On the Teaching and Acquisition of Pronunciation within a Communicative Approach

In the United States, the Communicative Approach has been the focus of much intellectual debate resulting in numerous studies examining the acquisition of the four language skills. Although the acquisition of certain morphological structures and discourse strategies have received attention, studies on the acquisition of target language pronunciation have lagged behind. Recent research examining phonological instruction indicates that improvement in pronunciation for adult foreign language learners is possible by employing a multimodal methodology designed to account for individual learning style variation. An extension of this research examines experimental subjects' overall improvement in pronunciation accuracy, pinpoints specific areas where pronunciation instruction appears to be most beneficial (e.g., discrete-word repetition, sentence repetition, discrete-word reading, and free speech); and determines natural phoneme classes and specific allophones that improved as a result of phonological instruction. The findings have implications for current communicative approaches.