Most teachers of English will have come across a sound chart at some point, but few realise how arbitrary they are. I do not mean 'arbitrary' in the negative sense of 'with no good reason', but rather in the sense that there are choices that the designer has had to make. At every stage in the creation of a chart, the author will have made decisions which could equally well have been otherwise.
Do you use the phonemic script in teaching? If you say, "It depends", what does it depend on? What are the pros and cons of the IPA? What kind of students does it help, and how does it help them? These are some of the issues broached in this paper.
Mark Hancock, in an interview with Andi White for IATEFL Online, talks about English as a Lingua Franca and about pronunciation as a listening skill. Read the transcript on the PDF below. Listen to the talk about pronunciation for listening here.
There are so many ideas and concepts in ELT competing for our attention that sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees.This article and map is intended as a way of keeping the big picture in view. Below, you will find a PDF of the shorter article, as published in the MET. You will also find the more complete article written up after the plenary talk at TESOL Spain.
