From Focus on Sounds to Focus on Words in English Pronunciation Instruction

Abstract

The paper addresses a very important aspect of Polish-accented English, namely the issue of frequent phonetic errors made by Polish learners which do not result from their inability to produce foreign sounds correctly, but which stem from various interference factors (e.g foreign pronounced as [fo’rejn]). Following Szpyra-Kozłowska’s (in press a) claims that such errors hinder successful communication far more than other segmental and suprasegmental inaccuracies and should thus be treated as a top pedagogical priority, what is suggested is a shift in phonetic instruction from the focus on the production of sounds and prosodies to the focus on the pronunciation of problematic words. Our major goal is to demonstrate how this proposal can be implemented in the language classroom. The authors present a report on the experiment in which a group of 25 Polish secondary school pupils has undergone a special training in the pronunciation of 50 commonly mispronounced words with the use of special, teacher-designed materials. The effectiveness of the employed procedure as well as the pupils’ reactions to it are examined and pedagogical conclusions are drawn.