Integrating pronunciation into ESL/EFL classrooms

Integrating Pronunciation Into ESL/EFL Classrooms John M. Levis and Linda Grant Hiroko often says “led” when she should say “red.” Jasmine sounds like she’s speaking too quickly because of an unfamiliar speech rhythm. Pierre seems to emphasize the wrong word in a sentence, making it hard to follow his ideas.

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ost language teachers are familiar with students such as these and agree that intelligible pronunciation is vital to successful communication. Similarly, most students see pronunciation as an important part of learning to speak, and therefore ask that more class time be devoted to pronunciation. Despite the recognized importance of pronunciation, teachers often remain uncertain about how to incorporate it into the curriculum. Given that most courses emphasize general oral communication over pronunciation (Murphy, 1991), teachers must seek creative ways to integrate pronunciation into speakingoriented classes in a manner clearly related to the oral communication goals of the course. We assume that it is desirable to address pronunciation teaching in the context of speaking (Firth, 1993), and that a speaking-oriented approach serves the communication needs of students more effectively than approaches focusing on either fluency or articulatory goals alone (Morley, 1991). Murphy (1991) echoes this belief by saying that pronunciation instruction “needs to be integrated with broader level communicative activities in which speakers and listeners engage in . . . meaningful communication” (p. 60). Although we believe it is best to achieve this integration without shifting the focus of the class to pronunciation, we acknowledge that implementation remains a work in progress. Approaches favoring the integration of pronunciation into oral communication have been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have received little clear direction about how to accomplish this integration. In this article, we address the practical challenges related to integrating pronunciation into oral communication. First, we describe the central difficulty in integrating pronunciation into the speaking classroom. Next, we suggest all-skills principles to guide the incorporation of pronunciation into oral communication courses. Finally, in the context of four typical classroom activities, we explore possible implementation strategies that can be applied to a wide variety of instructional settings. For the most part, the activities focus on suprasegmental features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation, not because segmentals (i.e., VOL. 12 NO. 2

consonants and vowels) are unimportant in communication, but because suprasegmentals are more clearly connected to functions of spoken English.

Approaches favoring the integration of pronunciation into oral communication have been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have received little clear direction about how to accomplish this integration.

Teaching Pronunciation and Oral Communication: The Challenges Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996) provide a five-stage model for teaching pronunciation communicatively. Their model generally moves from raising awareness of an aspect of pronunciation, to perception or focused listening, to oral practice. For segmental and suprasegmental features, oral practice progresses from controlled practice in oral reading, to semistructured practice in information gap activities and dialogues, to less structured communicative practice. In other words, the oral practice moves from a focus on phonological form to a dual focus on form and meaning. Teachers can apply this framework in various ways, but in our classroom and teacher-training experience, it is usually applied in two ways, depending on what skill is central to a course. In classes devoted to pronunciation, for example, teachers apply the framework usually by moving from controlled pronunciation practice to less structured, communicative speaking practice. In this case, however, teachers often spend the majority of time on controlled or guided practice, and give short shrift to the more communicative end of the pronunciation spectrum. Actual speaking practice is usually unrelated to pronunciation or ignored altogether. In courses devoted to speaking or oral communication, teachers apply the framework by moving in the opposite direction, starting with less structured speaking practice and perhaps moving into pronunciation. In this case, however, teachers often address pronunciation unsystematically, applying it primarily as a corrective measure when errors are too prominent to be ignored. TESOL JOURNAL

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Either way, students often fail to get the full range of practice activities they need for improving speaking and pronunciation. Consequently, even when teachers want to teach pronunciation communicatively, they have little sense of how to weave it effectively into a listening and speaking or all-skills course so that it consists of more than ad hoc corrections, but does not take up so much time that the communicative goals of the course are neglected. Similarly, existing textbooks offer two primary avenues for integrating pronunciation and speaking instruction. On the one hand, although current pronunciation-based texts include communicative activities, most are organized around pronunciation features and are not suitable as primary texts in oral communication courses. On the other hand, a striking feature of many speaking-based or integrated-skills texts is the absence of explicit, sustained focus on pronunciation. When pronunciation is included, it usually addresses listening comprehension or consists of carefully controlled oral reading or repetition. Speakingoriented pronunciation instruction, when it appears at all, consists of carefully controlled oral reading or repetition. The current situation closely resembles that described a decade ago, where one researcher found that, in oral communication texts, “activities centered around speaking and listening are vastly more common . . . than are pronunciation activities” (Murphy, 1991, p. 64).

Guiding Principles Our attempts to incorporate pronunciation into speaking classes are based on several principles gleaned from practice and theory. These principles promote the integration of pronunciation in ways that link features of speech with their communicative functions rather than ways that promote noncontextualized or irrelevant work on the sound system.

Principle 1: Aim for a Primary Though Not Exclusive Focus on Suprasegmentals The first principle, that instruction should focus primarily on suprasegmentals (e.g., stress, rhythm, intonation), comes from the belief that mastery of suprasegmentals is

Even when teachers want to teach pronunciation communicatively, they have little sense of how to weave it effectively into a listening and speaking or all-skills course so that it consists of more than ad hoc corrections, but does not take up so much time that the communicative goals of the course are neglected.

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likely to make a greater contribution to intelligibility than mastery of segmentals (McNerney & Mendelsohn, 1993). However, intelligibility is not our justification for their importance in the speaking classroom. Rather, suprasegmentals, by virtue of their connection to discourse meaning and connected speech, are more likely than segmentals to be directly relevant to speaking skills. Because features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation affect not just words but whole utterances, they contribute more directly to skill in using the spoken language.

Principle 2: Maintain a Central Focus on Speaking in the Class The second principle is based on an assumption that “a pronunciation syllabus should begin with the widest possible focus [general speaking] and move gradually in on specific problems” (Firth, 1993, p. 173). It also assumes that pronunciation is a subset of the principal skill areas of speaking and listening (Murphy, 1991) and, as such, should always be taught with reference to those skills. As experienced pronunciation teachers know, students who are able to produce new sounds when they focus only on pronunciation face a significant gap in using their new pronunciations in meaningful communication (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996). We therefore assume that incorporating pronunciation into a speaking curriculum is essential in helping bridge this gap. Teaching pronunciation in the context of speaking also means that features that are targeted should be those that arise naturally from the speaking activity and contribute to the success of the interaction. This is in contrast to most approaches to addressing pronunciation, which only incidentally relate pronunciation features to success in speaking tasks.

Principle 3: Pronunciation Instruction Should Fit the Constraints of the Speaking Task The third principle relates to the varieties of tasks that make up speaking. Speakers can sometimes take advantage of the opportunity to plan, as in many formal speaking tasks, such as giving presentations and teaching. At other times, speech is spontaneous, with the discourse being coconstructed in the course of speaking. Traditional pronunciation instruction, which most frequently assumes careful preparation and planning, is better suited to formal speaking tasks that allow for planning. However, students also need to be able to use pronunciation as a tool in relatively unplanned conversation, and instruction must meet those needs as well (Levis, 2001). Integrating pronunciation into the speaking classroom should address planned and unplanned speaking.

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Teaching Pronunciation and Oral Communication: A Solution The following activities are examples of ways in which key pronunciation features can be incorporated into speaking tasks intended to help students develop oral communication skills: (a) word clarity in public speaking, (b) thought groups in storytelling, (c) intonation in conversation, and (d) focus in comparisons. Consistent with our three principles, each activity gives priority to suprasegmental features, includes a specific focus on pronunciation while maintaining a broad focus on speaking and communication, and fits the parameters of the speaking task.

Activity 1: Word Clarity in Oral Presentations Oral presentations, a common assignment in a wide variety of ESL/EFL classes, offer opportunities to target many pronunciation skills with minimal class instruction. Issues such as phrasing, rhythm, and sentence focus are especially valuable in this planned context. One other area that is especially affected by planning is word clarity. Word clarity encompasses whatever difficulties students have in saying words so that listeners can understand them. This can include consonant and vowel sounds, the lengthening of stressed vowels, stress patterns in multisyllabic words, and the pronunciation of lexical units, such as on the other hand or to sum up. The following sentence, reconstructed from a Thai student’s oral presentation, illustrates several of these issues. The underlined r letters were all pronounced in a way that was perceptually similar to /l/, the italicized ch spellings were pronounced like sh, and the main stress in characteristics was on the second syllable rather than the fourth. Names are related to charácteristics of the children. This example illustrates that suprasegmentals, though usually more applicable to speaking tasks, are not always easy to separate from segmentals. Both kinds of errors may have a cumulative effect on intelligibility. First, the word characteristics did not match the stress pattern (a suprasegmental issue) expected by the listeners, which affected the intelligibility of the utterance. This change in stress also affected the pronunciation of vowels (usually a segmental issue), which is a crucial clue to stress for nativespeaker listeners (Cutler, Dahan, & van Donselaar, 1997). In addition, recent evidence suggests that the inaccurate pronunciation of consonant sounds (a segmental issue) can affect a listener’s ability to successfully decode speech, especially when the listener and speaker are nonnative speakers and do not share the same native language (Jenkins, 2000). The potential for incorporating pronunciation instruction into oral presentation assignments is based on students’ opportunity to plan. Presentations are a controlled situation that places demands on speaking and pronunciation skills. A suggested sequence is shown in Figure 1. VOL. 12 NO. 2

Working on Word Clarity in Presentations 1. Have students prepare an oral presentation. 2. Ask students to identify five key words to pronounce correctly. 3. Ask students to practice and record their presentations on audiotapes. 4. Have students listen to their audiotape recordings and evaluate their presentations and pronunciation of key words. 5. Ask students to hand in their tape recordings, along with a written copy of their presentations with the key words identified and a written self-evaluation. 6. Record general feedback on the students’ audiotapes, including comments on their pronunciation of the five key words they selected and the identification of up to five additional key words for them to practice. 7. Ask students to revise and practice their presentations after receiving your feedback. 8. Have students give their presentations in class. 9. Evaluate their class presentations and pronunciation of all key words. Figure 1. An instructional sequence to help students work on word clarity in oral presentations.

Incorporating work on word clarity has two main elements, the students’ choices and the teacher’s feedback. As students prepare their oral presentations, they are asked to identify five key words they want to pronounce clearly. Depending on their awareness of their pronunciation, students can identify these key words with or without the teacher’s assistance. They should then prepare their presentations; practice them orally, paying careful attention to their pronunciation of the key words; record their presentations; and write a self-evaluation to submit along with their recordings. The teacher then listens to the tapes, giving oral (recorded) or written feedback, or both, on general speaking, organization, and the pronunciation of the key words. The teacher can suggest up to five more words that were difficult to understand for the students to practice. The students then revise and practice their presentations before giving them in class. The final evaluation includes pronunciation of all the key words identified by the teacher and students. One teacher who wanted to incorporate pronunciation practice into an already full course load expressed the following after she tried this activity. [I found that] it wasn’t a huge time commitment . . . and the students seemed thrilled with the individual attention in the form of a tape that they could play at home. However, more than the practice it gave the students, I found that I became more aware of areas that we need to work on . . . . Something about removing the faces and body language helped me really hear the students’ voices. (Jessica Mercer Zerr, personal communication, March 2002) TESOL JOURNAL

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Working on pronunciation in the context of presentations offers several advantages. First, teachers can focus on individual strengths and weaknesses so that students’ skills can be better assessed and instruction targeted more effectively. Listening to students one at a time helps teachers identify common issues more easily so that they can address these issues later in class. Furthermore, because students can plan their presentations and deliver them relatively free from interruption, they have the opportunity, with teacher input, to identify words and phrases that are difficult to pronounce. Students can, for example, record their practice sessions on audiotapes (or as digital files on the computer) so that the teacher can listen and provide feedback before the actual presentation. Free conversation offers little such opportunity. Depending on the students’ comfort level with presentations, this activity can range from a task resembling oral reading to one that is less controlled, centering around key words, as in the tasks described by Yule and Macdonald (1994). Either way, the opportunity to plan, a key feature of the speaking task, allows students to target their pronunciation of key vocabulary.

Activity 2: Phrasing and Storytelling Students in all types of ESL classes share personal stories in writing and in speaking. Personal stories are just one type of narrative in a category that includes fables, fairy tales, and newspaper stories. Narratives offer a rich context for enhancing language skills, especially at the intermediate levels of proficiency, where students are most comfortable discussing topics related primarily to self and their immediate environments (Breiner-Sanders, Lowe, Miles, & Swender, 2000). Because narratives involve strings of sentences or paragraph-level discourse, they provide a good medium for practicing another high-priority suprasegmental feature—thought grouping, also known as chunking or phrasing. Speakers of English organize long stretches of speech into short, meaningful, grammatical units called thought groups. If speakers do not divide the stream of speech into meaningful phrases, listeners have difficulty processing the speech, no matter how clearly each word is pronounced. Gilbert (1994) offers this example of a long sentence divided into relatively short groupings (slash marks denote pauses): “The sign says that construction/ will be finished by April,/ but that was obviously optimistic” (p. 46). Many practitioners believe that slowing the rate of speech and combining words into meaningful chunks can improve fluency as well as overall intelligibility (Gilbert, 1994; Morley, 1994). In this activity, thought groups are integrated into oral narratives. Figure 2 outlines a suggested sequence for the activity. This activity is applicable to any story, report, short presentation, or journal entry that students prepare or rehearse in advance to give orally. Students should listen to 16

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Improving Storytelling by Paying Attention to Phrasing 1. 2. 3. 4.

Choose a paragraph-length narrative (or write one) to read aloud to the class. Rewrite or type the story, dividing it into thought groups. To visualize the thought groups, imagine the text is a poem and arrange it into short lines. Read the text in chunks, pausing briefly at the end of each line.

Figure 2. An instructional sequence to help students work on phrasing in storytelling.

one or more paragraph-length reports, myths, fables, tales, or personal narratives as models. The teacher can then introduce the notion of chunking by having students decide how they would divide the narrative. Figure 3 presents an extract of a model narrative, and shows how the text could be chunked to work on phrasing. Other ways of phrasing the narrative in Figure 3 are also possible, depending on how speakers interpret the situation. With practice, most students develop the ability to phrase at appropriate points in the discourse. Teachers can remind students that if they think about “where a speaker can logically pause in a stream of speech, . . . [they] can separate an utterance into thought groups” (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996, p. 174). As Learning to Drive When I came here, I could not drive. I knew nothing, not even simple things, such as which pedal is for the gas and which one is for the brakes, and how to use the rearview mirror to see the cars behind me. After six lessons, I took the driving test and passed. It was simple. I was asked to drive a few blocks and just do basic things, such as pull over and back up. Luckily, it didn’t include parking because I couldn’t park then, and I can’t park now. Narrative chunks When I came here, I could not drive. I knew nothing, not even simple things, such as which pedal is for the gas and which one is for the brakes, and how to use the rearview mirror to see the cars behind me. After six lessons, I took the driving test and passed . . . . Figure 3. Hypothetical narrative extract illustrating how text can be divided into chunks, or thought groups.

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students move into more spontaneous speaking formats, they often come to realize that conveying information in chunks is helpful not only as a means for listeners to process information but also as a strategy for speakers to organize their thoughts.

Activity 3: Intonation and Conversation An important goal of most speaking classes is to develop students’ conversational abilities. By conversation, we mean the coconstructed discourse of normal talk, where two or more interlocutors initiate and respond to a changing variety of topics. Dialogues are commonly used to model, among other things, conversational style, appropriate grammar and vocabulary, and functional uses of spoken language. Dialogues are also ideal for controlled practice with conversational discourse in which speech rhythm, focus, and intonation work together with body language. The vignette below demonstrates how the intonation of discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1988) and backchanneling cues (common vocalizations in English, such as OK, umm hmm, well, oh, and yeah, that communicate to an interlocutor that we are listening to and following what is being said) can be integrated into discourse practice using dialogues. Many spoken discourse markers are hard to define and have various meanings that are closely tied to intonation (the use of voice pitch) and other pronunciation cues. They also are important in regulating conversational speech, but do not occur in written speech and are rarely explicitly taught (Schiffrin, 1988). Specifically, this activity focuses on the intonation of the backchanneling cues umm hmm and hmm umm to signal listener attention, agreement, and negation or disagreement. These cues are associated with fixed intonation patterns so that they have almost become intonational idioms. Their use and typical intonation patterns are illustrated in the constructed dialogue below, with the accented syllable in boldface. The attention or agreement marker usually has rising intonation (B1, A3), with the accent on the second syllable, whereas the negation or disagreement marker falls in pitch and is accented on the first syllable (B2). A1: B1: A2: B2:

And so, it was a really difficult test. Umm hmm [meaning: I’m listening or I agree]. Have you ever taken physics? Hmm umm [meaning: No]. I heard it’s really hard. A3: Umm hmm [meaning: I agree]. It’s way harder than I imagined.

These two discourse markers are verbal gestures with conventionalized forms and intonations. They are also usually accompanied by physical gestures (body language). Umm hmm is associated with a small up-and-down nod of the head, whereas Hmm umm, like other negative markers in English, is accompanied by a small side-to-side head shake. Although the body language is not always available as a cue (as in telephone conversations), learning to make VOL. 12 NO. 2

use of these and other discourse markers means also using intonation and body language appropriately. Such mastery will help promote overall communicative competence. We believe that when students practice the simple form and limited discourse uses of many discourse markers in planned dialogues (where creativity is at a minimum), they will be more likely to use them in unplanned speech. Figure 4 suggests a sequence of conversational activities

Practice Using Discourse Markers and Intonation in Conversation Prepare and read a written dialogue with discourse markers. 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

Elicit from students the functions and meanings of the discourse markers (awareness). Use controlled practice with pronunciation of discourse markers using sentences such as “I was really scared,” answered by “Umm Hmm” (with rising intonation to indicate the listener is paying attention or is in agreement), or “Have you ever been to Japan?,” answered by “Umm Hmm” (with rising intonation to mean yes) or “Hmm Umm” (with falling intonation to mean no). Use controlled practice with body language associated with discourse markers, if applicable, such as shaking the head from side to side to mean no for “Hmm Umm” (with falling intonation). Pair students to practice dialogues, asking them to focus on language, intonation, and body language. Ask students to perform dialogues.

Figure 4. An instructional sequence to help students learn discourse markers and practice intonation.

that can help students learn discourse markers and their intonations. Teaching discourse markers may require the teacher to adapt textbook dialogues because textbook dialogues frequently do not include these markers of coherence. The no meaning in the dialogue above is often written as “No, I haven’t,” whereas the agreement meaning would likely be written as “Yes, it is.” The I’m listening meaning is not easily paraphrased. Adapting textbook dialogues so that students can identify and comprehend these discourse markers can be done by replacing short answers with discourse markers or by asking advanced or native English speakers to read the dialogue, then role play it without using the text, using discourse markers that come to them naturally in speech.

Activity 4: Focus and Comparison-Contrast Writing In English for academic purposes classes, students demonstrate mastery of course content through writing. In the TESOL JOURNAL

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process of creating written products, students are expected to discover relationships and synthesize information from readings and lectures. A common format for exploring relationships between ideas is comparison and contrast. Students might compare two or more readings, points of view, characters, or places. For example, Figure 5 presents

Chicago in Midwest spread out flat snows often

Chicago & San Francisco many tourists

San Francisco

Comparing Two Things Using Contrastive Focus 1. 2. 3. 4.

Underline the contrasting elements in the chart. Create a sentence for each main difference. Take turns saying your sentences. Emphasize the contrasting elements in each sentence to help your partner understand your meaning (e.g., the American-made car has poor gas mileage, but the gas mileage on the German-made car is much better).

Figure 6. Instructional sequence to help students practice using focus to compare or contrast.

in West compact

distinctive skylines

hilly

have harbors

rarely snows

Figure 5: Venn diagram used to compare and contrast two cities (based on Blanton, 1995, p. 215).

an example of a Venn diagram, a graphic organizer used to help organize an essay comparing and contrasting two cities. Even in courses dedicated to reading and writing, students spend time listening and speaking. Once students have read, taken lecture notes, and begun to organize their ideas, they often discuss content, a step that provides an opportunity to practice pronunciation points in realistic conversational exchanges. In discussing contrasts, for instance, students face an immediate pronunciation need— using focus, that is, the element in the sentence with the greatest emphasis, to signal contrasting elements. For example, a student verbalizing the contrast in weather depicted in Figure 5 might say the following (capitalization indicates focus).

Automobile B. As a class, the students discussed ways in which they might join clauses to create sentences in their paragraphs. Then, working in pairs, students shared and compared the information in their charts. If students are learning about focus for the first time, they will probably not use it correctly. Instead, tasks such as these can serve to draw students’ attention to the form and how it functions in communication, an essential first step in language learning. In this class, however, because students were working with the same content for several days, the use of focus to highlight contrasts was recycled in natural classroom interactions. On one day, for example, students brought their drafts to class and identified the use Comparing Two Automobiles Feature Age Cost Size Make Gas mileage Reliability

Automobile A 3 years old $8,500 4 passengers large trunk American-made 2 5 miles per gallon/highway very reliable

Automobile B 6 years old $6,500 5 passengers small trunk German-made 3 5 miles per gallon/highway not very reliable

It OFten snows in ChiCAgo, but San FranCISco almost NEVer has snow.

Figure 7. Chart using focus (indicated in boldfaced italics) to compare the features of two automobiles.

This ability to emphasize what is key or important in spoken discourse is crucial to intelligibility, especially in international contexts (Jenkins, 2000). In Figure 6, the use of focus to highlight contrasts was integrated into an oral prewriting activity in an ESL writing class. The students’ assignment was to draft a paragraph comparing the features of two cars. (The task is adaptable to a variety of comparisons, such as apartments and places to shop.) The use of focus to highlight contrasting elements was incorporated into the instructional sequence. First, to help the students organize their ideas, the teacher provided a chart with points of comparison, shown in Figure 7. Using material from their texts, the students filled in the chart with the features of Automobile A and

of effective and ineffective comparisons in their paragraphs. Students wrote sample sentences on the board, and the class worked through the grammar points with the teacher, which provided additional opportunities for them to hear and produce focus in structures used to express contrast. When integrating pronunciation into the writing process, the process moves from a wider emphasis on the task to a narrower emphasis on the pronunciation point needed to complete the task. The advantage is that students are already familiar with the content and have more resources to attend to the form. Because discussion of similarities and differences is so common in language classrooms, opportunities to integrate focus naturally into speaking activities extend far beyond

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the writing course. For example, teachers can incorporate focus in pre- and postlistening and reading questions to highlight contrasts, or in grammar practice to highlight comparative structures.

Conclusion Although pronunciation instruction can be sensibly integrated into many types of ESL/EFL classes, it is particularly relevant to classes where speaking is central. An old truism about spoken language is that the way something is said is frequently more important than what is said. The way something is said obviously includes such things as vocabulary connotations, pragmatics of speech acts, and effective use of coherence. But it also must include pronunciation, which, when inadequate, has been implicated as a major factor in comprehensibility problems. We have shown ways in which effective use of pronunciation features is crucial for effective spoken communication. Words must be recognized if listeners are to process speech. Speech is processed more easily if speakers chunk information in expected ways. Intonation is essential to management of conversational goals. Important cues about given and new information and about categories being contrasted with a topic are signaled by sentence focus. Other areas could easily be added to this list, such as the importance of shorter and longer syllables in creating spoken English rhythm. Awareness of how these and other pronunciation issues impact speaking can be enhanced through awareness building and explicit instruction. Such instruction is more likely to be productive when students can see how pronunciation improvement helps them communicate in English more effectively. References Blanton, L. (1995). The multicultural workshop, Book 2. Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Breiner-Sanders, K., Lowe, P., Miles, J., & Swender, E. (2000). ACTFL proficiency guidelines—Speaking. Foreign Language Annals, 33(1), 13–18. Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. (1996). Teaching pronunciation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cutler, A., Dahan, D., & van Donselaar, W. (1997). Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech, 40(2), 141–201.

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Firth, S. (1993). Pronunciation syllabus design: A question of focus. In P. Avery & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), Teaching American English pronunciation (pp. 173–183). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilbert, J. (1994). Intonation: A navigation guide for the listener. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory (pp. 38–48). Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levis, J. (2001). Teaching focus for conversational use. ELT Journal, 55(1), 47–54. McNerney, M., & Mendelsohn, D. (1993). Suprasegmentals in the pronunciation class: Setting priorities. In P. Avery & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), Teaching American English pronunciation, (pp. 185–196). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morley, J. (1991). The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 481–520. Morley, J. (1994). A multidimensional curriculum design for speech-pronunciation instruction. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory (pp. 66–91). Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Murphy, J. (1991). Oral communication in TESOL: Integrating listening, speaking, and pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 51–74. Schiffrin, D. (1988). Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yule, G., & Macdonald, D. (1994). The effects of pronunciation teaching. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory (pp. 109–119). Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Authors John M. Levis is assistant professor of TESL and applied linguistics in the Department of English at Iowa State University, in the United States, where he teaches ESL/EFL teaching methods and linguistics. His research interests include the intelligibility of spoken language and the integration of pronunciation into oral communication curricula. Linda Grant teaches applied linguistics at Georgia State University, and has taught ESL at Georgia Tech and Emory University, in the United States. She is the author of Well Said: Pronunciation for Clear Communication (Heinle & Heinle, 2001), and writes, presents, and consults in her area of special interest—integrating pronunciation with speaking and listening.

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