Bad or Bet? The Effect of Pronunciation Teaching on Dutch Secondary School Pupils’ Production and Perception of English phonemes

Abstract

Even though English has become a ‘core-subject’ in Dutch secondary school education and has therefore received more attention over the last few years, there is still little attention for pronunciation education. This study aims to demonstrate the value of pronunciation teaching for the curriculum of English in Dutch secondary schools. We tested whether explicit pronunciation teaching on English vowels and consonants could improve pupils’ production and perception of these phonemes. Pupils participated in a production and perception experiment before and after receiving three lessons on English pronunciation. A control group was included who did not receive pronunciation training, but writing and reading training instead. The pupils’ production was rated by native speakers of British English and the results showed a significant effect of pronunciation training. The pupils who received training improved their production of the English phonemes. Furthermore, their perception of the phonemes was, in a lesser extent, also indirectly improved. These results suggest that pronunciation teaching should be implemented more strongly in the curriculum to further strengthen the position and status of English education in the Netherlands and to improve the English language skills of Dutch secondary school pupils.