A consciência fonológica do professor de língua inglesa como L2 em contexto brasileiro : os aspectos ditongais em foco.

Abstract

This work investigates the phonological awareness of professors of English as L2 and discusses the importance of a systematic approach of phonetic and phonological aspects in Brazilian classrooms so that there is a satisfactory teaching of English, especially in the sphere of speech, which is the largest obstacle for those who study it. In order to carry out our discussions, we assumed that the need for proper pronunciation of English teachers has been little emphasized in teaching training centers, especially in English programs, and we bring the theoretical basis of some of the biggest names among those who dedicated to research the sounds of language and speech. As a research question, we outlined the diphthongs on the segmental level of pronunciation in order to show that the intelligibility and communication of a language articulate the control, of not only grammar and lexicon, but phonetics, also. The method used is the inductive, and the application consisted on collecting, via audio recording, the speech of five English professors and teachers of English as L2 at universities and language schools. At the last stage of the work, we propose a simple exercise that envisions to enhance the issues discussed, which concern the training and teaching of English phonetics. After all ruminations, we conclude that, on the one hand, without formal instruction, pronunciation teaching will be rather precarious and will not prompt the student to acquire the phonological awareness of the English language; on the other hand, the foreign speaker’s phonological awareness, solely, does not support the ability to teach English as L2 either, which proves there is no full phonological awareness when it does not come from the combination between the formal and the empirical of the language.