Mispronunciation in International English Communication
The majority of misunderstandings between speakers of English with different first languages come down to pronunciation differences. This was established by Jenkins, 2002. She points out the following irony: only learners of English are still expected to learn RP or general standard American pronunciation. In the UK and the US, everyone knows and accepts that speakers have regional accents. All L2’ English users are marked by their L1, and when English is used for international communication, L1 influenced pronunciations can lead to misunderstandings. How to avoid this and best prepare our learners ?
Trudgill (1998) favours the approach of holding on to some internationally accepted standards, informed by British or American standard pronunciation. He argues that if we do not pursue this, English will break up into dialects.
Jenkins favours the approach of teaching mutual intelligibility. She argues that this approach is more realistic, and native speaker pronunciation is much much rarer than non native, globally, and that it is also pedagogically most useful for learners.
Which one do you agree with?
You may read the full works cited by the authors if you like. Just click on the hot links below.
Explore the learning materials “Between two worlds” prepared by the British Council for teenagers learning English:
https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/study-break/video-zone/between-two-worlds
Would you be interested in using these materials in your teaching practice. Why? / Why not?
Explore the learning materials prepared by the British Council for teenagers learning English in the “YouTuber zone”:
https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/study-break/youtubers
Would you be interested in using these materials in your teaching practice. Why? / Why not?