Open AccessEnglish Lingua Franca: New Parameters for the Teaching (and Testing) of English Pronunciation?
Author(s) -
David Newbold
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
educazione linguistica language education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2280-6792
DOI - 10.30687/elle/2280-6792/2021/03/003
Subject(s) - pronunciation , english as a lingua franca , linguistics , lingua franca , intelligibility (philosophy) , phonology , stress (linguistics) , computer science , psychology , philosophy , epistemology
The recent (2018) Companion Volume to the Common European Framework offers an overhaul of many of the scales of descriptors, including, notably, phonology. A single, skeletal, scale for ‘phonological control’ is replaced by three scales, describing overall control, sound articulation, and prosodic features. In each of these, the focus has become intelligibility, rather than proximity to a native speaker accent. In this article I examine the development of pronunciation teaching since the communicative revolution, and the rise of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in which intelligibility is crucial. The article concludes with a reflection on how (if at all) the revised framework could inform an ELF aware assessment of pronunciation.