Applied Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching – serie

A Conceptual Approach to Teaching Pronunciation reveals the secret to pronunciation learning and teaching: understanding how speakers from other cultures and languages think, interpret, and extract meaning from sounds. Drawing on a career-long journey as a pronunciation teacher and researcher, Graeme Couper presents a conceptual approach as a basis for demonstrating what Cognitive Linguistic theory means in practical terms.This book presents the insights gained in the author's journey and engages readers in that journey, asking them to reflect on their own pronunciation learning and teaching experiences. Along the way, it explores the role of concepts and categories in interpreting the world around us, the conceptual nature of pronunciation, and the difference between phonological concepts and acoustic reality.Quantitative and qualitative evidence drawn from the author's research career demonstrates that a conceptual approach is effective. His detailed explanations of instruction and methodology allow for replication, making the book valuable for researchers, while anecdotes from Couper's teaching career ensure relatability, making this an essential resource for language educators at all levels.

The Multimodal Context of Phonological Learning is both authoritative and practical, combining research review and a pedagogical orientation presented by a researcher and teacher whose work in second language acquisition has centrally involved the wider context in which pronunciation is situated.The book reviews the early foundation established by speechreading studies that explored the extraction of speech information from a talker's facial movements and the interaction of auditory–visual cues in perceptual illusions. It then focuses on the role of auditory, visual, and tactile information in second-language perceptual learning and the interactional functions of eye gaze within the complex of non-verbal communication that incorporates head movements and manual gestures. The book also details an original mixed-methods study of the eye-gaze behavior of perceivers when viewing the face of a speaker producing their first language (English) and a speaker producing their second language (French) in different stimulus conditions.The issue of variability in speech emerges as a central theme throughout the book and one which researchers and teachers are encouraged to exploit through their selection of multimodal materials and their approach to pronunciation teaching.

The Multimodal Context of Phonological Learning is both authoritative and practical, combining research review and a pedagogical orientation presented by a researcher and teacher whose work in second language acquisition has centrally involved the wider context in which pronunciation is situated.The book reviews the early foundation established by speechreading studies that explored the extraction of speech information from a talker's facial movements and the interaction of auditory–visual cues in perceptual illusions. It then focuses on the role of auditory, visual, and tactile information in second-language perceptual learning and the interactional functions of eye gaze within the complex of non-verbal communication that incorporates head movements and manual gestures. The book also details an original mixed-methods study of the eye-gaze behavior of perceivers when viewing the face of a speaker producing their first language (English) and a speaker producing their second language (French) in different stimulus conditions.The issue of variability in speech emerges as a central theme throughout the book and one which researchers and teachers are encouraged to exploit through their selection of multimodal materials and their approach to pronunciation teaching.