Pronunciation as a Listening Skill

Pronunciation is not only about the mouth, but also the ears. And, with English being a global language, the ears must learn to be flexible in order to make sense of all those varieties of spoken English out there. This article is about helping learners to deal with this variety. We focus on features of fast conversational English, and on parameters which are most vulnerable to variation across different accents. We also look at ways of exploiting authentic audio in the classroom. And last but not least, we discover the humour which can so easily emerge out of misunderstandings.