March 01, 2019

Due to ongoing globalization tendencies and the steadily increasing use of English as the lingua franca (lingua franca) in industry, in business and commerce as well as in science and research, there have been efforts in some linguistic research areas, especially in applied linguistics, but also for twenty years partly in teaching English as a foreign language, to redefine the role of pronunciation. The classic native speaker models such as the British or American standard pronunciation are questioned and the legitimacy of non-native speakers is advocated. Mimicking a British or American pronunciation should no longer be desirable, say many experts. Instead, worldwide it is important to be able to communicate primarily in English.

While one learns Danish to converse with Danes and learns Polish to converse with Poles, nowadays one does not necessarily learn English to communicate with native speakers of English-speaking countries. Does this eliminate the need for stubborn adherence to traditional pronunciation rules in English classes (such as in the case of the 'inglorious' interdental fricative - better known as 'th'), since more and more often English at work is not used by native English speakers anyway? What do the THMstudents think about this?

In order to capture the opinions of the THMstudents, an online survey on this topic was carried out at the beginning of the 2018-19 winter semester with the support of the ZQE. The aim was to obtain a meaningful snapshot of the views on the role of pronunciation in the teaching of students who deal with English as a foreign language in the course of their studies as part of an English course offered by the Language Center. A total of 742 students filled out a questionnaire with fourteen questions completely or almost completely. The most important results are presented below.

The evaluation of the valid questionnaires shows a complicated and somewhat confusing starting point. While a third of all respondents believed that everything there is to know about 'English pronunciation' is taught in school, almost half (47%) stated the opposite. However, more than half of all respondents (55%) were aware that they still have difficulties with English pronunciation, while 34% saw no problems in this area. When asked if speaking English with an accent bothered them, 42% of respondents answered 'no', while only slightly fewer (39%) said speaking with an accent was undesirable for them.

However, the answers to the core questions about the role of orientation to native-speaker pronunciation standards in learning English were clear. Three quarters of all respondents (75%) confirmed that they would like to be guided by native speakers when learning English pronunciation. The US or North American variant seems to be favoured: 38% of respondents preferred a US pronunciation as a model, while 28% favored a British pronunciation. This slight advantage of US English is even clearer when the results of two questions are correlated: 26% of all respondents said they preferred the US variant and at the same time said they had no intention of pronouncing it in British language, while 17% of respondents who were aiming for a British pronunciation also indicated that they did not want to sound like an American when speaking English. Apparently, among the native-speaker varieties preferred by learners, British pronunciation no longer enjoys the monopoly it has traditionally enjoyed in German education.

The central importance of the role model function of native-speaker pronunciation standards is also shown in the question about the increasingly frequent lingua franca situations in which native speakers are not necessarily involved in communication. Most respondents assume that English native speakers could (also) be involved in the use of English in their later professional life. While only 33% of all respondents felt that it was not important to sound like a native English speaker in such situations due to the lack of native speakers, almost three quarters (73%) indicated that the orientation towards a native pronunciation is important, since there will probably be communicative situations in which (also) native speakers are involved.

Regarding the role of pronunciation in learning English, learners at THM seem to have a keen interest in improving their pronunciation. Already 60% of all respondents would like to continue working and improving their pronunciation, while only a quarter (25%) believe that good pronunciation is not necessary as long as one can communicate.

The vast majority of respondents (77%) agreed that practicing pronunciation is just as important in English class as working on grammar and vocabulary. In addition, 78% felt that digital media and online opportunities to practice English pronunciation were not enough to achieve the desired improvement. As far as this language area is concerned, the help of a lecturer is probably indispensable.

Teaching proper phonation is not an easy task, and students at THM are aware of some of these issues. Almost two-thirds of respondents (63%) said that English orthography, which unlike German is not based on phonetic principles, makes pronunciation difficult to learn. About the same number (65%) stated that most English pronunciation problems relate to the pronunciation of newly learned words that cannot be pronounced from spelling and need to be learned separately. More than half of all respondents (52%) said that it would take at least a year to improve their pronunciation in an English-speaking country.

Thanks to the lively participation of the THMstudents on the subject of 'English pronunciation', we at the Language Center can now better assess the importance of this important language skill and accordingly take it into account in our curricula.

I would like to thank everyone involved in this project - both the students who took part in the survey and the ZQE for the good technical support.

Prof. Dr. Ronald Kresta

Head of Language Center

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Ronald Kresta
Telephone: +49 641 309 2824
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