Helping teachers help students with pronunciation

Abstract

This article introduces a theoretical framework for understanding speechand pronunciation based on insights from cognitive phonology in whichpronunciation is seen as a cognitive skill. In learning a cognitive skill, practice isessential, but its value depends on students having the right concept of what itis they are practising. Helping students form concepts appropriate to the newlanguage is therefore a crucial part of a language teacher's role. The article startswith an informal overview of the role of concepts and concept formation incognition. I then consider how well-known observations about pronunciationand pronunciation learning can be understood from this perspective, andsuggest some principles which can account for and extend these observations.Finally, I compare the cognitive approach with more familiar mainstream viewsof phonology, and suggest that they are not in conflict but offer significantlyand usefully different perspectives appropriate to different applications.