Month: May 2018

In my previous post, I promised to investigate possible implications a post-ELF perspective for pronunciation teaching, and in this post we will consider the question of what features of phonology we should focus on.

Let me begin with an analogy. If you think of a car, you can probably divide its features into essential and superficial. For example, wheels and a motor are essential (currently, at least). The colour doesn’t matter and is superficial, and the exact body shape probably doesn’t matter much either. There are even features which are accidental such as scratches and dents in the body work.

Continue reading “Post-ELF 4: Essential versus Superficial”

In my last post, article 2 in this series, I suggested that pronunciation teaching post-ELF must distinguish productive and receptive competences, and these will be asymmetrical.

In an English-as-a-lingua-franca speech community, we will pronounce locally and understand globally. The accent or range of accents we can produce will be much smaller than the range of accents we are capable of understanding. Continue reading “Post-ELF 3: A Hierarchy of Pronunciation Skills”