The article aims at presenting the results of an investigation into the knowledge of phonemic tra... more The article aims at presenting the results of an investigation into the knowledge of phonemic transcription among Czech undergraduate students. It was motivated by the hypothesis that despite a frequent use of transcription in teaching materials and by English language teachers, its workable knowledge in students is poor. The study deals with the basic concepts of recording spoken language, advantages and disadvantages of using transcription in language teaching and argues for its inclusion in language teaching. The article also includes several suggestions on possible incorporation of transcription into English teaching together with examples of suitable teaching resources.
The study is a small-scale explanatory survey to investigate English language learners’ (N=82) at... more The study is a small-scale explanatory survey to investigate English language learners’ (N=82) attitudes and beliefs about their own pronunciation. The findings are compared to those of in-service teachers (N=23) and their pronunciation teaching practices. The data were obtained through a set of two survey questionnaires that were to shed the light on the opinions of Czech undergraduate students and to explore whether there are any clear reasons for those beliefs in the in-service teachers’ pronunciation attitudes and practices. The results clearly show that both the students and the teachers are aware of the importance of good pronunciation for successful communication. However, on the other hand, they also indicate that the teachers are not very knowledgeable in the components of pronunciation teaching, thus focusing primarily on segmental instructions at the expense of prosody training. This notion was supported by the importance that both the students and the teachers assign to the particular components of English pronunciation. The paper also suggests some steps that can be taken to improve the situation of pronunciation teaching in the Czech schools.
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Papers by Michal Pištora