Crenças sobre o ensino de pronúncia: pesquisa e prática docente na formação inicial de professores de língua inglesa

Abstract

Pronunciation is a linguistic component responsible for the development of effective communication in the additional language (intelligibility). Even though its study is extremely important to teacher training, since trainee teachers will possibly teach the mechanisms of sound articulation to their future students in order to develop orality (CELCE-MURCIA et al., 2010), the study of pronunciation in the curriculum of the Language Studies graduate courses in Brazil has faced some obstacles, such as the emphasis on theory and the insufficient development of teaching approaches (SILVA JR, 2017), which may affect the trainee teachers’ beliefs and actions. For this reason, aiming at contributing to broaden the studies in this area, the present qualitative case study seeks to investigate the contributions that an approach for teaching pronunciation, with the help of the digital technologies, may offer to the undergraduate students of the English Language and Literature Studies of Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), when it comes to their training and future teaching practice. Thus, during the first term of 2022, a 30-hour online course on English pronunciation was taught to five students enrolled in English Language III, who agreed to take part in the activities by answering two questionnaires, being interviewed, and having their academic production registered for further analysis. An interview was also conducted with three professors who have already taught this course at UERJ to obtain an account of their previous experiences. Regarding data analysis, the study of the participants’ beliefs related to the teaching of English pronunciation was applied (BARCELOS, 2001; 2004), and we also compared such beliefs to those reported in other studies on the same issue (SILVA; CAVALCANTI, 2019; MARTINS, 2020). The results show that the students believed that the teaching of English pronunciation should be integrated to the other linguistic components, embracing language variations and the contexts to which their learners may be related. However, some beliefs about the existence of a “perfect” pronunciation, and the emphasis on the study of the segmental aspects (phonemes) of the language have been identified. Nevertheless, by the end of the lessons, the students mentioned that they have developed their theoretical and methodological repertoires and, consequently, have become more confident to teach the English pronunciation in a meaningful way, focusing on the development of the communicative competence of their future learners