The course Teaching English Phonetics aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand how English phonetics and phonology work and to improve their own pronunciation. Additionally, it aims to provide students with techniques and strategies to teach English pronunciation to their future learners.
Phonetic and phonological knowledge—alongside grammatical and pragmatic knowledge—is a part of the core linguistic knowledge (or know-what) that constitutes one of the specific teaching competences outlined in the Foreign Language Curriculum. This competence was given the highest possible score (3.659) in the Libro Blanco for the undergraduate Degree in Primary Education. Such knowledge is directly involved in the development of oral skills (listening and speaking), but it also plays a crucial role in written skills (reading and writing), as demonstrated by findings from cognitive psychology studies focusing on the acquisition of these skills.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2002, p. 102) explicitly lists several competences related to phonological awareness and performance:
- the ability to distinguish and produce common sounds and prosodic patterns
- the ability to perceive and reproduce unfamiliar sound sequences
- the ability, as a listener, to segment a continuous stream of sound into a meaningful and structured chain of phonological elements
- the understanding and control of the perceptual and productive processes involved in the learning of a new language
In turn, metaphonological knowledge refers to the ability to reflect on and analyse one’s own phonological competence. This skill is essential for learners to develop the competences needed for autonomous learning. Its importance is evidenced by the Libro Blanco, which assigns it a high value of 3.024. Developing this type of knowledge enables future teachers to adopt a receptive attitude towards children’s pronunciation and listening errors—another highly valued teaching competence (2.984)—and prepares them to design and select appropriate educational materials, as well as to plan activities aimed at fostering the development of phonetic and phonological skills in Pre-primary and Primary Education. These general competences are rated with a score of 3.537 in the Libro Blanco.
Finally, self-assessment skills, which are essential for learners to continue progressing beyond the classroom and to develop a sense of responsibility for their own learning, are included within the broader competence of autonomous learning and scored at 3.17 in the Libro Blanco.
Taking all of the above into account, the course will be organised in line with current perspectives on phonetics instruction (e.g., Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010; Pennington & Rogerson-Revell, 2019). It will follow an analytical approach, grounded in the provision and use of perceptual, articulatory, and metaphonological information, and will place strong emphasis on developing students’ self-assessment skills in order to foster learner autonomy throughout the learning process.
