Kate Mastruserio Reynolds, Central Washington University, Washington, USA

While in norming-generating* contexts, language learning in primary and secondary schools for those who are recent arrivals, again depending on micro-context, learners may have a short-duration newcomers’ or English language development (ELD) program, which may or may not include explicit instruction in pronunciation learning and practice; however, there are some of these learners who are placed into general education classes for lack of a newcomers/ELD program, or licensed ELL Specialist. While for those learners who have been in the norm-generating contexts for years, their instruction more closely aligns with content and language integrated instruction. In the later two placements, pronunciation is considered as a language skill that students acquire along with their ability to speak without any specific instruction (For an informative review of recent pronunciation instruction approaches, see Pennington (2021), and LaScotte, et al. (2021). In this paragraph, you may have noticed a lot of hedging. There seem to be no guidelines or universals for inclusion of pronunciation into curricula or textbooks, so how would educators see the connections without looking for them.

In many standards, pronunciation is considered part of learning about four skills (for instance TESOL, 2006, 2013, 2019; WIDA, 2020). Educators in ELT/TESOL see the direct and important relationships between speaking, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary, and pronunciation; however, these relationships are not always adequately communicated, so that materials writers, curriculum designers and others include instruction and practice on pronunciation with the four skills and vocabulary.

At the 2022 TESOL International Association Convention in Pittsburg, PA, I was fortunate to present with Mara Faslam, Jennifer Foote, and Khanh-Duc Kuttig on what we termed the ‘trickle-down problem’, teaching teachers the knowledge and practices for teaching pronunciation in the hopes that pronunciation will be included into their instruction. We each explored how we endeavor to bridge this teacher education to language instruction gap.

While we teach future educators about pronunciation, we need to consider how we are helping them bridge knowledge to how they can integrate pronunciation instruction and practice into their courses in their micro-contexts. Of course, teaching pronunciation and speaking are topics included in TESL Methods courses, among others, and we endeavor to give demonstrations, models, and examples, but we asserted that teacher educators need to make more explicit connections for future educators. For example, in my Literacy for Multilingual Learners courses, I call attention to the relationships between language skills, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In these discussions and practice, teacher candidates and I strive for explicitly teaching reading and vocabulary with emphasis on the phoneme/grapheme relationships as well as the suprasegmentals intonation, rhythm, prominence, word stress, and thought groups. Each of these phonological concepts helps readers to “read with expression”, a standard included in the Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010, p. 16). When discussing the teaching of speaking in literacy classes, we draw connection between speaking and pronunciation intelligibility, not expecting multilingual learners to speak or pronounce intelligibly without scaffolding. It calls to my mind a parallel to what Maria Estella Brisk said about teaching writing; we need to provide the scaffolding for writing in various genres, not just expect writing (Brisk, 2021). Embedding pronunciation into sheltered content or general education content courses, we can link vocabulary with word stress and articulation by teaching the vocabulary term explicitly along with a choral repetition followed by oral and written spaced practice with the meanings, writing and pronunciation of the words in isolation and in context. These examples are only a couple ideas of how I see pronunciation being included. I am sure you can think of many as well.

One last note, I am currently advocating for teacher educators to go one step further by considering the program models (i.e., pull-out, push-in, sheltered content, content and language integrated instruction), curricula (i.e., do materials include pronunciation along with the other content?), and links to other skills mentioned above when teaching about pronunciation instruction. I feel that if we bridge these gaps, then future language educators will not forget about the importance of teaching pronunciation, and it will become a possible mission.

References

Brisk, M.E. (October 26, 2021). SFL genre pedagogy: Teaching writing to students of all ages. TESOL International Association Teacher Education Interest Section Webinar. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX4oTsZ9dE8

LaScotte, D., Meyers, C., & Tarone, E. (2021). Voice and mirroring in SLA: Top-down pedagogy for L2 pronunciation instruction. RELC Journal 52(1), 144-154. https://doi.org/10.1177/003368822095391

Pennington, M.C. (2021). Teaching pronunciation: The state of the art 2021. RELC Journal, 52(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882211002283

Reynolds, K.M. (March 25, 2022). Highlighting pronunciation in literacy and vocabulary instruction. In K.M. Reynolds, M. Faslam, J. Foote, K.D. Kuttig, & C. Showalter, C., The Trickle-Down Problem: Pronunciation from Teacher Education to the Classroom, at the 57^th Annual TESOL International Association Convention, Pittsburg, PA.

WIDA. (2020). WIDA English language development standards framework, 2020 edition: Kindergarten–grade 12. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.