An innovative proposal to teach English pronunciation through literature

Abstract

Teaching English pronunciation has become an issue of controversy since text books as well as previous methods appear to give more importance to other aspects in the English language such as grammar or vocabulary. The present work thoroughly focuses on this issue. It aims at providing an innovative proposal to teach pronunciation through the implementation of literature in the classroom. This innovative proposal has been implemented in the subject of Practical English offered in the first year of Bachillerato at the IES Francesc Ribalta. Taking these aspects into consideration, a theoretical review in which the importance of teaching pronunciation, its evolution and divergences according to different methodology, the influence of motivation, and an innovative proposal based on literature is firstly provided in the introduction section. After that, a detailed explanation about the participants, procedure and the materials utilised is offered in the method section. At the end of this proposal, students from Practical English are provided with a questionnaire to be filled in. The same questionnaire is also completed by the students from English as a foreign language Sciences K having all of them access to the same materials, the same level of English as well as the same background on this issue. After that, a comparison between the results in both groups is established. It shows a distinguished contrast between the students in Practical English who have taken part in the implementation of the mentioned innovative proposal in comparison to the students from English as a foreign language Sciences K who have not participated in it. These results are obviously more accurate in Practical English than in English as a foreign language Sciences K. The last part of the paper is a conclusion to show that although some improvements in terms of methodology can still be considered, the results obtained together with the students’ attitude offers a piece of evidence about the effectiveness of this proposal.