Abstract

Some believe that a learner must acquire the ability to produce and recognize all speech sounds used by the speaker of the target language while others think that if the goal is communication it is not necessary to teach all phonemic aspects. In fact in teaching (especially the phonology of) a language, the learners' objectives are to be taken into account. If their goal in the long run is either to teach the language or to use it in radio news broadcasts, they should learn pronunciation accurately, correctly, and authentically; otherwise, when communication is possible, there is no obligation to strive for perfect pronunciation. One way to achieve this purpose is by sensitizing students to the conversational tactics they use naturally when talking in their native tongue: turn-taking, supporting, challenging, questioning, expanding on statements, and so on; they do not tend to use these when interacting in English (Counihan, 1998).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.