When I teach conversation, speaking, or pronunciation, I’m guided by the standard of “comfortable intelligibility.” So much teaching in the antiquated past was focused on eradication of non-native accents, but, did you know that 75% of the world’s English speakers are NOT “native” speakers?
Jennifer Jenkins did some really cool research, based on communication among the “other” 3/4 of the world’s speakers, where she identified key elements of the language that are needed for these speakers to understand each other. She defined these features as the Lingua Franca Core.
I’ve developed a presentation on an enhanced model for teaching pronunciation focusing on these elements of the language that appear to be most important for comfortable intelligibility among NNESs and adding a couple of crucial elements that increase intelligibility when speaking with native speakers as well. This new enhanced model can be used to save time and energy in pronunciation lessons by focusing on the skills that will benefit our students most.
