The Pronunciation Book: A Language Teacher’s Guide is intended as a comprehensive, all-in-one guide to pronunciation teaching for language teachers. For experienced and inexperienced language teachers alike, it offers an expansive and modern, communicative view of pronunciation and a review of pronunciation teaching approaches. These are both set in a context of second language acquisition theory and research that can help teachers understand the rationale behind various approaches and so help them make decisions about how best to address pronunciation in their own teaching. Of particular interest to teachers, the volume lays out practical principles for pronunciation instruction and the design of lessons and curriculum that are drawn from the review of approaches and the theory and research supporting them. In this way, The Pronunciation Book gives a grounded and unified account of pronunciation teaching set in a context of contemporary research and issues in language acquisition and language teaching.

The first part of the book provides what is in essence a mini-course on pronunciation and phonology from the perspective of second language acquisition and language teaching. It presents a communicative view of pronunciation in social, business, and professional communication, with attention to multilingual and lingua franca contexts. It includes a review of the pronunciation features of varieties of English in comparison with other languages and considers the place that pronunciation occupies in language teaching, testing, and teacher education. The second part presents an in-depth review of approaches to pronunciation teaching and of the research and theory supporting various approaches, including those which teach pronunciation as the primary concern or as a secondary concern, those which teach pronunciation on the segmental level or on the suprasegmental or prosodic level, those which teach pronunciation in context or in a decontextualized way, and those which teach pronunciation using technology or not using technology. The third part lays out a set of practical principles and guidelines for pronunciation instruction, curriculum, and lesson design that are consistent with the view of pronunciation given in the first part and follow directly from the review of teaching approaches given in the second part.

The Pronunciation Book thus offers a wealth of practical information backed up by research and an in-depth consideration of the contemporary issues of the language teaching field and the everyday concerns of language teachers. While the focus is on pronunciation in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language, the volume is relevant also to the teaching of pronunciation in other languages and in other contexts where pronunciation is addressed, such as speech therapy and training programs for international medical graduates and teaching assistants.

Series: Applied Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching