EPIP6 - 2019 - John Levis

John Levis

Iowa State University, USA

Connecting the dots between pronunciation research and practice

Abstract
The (non)interaction of research and practice is a common issue in language teaching circles. At teaching-oriented conferences, teachers often lament that research presentations are not relevant to what happens in the classroom, and they seem to assume that direct application to classroom practice is the primary goal of research. Likewise, those who are interested in research often do not or cannot express pedagogical implications of their research that are clearly applicable to the classroom.
The disconnect between researchers and teachers is perhaps nowhere more evident than in teaching and researching L2 pronunciation, where researech has traditionally had close connections to pedagogical concerns. But teachers lack an understanding of key concerns that drive pronunciation research, and they are often inadequately trained to teach pronunciation (Foote, Holtby, & Derwing, 2011). This leads to comments that any pronunciation researcher is familiar with. Decades ago, at one of my first presentations at International TESOL, Judy Gilbert told me that she found my topic interesting but that she could not see how she could apply it to teaching pronunciation. More recently, at TESOL 2018, my invited talk received feedback from one attendee as having been “Theory only, no practice.” Because I have always tried to connect theory to practice, these and other comments I have received suggest that both research and teaching concerns, while related, are many more steps removed than we think. But there are steps we can take to make both more relevant to each other.
This presentation uses my own research history and that of others I know to illustrate some of the reasons it is so difficult to connect theory and pedagogy:1. Teachers and researchers work on different timelines. Teachers often need pedagogical activities immediately, while researchers’ concerns are not directly connected to the day-to-day concerns of teaching.2. Teachers are interested in what seems to work; researchers are interested in why and to what extent something seems to work.3. L2 pronunciation research is typically not directly based on teaching concerns; Similarly, L2 pronunciation teaching is typically indirectly connected to research concerns. 4. Both teachers and researchers are often not able to describe the connections of research concerns and classroom practices.
The goal of this presentation is to encourage non-researching teachers to understand what they can expect from research studies. It will encourage them to consider how some of the important questions in pronunciation research are intensely practical. It will also suggest what researchers can do to better frame their studies so that pedagogical connections are clearer. Finally, I will suggest why researchers should pay closer attention to pedagogy, both to enrich their research and to promote better pedagogy.
ReferencesFoote, J. A., A. K. Holtby, and T. M. Derwing. 2011. ‘Survey of the teaching of pronunciation in adult ESL programs in Canada, 2010,’ TESL Canada Journal 29/1:1–22.

Bio

I have been teaching ESL for over 30 years, mostly at the university level. For most of that time I have worked with teachers, teaching them, supervising and presenting workshops on how to teach. My specialty is English pronunciation. This specialty has led me to explore a wide variety of topics, including teaching pronunciation, the role of intonation in pronunciation teaching, teaching other teachers about teaching pronunciation, the roles of dialects in teaching pronunciation, and examining what makes speech intelligible.
I have presented papers and taught in Canada, Singapore, Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Taiwan, Ukraine, Scotland and the US. I have written articles about pronunciation teaching in a variety of journals, from the more theoretical (such as Applied Linguistics) to those that mix theory and practice (such as TESOL Quarterly) to those that are quite practically minded (TESOL Journal, ELT Journal). I am also the co-editor of several volumes, including Social Dynamics in Second Language Accent (Degruyter), the Handbook of English Pronunciation (Wiley Blackwell), Critical Concepts in Linguistics: Pronunciation (Taylor & Francis), and the forthcoming Cambridge University Press book, Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation.
I am the creator and organizer of the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference, now going into its tenth year. The conference attracts scholars and teachers interested in pronunciation from around the world and provides a freely available reviewed electronic proceedings (available various places, including my publications page). A direct result of the conference is the new Journal of Second Language Pronunciation (John Benjamins), of which I am the founding editor. I am also the co-creator, with Sinem Sonsaat, of pronunciationforteachers.com, a website providing reliable information about pronunciation concepts and pronunciation teaching.

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