Towards Intelligibility: Designing Short Pronunciation Courses for Advanced Field Experts

English teachers are frequently asked to help colleagues prepare presentations for international conferences. Sometimes this assistance takes the form of a language course or tutorials focusing on the spoken language. Contact time is short but the participants are highly motivated. What type of pronunciation work will provide the greatest payoff in terms of successfully being understood when speaking English to an international audience? Given the current debate on norms and varieties spurred on by the work of Jenkins (2000, 2002, 2007) and other proponents of English as a Lingua Franca – how can teachers ground their course design in research? This paper addresses a variety of issues concerning the design of pronunciation courses which focus on maximum intelligibility for both native speakers and non-native speakers. Reference is made to an exploratory study of a particular course for researchers in applied linguistics, in order to illustrate some of the issues. Directions for further research are described. RESUME : Les enseignants d‘anglais sont fréquemment appelés à aider leurs collègues à préparer des communications pour des colloques internationaux. Parfois, cette aide prend la forme de cours de langue ou encore de séances individuelles centrés sur l‘oral. Si le temps d‘échange est toujours restreint, les participants témoignent d‘une grande motivation pour participer à ces travaux. Comment optimiser un travail axé sur la prononciation dans la perspective d‘être compris en anglais par un auditoire international ? Face au débat actuel sur les normes et les variétés de l‘anglais, impulsé par Jenkins (2000, 2002, 2007) et d‘autres promoteurs de l‘anglais en tant que Lingua Franca, comment mieux fonder les pratiques pédagogiques ? Cette contribution traite de plusieurs questions concernant la conception d‘un cours d‘anglais parlé qui prend pour objectif une intelligibilité maximale auprès d‘un public tant natif que non natif. Afin de traiter cette problématique, nous rendrons compte d'une étude préliminaire relative à un cours d'anglais ciblé sur un public de chercheurs en linguistique et en didactique. Des pistes pour des recherches ultérieures seront également proposées. Many teachers of short pronunciation courses face a tremendous challenge when they have to select aspects of spoken English to focus on. They choose on the basis of their own training or experience, or may look to textbooks for a list of features to teach. However, because the number of non-native speakers of English is now greater than the number of native speakers, leading to cultural and linguistic diversity in a huge variety of interactional contexts and genres, such a list is bound to be imperfect. Teachers, therefore, need to decipher the current debate over norms and standards, which can be expressed in two related questions: should native-like pronunciation always be the goal and which variety of English should be taught? ha l-0 06 36 62 5, v er si on 1 31 O ct 2 01 1 Author manuscript, published in "ASp_ la Revue du GERAS 53-54 (2008) 89-110"