Using Shadowing Technique to Improve 7th_ Grade Students’ English Pronunciation. A Methodology

Correct English pronunciation is essential when communicating for international academic exchange, business, education, etc. In foreign language teaching, one of the elements of the oral skill that should be taught in lessons is pronunciation. In Ecuador, though, there is always a call to improve the students’ acquisition of their oral communicative competence, the students at different levels of education show deficiencies in pronunciation. Different reasons limit its development like lack of teachers’ motivation, preparation, time to teach it, effective teaching materials, media, and, techniques to be employed. One technique that can be used by teachers to enhance pronunciation is the shadowing technique. In this article, the results of the research developed by the author are presented and explained. This study was carried out to corroborate the feasibility of the application of a methodology for the improvement of 7th_ grade students’ English pronunciation at Flavio Alfaro # 52 Junior High School in Flavio Alfaro Canton, through the triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative results of an experiment in a class of 25 students, and questionnaire. This methodology containing four stages took into account the student’s previous knowledge and learning styles and its results showed that after the post-test, 72% of the students increased their grades. These results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed methodology that uses the shadowing technique in the English lessons to favor the development of the 7thgrade English pronunciation.