importance of individualized teaching and cautioned against pedagogy not based on research that may be detrimental to the learners.
Conference Report Julie Bouchard
Another important presentation was the colloquium on teaching and learning pronunciation moderated by Dr. Lucy Pickering. Dr. Amanda Baker, Dr. Linda Grant and Dr. Beth Zelinski talked about the importance of basing a pronunciation curriculum on the local context and the features that facilitate intelligibility locally. Dr. Marnie Reed talked about the importance of linking research findings to pedagogy and the importance of training teachers in pronunciation pedagogy. Dr. Lucy Pickering, Shigehito Menjo and myself talked about call center outsourcing and intelligibility issues, as well as the teaching of pronunciation for English as an international language.
Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) International Conference and preconference Pronunciation Symposium Cairns Convention Center, Cairns, Queensland, Australia, July 2-5 2012
Pre-conference Pronunciation Symposium
Cairns, Australia
The pre-conference Pronunciation Symposium was held nd on July 2 , the day before the beginning of the ACTA International Conference. The symposium was attended by 135 delegates who not only had the opportunity to listen to 5 experts’ presentations during the morning, but also to ask them questions about their talk and their current research agenda in the afternoon sessions. The main presenters were Dr. Trady Derwing, Dr. Helen Fraser, Dr. Lynda Yates, Dr. Ee Ling Low and Dr. Andy Kirkpatrick. They were joined by Dr. Lucy Pickering for the afternoon sessions.
This year’s ACTA international conference in Cairns, Australia hosted a pre-conference symposium on pronunciation organized by Linda Grant, Dr. Lucy Pickering, Dr. Marnie Reed, Meg Rosse and Dr. Beth Zielinski. This resulted in a focus on pronunciation with a dedicated string during the entire conference and the meeting of various pronunciation experts for the benefit of the 350 delegates who registered for the conference themed “TESOL as a Global Trade: Ethics, Equity and ecology”.
Dr. Tracy Derwing talked about ethical pronunciation teaching practices. She warned against teaching informed by intuition and urged teachers to build their teaching on current research findings. She explained how having an accent doesn’t mean being unintelligible and stressed the importance of basing pronunciation teaching on the intelligibility issues as it is those that will lead to communication breakdown. She concluded with a list of suggestions for better teaching that can be summarized as a focus on intelligibility to facilitate efficient communication.
The conference took place at the Cairns Conference Center situated at a walking distance from the city’s main attractions and restaurants, as well as the departure point for those who wish to discover the Great Barrier Reef. The highlights of the conference were the five plenary presentations from several renowned speakers in the area of TESOL and ethics including Dr. Tove SkutnabbKangas, Professor Suresh Canagarajah, Professor Robert Phillipson and Professor Gillian Wigglesworth.
Dr. Helen Fraser’s talk was based in her cognitive phonology work. She talked about how teachers can help students feel more confident in their language use. She clarified how language teachers can work with their students’ thought processes to help them improve their pronunciation. She explained how cognitive phonology does not focus on finding a problem, but on learning how to learn, and helping the learner to become more independent in order to take charge of their own learning.
The conference’s pronunciation strand comprised 19 papers from participants from various countries including Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Pakistan and Canada. One of the highlights of the conference was a talk by featured speaker Dr. Tracy Derwing who talked about ethical pronunciation teaching. She stressed the
Dr. Lynda Yates’ presentation demonstrated the importance of pairing pronunciation teaching with pragmatics. She showed how both are related in the sense that they might impair intelligibility. She demonstrated through a case study the importance of pragmatics in high stake situations and how teaching it in conjunction with
__________________________________________________________________________________ 1 IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group Newsletter Issue NN
pronunciation can be useful for learners. She finally suggested that teachers could help their students by modeling their teaching on authentic examples and teaching through noticing activities, explicit comments and encouraging students to research problems they notice.
Julie Bouchard, Research Assistant, Applied Linguistics Laboratory, Texas A&M University –Commerce.
[email protected]
Symposium wrap-up session Dr. Ee Ling Low presented on the controversial issue of Native English Speakers Teachers (NEST) and Non Native English Speakers Teachers (NNEST). She showed that most people learning English in the world do so outside of a native speaker environment and that they are likely to use English with non native speakers. She questioned the prejudice against NNESTs in teaching English in general but particularly in teaching pronunciation. She recommended refocusing the native speaker model to an international English language model that corresponds better to today’s reality. Dr.Andy Kirkpatrick talked about the implications of the use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the ASEAN countries. He suggested teaching English in a way that helps learners from those countries to be mutually intelligible instead of focusing on the native speaker model. He showed how some phonological deviations can facilitate intelligibility in certain contexts. The afternoon sessions gave the participants the chance to interact with the presenters who were also available through the entire conference. Some friendly exchanges brought more light to the different perspectives on pronunciation research and teaching. This experience was very positive and the opportunity to interact with world renowned researchers who were very open was refreshing. I personally left the conference recharged with a head full of ideas. At the moment of writing this article, the conference website www.pronunciationsymposium.org is hosting the presenters’ PowerPoint presentations.
__________________________________________________________________________________ 2 IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group Newsletter Issue NN
