Presentation

Walking the Walk: Integrating the Story of English Phonology

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Abstract

We pedagogical phonologists talk the talk: We assure our students of what we believe, namely, that all the parts of English phonology make up a single, intricate system of subsystems. The problem is that neither our descriptive nor our pedagogical texts present English phonology this way. Furthermore, we have not always taught it this way. We haven't walked the walk. Recently the challenge of moving my pedagogical phonology course to a hybrid—in-class and online—format gave me the opportunity to try to practice what I preach. This paper describes how I have come to retell the story of English phonology in a way that is at least truer to its integrated nature than the way I told it before. Walking the walk has been a journey of several years. In retracing some of my steps, I want to show what can be done for our students. The result has been satisfying—a course that is new and interesting even to those who have some background in phonology. But most importantly, it is a course that does a better job now than before to prepare pronunciation teachers, materials developers, and those who want to go on with their study of theoretical or applied phonology.

How to Cite:

Dickerson, W. B., (2009) “Walking the Walk: Integrating the Story of English Phonology”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 1(1).