Exploring Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions on the Teaching of English Pronunciation within University Settings in Chile
Due to the significant expansion and acceptance of English as the global contact language, multiple countries have included instruction on it as a compulsory element of their educational systems, so their populations can participate more actively in the globalised world. Chile has not been the excep...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis de maestría |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2018 |
| País: | Chile |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.anid.cl:10533/236597 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/10533/236597 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Humanidades Lenguage y Literatura Lingüística |
| Sumario: | Due to the significant expansion and acceptance of English as the global contact language, multiple countries have included instruction on it as a compulsory element of their educational systems, so their populations can participate more actively in the globalised world. Chile has not been the exception to this phenomenon, and has placed the teaching of English as an area of great interest and emphasis in school and university curriculums. It is particularly in this last domain where English has been considered as an essential tool future professionals should master, due to its claimed usefulness for both facilitating international relations and, at the same time, access to economic development for the country. Even though English is acknowledged as the gate to international communication, its instruction in Chile, as well as in other countries that do not consider it as an official language, has been historically based on native norms that only reflect certain prestigious varieties of the language: the British Received Pronunciation (RP) and the General American (GA) accents. In this way, the present study explores the perceptions and practices of university teachers and students about English pronunciation teaching and learning, and the use of native norms for such purposes. The data was collected by means of online questionnaires applied to a group of teachers and students, together with follow-up interviews that were conducted to obtain more detailed insights of some teachers’ responses. The findings of the investigation confirm the supremacy of the RP and GA accents in English pronunciation teaching, for receptive and productive skills, including teachers’ choice of accent to speak the language, mainly as a result of the influence these teachers gained from their previous training programmes. Similarly, students also showed preference for these accents as a consequence of the little exposure they had to non-standard varieties. However, the results also indicate an emergent shift in the way some teachers perceive English and its role within society, what has made them innovate in their practices, although these were not fully informed on current sociolinguistic discussions, especially regarding the use of English as an International Language. This evidence implies an urgent re-evaluation of English teaching training programmes so they can prime teachers with a better understanding of the current scenario of English in the world and its implications for pronunciation teaching. |
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