Pronunciation Error Analysis in Future English Language Teachers in Croatia

Pronunciation Error Analysis in Future English Language Teachers in Croatia

Kovacevic, Kristina Cergol
Carevic, Ivana

This paper focuses on some pronunciation errors found in Croatian students of the Graduate Programme of Primary Education in Combination with the Study of the English language at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb. Despite the fact that the use of English as the international lingua franca questions the standards of what is defined as “incorrect” in the pronunciation of English as L2 as long as mutual intelligibility is achieved, one can still argue for the need to brush up on a standard English pronunciation (regardless of the variety) in certain groups of learners. In the future primary school English language teacher training a special emphasis needs to be placed on their pronunciation skills as flaws in pronunciation may hinder their successful future teaching of the English language to primary school pupils. The aim of this study was to identify problems in future teachers’ pronunciation of the English language and perform a categorisation of the problematic areas in pronunciation. The corpus used for error analysis was comprised of strings of speech in the English language recorded by each participating student. On the basis of the analysis, pronunciation errors were categorized and the most problematic areas highlighted. The findings of this study will be used for the purposes of the Phonetics and Phonology course syllabus redesign.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05

886