Robin Walker: Pronunciation Matters

     In his speech, Robin Walker emphasizes that pronunciation affects all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. He states that correct pronunciation knowledge facilitates word recognition and comprehension processes while reading. When I heard this, I experienced a great awareness because whenever I read an English book and see a word that I do not know the pronunciation of, I can not continue reading without learning the correct pronunciation. 

     He also suggests that teachers and students should consider three main options when setting pronunciation goals: Adopt a native speaker accent, aim for ease of understanding with native speakers and aim for international intelligibility. Although I believe I have achieved two of these goals, I do not think I have yet adopted a native speaker accent. I did not have much confidence in it before, but I have improved my accent a lot since then because I always wanted to sound like a native speaker. Getting compliments from people has made me even more ambitious about this and I am still working on improving my accent. When I think about my own goals, I think language is a matter of self-confidence. That's why, I always speak even though I know I might not pronounce it as a native speaker because now my priority is being internationally understandable. As Robin Walker says, teachers need to teach with confidence even if their own accent is not the native speaker one, and different accents are valuable in teaching. The important thing is to provide a pronunciation model that will allow students to communicate effectively. 

     Robin Walker says that priorities should be determined in teaching pronunciation and these priorities should be shaped according to the needs of the students. I completely agree with this because I think that each person has their own learning way. Personally, watching videos, movies and TV shows, imitating their expressions and stresses they make while talking helps me improve my pronunciation. Sometimes I sing the songs I listen to out loud and try to pronounce the lyrics the same way. I like to listen to podcasts while walking and sometimes I think "What would I say if I were to talk about this topic?" and prepare a speech for myself, often focusing on the words I want to improve my pronunciation. I also share these techniques with my students and sometimes try to I adapt these techniques to the lesson.