Article

Experienced ESL Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Using Phonetic Symbols in Teaching English Pronunciation to Adult ESL Students

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Abstract

Different opinions exist about the use of phonetic symbols in teaching English pronunciation to second language learners. However, little empirical research has been done to find out ESL teachers’ opinions about the use of this linguistic tool. For this reason, via an online survey this study sought to identify ESL teachers’ attitudes towards the use of phonetic symbols in teaching ESL pronunciation. A total of 120 teachers—most of them experienced in teaching pronunciation—took the survey. The analyses of qualitative data identified a contradiction between the teachers’ opinions and what they practiced in class. On the one side, the teachers had predominantly positive attitudes towards the use of phonetic symbols, and about 80% of them agreed that it was a valuable use of class time. Despite this, one third of the teachers surveyed (n=40) did not report using phonetic symbols in their teaching. In addition, though the teachers said the main reason to teach phonetic symbols was to enable student independent learning, only three respondents reported using phonetic symbols for this purpose. The results of the study suggest that one of the factors causing this contradiction may be ESL teachers’ lack of training in teaching phonetic symbols.

How to Cite: Kodirova, O. & Henrichsen, L. (2022). Experienced ESL teachers’ attitudes towards using phonetic symbols in teaching English pronunciation to adult ESL students. In J. Levis & A. Guskaroska (eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, held June 2021 virtually at Brock University, St. Catharines, ON. https://doi.org/10.31274/psllt.13337