Pronunciation Teaching Innovation in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom

Pronunciation research has recently witnessed growing interest in the sector of English language teaching, with a particular focus on pronunciation representation in textbooks, teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices, and learners’ beliefs about pronunciation instruction. Despite empirical evidence on the efficacy of communicative pronunciation teaching on second/foreign language (L2) learners’ intelligibility and/or comprehensibility, recent research shows pronunciation teaching to be unsystematic and ad hoc, usually through recasts and/or prompts. A possible explanation for this is that many L2 teachers receive little guidance on how to effectively implement communicative pronunciation teaching in their language classes. The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical reflective account of how pronunciation teaching was innovated in the Vietnamese tertiary English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom (i.e., a shift away from on-the-spot error correction to a communicative methodology). The chapter will begin with background information that gave an impetus for the innovation, followed by a detailed description of the context in which the innovation was piloted. It then portrays how a cohort of six Vietnamese tertiary EFL teachers constructed communicative pronunciation teaching in their English classes. Next, reflections on what worked and what did not will be discussed in detail. The chapter ends with some discussion questions that encourage readers to make links with other chapters in the book and to develop a clear understanding of the drivers of innovation.