Podcasting: An Effective Tool for Honing Language Students' Pronunciation?(Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION As evidenced by this special issue on teaching pronunciation, foreign language (FL) teachers are often challenged by the ongoing debate on how to teach pronunciation across proficiency levels. While some teachers feel there is often not enough class time to practice pronunciation, including intonation or prosody (Munro & Derwing, 2007; Ramirez-Verdugo, 2006), others may not enjoy nor know how to teach pronunciation, or they may believe that students simply find it boring (Stevick, Morley, & Wallace Robinett, 1975). Furthermore, some teachers may be reluctant to teach pronunciation due to lack of training in phonetics (Weinberg & Knoerr, 2003). Teaching pronunciation in a class specific to pronunciation, phonology, or phonetics may seem more feasible than in a typical language classroom. However, these types of classes normally only occur in the upper levels, so students in beginning language classes could be deprived of systematic pronunciation training until late in their language learning careers.