ENGLISH PHONETIC - SUMMARY

The importance of a good beginning in phonetics’skills depends on the “right”

direction explained by the teacher in any language, emphasizing fundamentally

that before learning to write, pupils have phonetic production’s exercises

(performance) and recognition (ear-training) from the sounds of the language to

be studied.

Through its practice, an important observation in perceiving in Brazil, some

pupils complains about to the quality of their pronunciation and oral

comprehension to learn English language (EL), and the teachers are insecure

about the “correct” pronunciation of themselves. According to cognitive

approach in 1960, influenced by transformational-gerative grammar by Chomsky

(1959, 1965) and by cognitive psychology by Neisser (1967) saw the language as

behavior rules instead of habit’s formation, which lead to emphasize the

grammar and vocabulary in detriment of the pronunciation, whereas they had

been believing inan equal native’s pronunciation was an unreal aim and could be

no being achieved. Nowadays the language teaching is emphasized by the

communicative approaching, which began in the 80’s having as principle and

primary goal the communication, focusing on a language which brings again the

necessity and urgency of the pronunciation’s teaching, however,, the purpose

isn’t to do the scholars speak likenatives do, because the mainly phonetic

preoccupation is how to describe the speaking’s sounds.

Successful communication cannot take place without correct pronunciation,

because the notion of “correctness” with regard to pronunciation is not

tantamount to adherence to “native speaker” norms or Received Pronunciation

(RP) rules.

There are some researchers who have cast doubt on the importance of

pronunciation practice in class has little, if any, effect on learners’ pronunciation

skills. In other words, the attainment of accurate pronunciation in a second

language is a matter substantially beyond the control of educators. It might be

helpful to think of various aspects of pronunciation along a teachability-

learnability scale. For instance, the attitudinal function of intonation might

better be learnt without teacher intervention.

João L. A. Ferreira (John Wainwright)