Connected Speech (Review‪)‬

Overview of Pronunciation in Language Learning To be able to speak and listen in a second language, it is clear that language learners need something other than just phonemic correctness. As or more important seems to be the ability to comprehend and produce in a near-native-like fashion aspects of pronunciation such as stress, intonation, rhythm, and pacing, and to use gestures and body language appropriately; in other words, to have both linguistic and sociolinguistic competence (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996; Florez, 1999). In many cases, however, pronunciation teaching still focuses on discrete phonemic awareness and production. For many reasons, this approach has been relatively ineffective to date (Boku, 1998; Donahue, 1999). Fraser (1999) notes that most language learners feel that pronunciation is a crucial part of language learning. Students believe the best way to improve their pronunciation is to practice, and many pronunciation experts agree that pronunciation teaching and learning must be situated in communicative contexts (Fraser, 1999; Levis, 1999; Otlowski, 1998; Wennerstrom, 1999) and help students to use metacognitive strategies in broader communication (Vitanova & Miller, 2002). Otlowski and Fraser (1999) concur with much of the current research that the goals of pronunciation teaching should be "developing functional intelligibility, communicability, increased self-confidence, the development of speech monitoring abilities and speech modification strategies for use beyond the classroom" (p. 3).