Navigating the Treacherous Seas of L2 Pronunciation

Slovakia, ID LLCE2015-222

Most students eager to study English language and literature as a major at university level have typically studied the language for at least eight years. Nevertheless their skills vary between B1 and C2 of the CEFR, often showing unexpected weakness in the area of pronunciation accuracy. Since many of them wish to join a teaching profession, it is essential for them to master all aspects of the language they aspire to teach as perfectly as possible in order to become inspirational speech models for their future pupils. The proposed paper aims to explore the typology of the most common pronunciation inaccuracies made by Slovak speakers of English language, discuss their possible causes and suggest ways to correct them, while outlining a corrective course of English Phonetics and Phonology for university level.

Key words: pronunciation accuracy, speech model,