Key words: teaching English pronunciation, task based instruction

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze what some pronunciation teachers are currently doing in some Asian contexts and, in view of their contribution to the profession and their results obtained, propose a state-of-the-art methodology for teaching English pronunciation founded upon the combination of fluency- with accuracy-focused tasks.

Introduction
For a long time, from the literature, it would seem that pronunciation teachers in many Asian contexts have been using what some would epitomize as an conventional methodology for teaching English pronunciation rooted in drilling and automatic exercises. The outcome of this divulges that many learners retain some critical deviant phonological forms which prove highly detrimental to successful communication in English.

A predicament of this type may entail a need to effect a change in the methodology used whereby tasks function as a central focus in a supportive and natural environment for language study. Under this new approach which combines meaning- with form-focused tasks, learners are expected to develop their communication skills and, in so doing, modify those deviant phonological forms with the intention of preserving phonological intelligibility.

In the last decades, and perhaps due to the effects of globalization as a worldwide phenomenon, there has been a steady growth in the attention to the magnitude of pronunciation teaching, as the general goals of teaching have primed the effective use of the spoken language to establish successful communication. This fact, however, has brought about an emergent debate about the models, goals and, particularly, the methodology used for pronunciation skill teaching. For some, such changes and the uncertainty of debate are puzzling, so a study to resolve some aspects of the debate is a valuable contribution to the English language teaching profession.

In the more distant past, conventional approaches to teaching pronunciation emphasized the study of phonemes and their meaningful contrasts, along with some structurally based interest in stress, rhythm, and intonation. From the pedagogic perspective, instruction mainly consisted in articulatory descriptions, imitation, and memorization of patterns through drills and set scripts, with overall attention to correction, all this, in the hope that learners would eventually pronounce the English sounds like a British native speaker. This concern for perfect pronunciation, derived from native models, aimed at enabling learners to come as close as possible to the native-like performance of a single prestige accent - Received Pronunciation (RP).

Later, under the notional-functional approach, nevertheless, came the need to get learners to use the language freely for communicative purposes. Along these lines, drillings and other types of mechanical exercises were considered outdated whereby the focus was placed mostly on meaning and not on form. In this context, pronunciation teaching was downgraded pedagogically as a result of difficulties in aligning it with and incorporating it into more communicative approaches to language teaching since work on phonology, it was believed, could impede communicative practice and thus threaten learners' self-confidence (Jenner, 1996).

Nonetheless, in recent years, and with the renewed professional support to enable students to become effective and efficient speakers of English, there has been a incessant progress to bring pronunciation back on stage since, as many prominent theorists and researchers point out, it is a vital element of communicative competence and, as such, it should be given preferential treatment (see, for example, Morley, 1991; Taylor, 1991; among others). At present, and possibly as a result of this new trend, many more people are again keen on pronunciation, but the truth is, as was said above, that we are not completely convinced of which models, goals and methodology are more helpful for students and teachers alike.

In accordance with the different approaches to teaching pronunciation, the bottom-up approach, on the one hand, begins with the articulation of individual sounds and works up towards intonation, stress and rhythm. On the other hand, the top-down approach begins with patterns of intonation and brings separate sounds into sharper focus as and when required. In the bottom-up approach, the central idea is that if you teach the segments first, the suprasegmental features will be subsequently acquired without the need of formal instruction. In the top-down approach, however, the assumption is that once the prosodic features are in place, the necessary segmental discriminations will follow accordingly (Dalton and Seidlhofer, 1994).

Starting holistically from voice quality and then moving on to work on segmental features, according to Jenkins (2000), implies that learners are pushed to adapt to and use L2 articulatory settings with their articulators still geared towards the production of L1 sounds:

Regarding the polemic claim presented by many pronunciation writers which asserts the view that suprasegmentals are more indispensable and contribute more to intelligibility and accent than segmentals do, Jenkins (1996, 1998, 2000), rather contentiously, argues that the view that most segmental errors, though evident, do not impair understanding, is something of an overstatement, since most mishearings between NSs-NNSs and NNs-NNs, according to her own data sources, can be identified as occurring at a segmental level. According to her "segmental transfer errors can prove highly detrimental to successful communication in English" (Jenkins, 2000, p. 39). On the same grounds, and to provide support for her claims, Anderson-Hsieh (2000) reported that "very few studies have actually investigated the relative roles of the segmentals and suprasegmentals in intelligibility, but also that the few that have been conducted have been suggestive (emphasis on original) rather than strongly conclusive of the greater influence of suprasegmentals" (in Jenkins, 2000, p. 135).

Close examination of these controversial beliefs may lead us to think that a reasonable aim would be to establish a degree of segmental-suprasegmental balance through which learners, for personal or professional reasons, are allowed to choose whether they wish to sound as close as possible to native speakers of English or not. However, even with these needs in place, although it may sound discouraging, many students will never acquire through formal instruction all the suprasegmental features because some of these, especially pitch movement, are apparently not teachable and can only be acquired over time - if at all - through extensive non-pedagogic exposure (Roach, 1983; Dalton and Seidlhofer, 1994; Nelson, 1998; Jenkins, 2000; among others).

For pedagogical reasons, it might be helpful to think about the teachability-learnability scale as introduced by Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) which suggests that there are certain aspects of the English pronunciation which seem to be easily taught; namely, sounds and stress while others, such as intonation, are extremely dependent on individual circumstances and thus practically impossible to separate out for direct teaching. In her latest studies, Jenkins (1996, 1998, 2000) explains that even if it were feasible to teach pitch movement in the classroom, she does not believe that the use of native speaker pitch movement matters very much for intelligibility in interactions between NSs-NNSs or NNs-NNs since this feature very seldom leads to communication breakdowns, and when it does, it is accompanied by other linguistic errors - commonly phonological.

Nuclear stress, and especially contrastive stress, however, unlike intonation, operates at a more conscious level and is crucial for intelligibility. In her data, Jenkins (2000) found out that most of the errors that caused unintelligibility were segmental, a substantial minority consisted of intonational errors and, of these, almost all related to misplaced nuclear stress, particularly contrastive stress, either alone or combined with segmental errors. Yet again, this last finding provides evidence to support the view that the furthermost phonological obstacles to mutual intelligibility between NSs-NNSs and NNs-NNSs seem to be deviant sounds in combination with misplaced and/or misproduced nuclear stress.

On looking back at this discussion and turning back to the concern about setting realistic and achievable goals for teaching pronunciation, it could be sensible to think that instead of pushing learners to strive for perfect pronunciation, a focus on pedagogic attention on those items which are teachable and learnable and also essential in terms of intelligible pronunciation, appears to be a more reasonable goal. The main pedagogic aim underlying my proposal is that, upon the implementation of a new methodology for teaching pronunciation, which combines fluency- with accuracy-focused tasks, students are expected to develop a highly acceptable phonological competence to become fluent bilingual speakers, a fact which will enable them to communicate in EFL (English as a Foreign Language), ESL (English as a Second Language) and EIL (English as an International Language) contexts.

After exploring and critically analyzing the different approaches to teaching pronunciation and what appears to be teachable and learnable for classroom settings, I will now refer to the type of methodology that, according to some influential pronunciation scholars and my own experience, appears to be more useful for learners and teachers alike. As was mentioned above, the formal instruction of those common core features of English pronunciation - vowel length, nuclear stress (especially, contrastive stress), and voice setting- which seem to be vital for establishing intelligibility enable learners to take utmost advantage of both their receptive and productive pronunciation skills.

Concerning production skills, interactive or "reciprocal" (Ellis, 2001, p.49) tasks with a specific focus on form are crucial for the development of key phonological features (Thornbury, 1993; Jones and Evans, 1995; Jenkins, 2000; Swain and Lapkin, 2001; among others). More controlled sessions, on the other hand, are vital to classroom work in accommodation skills and where changes to L1 phonological habits are indispensable, as learners will not be able to converge with one another on more target-like pronunciations unless it is within their capacity to produce them successfully.

Indeed, practice activities of specific target sounds - minimal pair exercises and drilling - as well as the rules of contrastive and nuclear stress, for instance, will facilitate learners to move from receptive to productive competence in core problematic areas (Jenkins, 2000). Nonetheless, it is very doubtful that these types of tasks will promote pronunciation skills or motivation in the language classroom. Although drilling exercises might be of noteworthy importance to cause to happen decisive changes in L1 phonological habits, they should not be overused in the pronunciation class at the expense of other kind of more communicative tasks through which learners may have the opportunity to develop the appropriate use of specific phonological features, and above all, their accommodation skills.

Less controlled pair and small group work, especially involving joint problem-solving situations, as Gass and Varonis (1991) suggest, are better than those which are "non-reciprocal" (Ellis, 2001, p. 49) because they involve negotiation of meaning and more opportunities for learners to adjust and accommodate their receptive as well as productive pronunciation skills (in Jenkins, 2000). According to Thornbury (1997), students should be provided with opportunities for "noticing gaps which, even if essentially meaning-driven, allow the learners to devote some attentional focus on form, and, moreover, provide both the data and the incentive for the learners to make comparisons between interlanguage output and target language models" (p. 327).

Consistent with a consciousness-raising approach to teaching pronunciation (Rutherford, 1987; Schmidt, 1990), it follows then that teachers should try to promote noticing in their classes, by focusing their learners' attention on specific targeted phonological forms in the input, and on the distance to be covered between the present level of their interlanguage, on the one hand, and the target form, on the other. The comparison by learners of their version with the input model presents them with helpful evidence of yet-to-be-acquired phonological features, and this process of noticing, it might be argued, turns input into intake, and serves to reorganize the learners' developing phonological competence. Indeed, this kind of tasks overturns the order of traditional models of teaching, which go from accuracy to fluency, as, for instance, when learners are presented with a rule for later use in freer practice activities. This task-based mode of instruction, in turn, proposes a fluency-to-accuracy sequence which pushes learners to complete the task set by using whatever linguistic resources they have within reach, and at the same time, allows for consciousness-raising at the discoursal, syntactic, lexical, and phonological levels (Luchini, 2004.a; Rutherford, 1987; Schmidt, 1990; Thornbury, 1997).

On looking back at the above discussion on the implementation of different types of tasks for the pronunciation class and their ultimate impact on learners' acquisition of specific phonological features, it could be pointed out that, as for my proposal, the aim would be to establish a degree of controlled to less controlled task-type balance appropriate to a class composed of students of different talents, different motivations, and even different stages of development.

As to their receptive skills, learners need to range far beyond the limits of the dominant native-speaker accents such as RP (the standard British accent) or GA (General American) in their receptive repertoires in order to be able to deal with the different accent varieties of their interlocutors whom they are most likely to meet, whether they are Ns or NNs English speakers. The best way for this familiarity to be achieved is through repeated pedagogic exposure to assorted L1 and L2 accents of English with a focus on areas of difference, especially those which are considered highly threatening for establishing mutual understanding. The aim of exposing learners to these different accents is to help them develop greater awareness of the fact of L1 as well as L2 accent variations - particularly in vital phonological areas - and a readiness to attempt to cope with them, especially when faced with a completely new accent (Jenkins, 2000; Walker, 2000; Rosewarne, 2002).

Since 2001, the theoretical principles underpinning this proposal for teaching pronunciation have been implemented at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata -Teacher Training Program in Argentina- with student teachers attending Oral Discourse II - a course on English pronunciation which is taught in year two of this program. Some of the data sources drawn from this longitudinal evaluative study have already been analysed and interpreted against the criteria presented in this discussion in order to determine the effectiveness of the implementation of this new methodology for teaching pronunciation. The results obtained so far, coming from different instruments of data collection (see Luchini, 2004.b), reveal that this proposal for teaching English pronunciation is effective, at least at this stage in the study, for both students and teachers alike. This suggests that pronunciation teachers no longer need to hesitate to introduce task-based instruction to their Asian learners, or perhaps to any other group of students in different contexts worldwide.

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