Techniques of teaching pronunciation in ESL, bilingual & foreign language classes

Learners and teachers of languages as a native, second and foreign and other professionals benefit greatly from this book. It presents a systematic and holistic approach to the teaching of pronunciation that is cognitive in pedagogical foundation and multisensory in implementation. The approach is consistent with the recent orientations in cognitive sciences, especially Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory. The book gears the approach, methodology and techniques of teaching pronunciation away from the behaviorist audiolingual method dominated by the 'repeat-after-me' technique and the notorious letter-based phonics tradition so unjustifiably domineering in the teaching of the so-called Language Arts in the United States. Because the approach adopted in this book is cognitive, it believes that pronunciation is the function of the brain prior to being a function of the vocal organs; this is more so in the case of adult learners of pronunciation. All the techniques used in this book aim at enabling the brain to first perceive and recognize the problematic sounds before attempting at producing them. Learners need to be able to transform the initial correct impressions of sounds into cognitive habits that are activated subconsciously and automatically. The author is multilingual and his approach is the outcome of thirty years of teaching language and linguistics in different academic institutions around the world.