Development of pronunciation activities regarding American English vowel sounds and–ed ending sounds of verbs and adjectives for eighth grade students

Abstract

Given that the pronunciation of English in foreign language learning environments in Cuenca’s public high schools has been an issue that troubles most learners, and being an accurate pronunciation of English words necessary for communicating in the target language, techniques to improve learners’ pronunciation skills should be revised and improved.

This research paper provides information on the teaching and practicing of pronunciation in EFL [English as a Foreign Language] classrooms and proposes, as its main purpose, twenty developed/adapted activities for working on pronunciation in eighth grade in two main categories: vowel sounds and the sounds of the –ed suffix of different parts of speech.

The different activities proposed follow a substantial research on phonetic and phonological knowledge, foreign-language teaching methodologies, current studies on the topic, and an analysis of the eighth grade EFL curriculum. In addition, information about existing and desired foreign language pronunciation practice was gathered from interviews to two public high school English teachers and a survey to one hundred and seven eighth graders from public institutions of the city of Cuenca. Learning to pronounce the sounds of the target language accurately and practicing them on a regular basis, will help EFL learners improve their pronunciation skills and, consequently, their communicative skills.