Pronunciation and Comprehension of Oral English in the English as a Foreign Language Class: Key Aspects, Students’ Perceptions and Proposals*

Abstract

Traditionally, little attention has been paid to learners’ perceptions of pronunciation and comprehension instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. This study is aimed at putting forward a series of detected key aspects, students’ perceptions and proposals for enhancing, improving and implementing pronunciation and comprehension skills in the Spanish higher-education EFL class –specifically a pronunciation class. By means of the administration to students of three questionnaires designed ad hoc for this small-scale, pilot study, a diagnostic analysis has been carried out that has yield to valuable data and to the suggestion of specific proposals derived from first-hand experience. Accordingly, among other aspects, the results obtained show that students’ motivation and implication is high when being taught pronunciation, they believe in the usefulness of pronunciation instruction, but at the same time they may experiment frustration relatively easily, especially due to inhibition and peer-comparison factors that may negatively affect performance and self-confidence. In the same way, students are aware of the importance of both segmental and suprasegmental aspects in order to favor comprehensibility, they consider variation in means, methods and activities to be fundamental in the classroom in order to keep their own interest and motivation and they find computer-assisted and audio-visual aids highly useful and valued when it comes to learn pronunciation.