A COMPARISON OF TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES IN TEACHING AND ASSESSING YOUNG EFL LEARNERS’ PRONUNCIATION
Keywords:
EFL pronunciation, young learners, communicative, cooperative, assessmentAbstract
The present study aims at comparing the effects of the application of various carefully selected techniques of the two distinct teaching approaches, Communicative Language Learning and Kagan’s version of Cooperative Language Learning, on enhancing young Serbian EFL learners’ pronunciation
of allegedly problematic sounds, such as interdental fricatives /ð/, /θ/ and approximants /r/ and /w/. In order to answer the proposed research questions a preliminary quasi-experiment was conducted in which the aforementioned techniques were applied consistently for three months during the private English lessons to twelve nine- and ten-year-olds, who have been learning English for almost four years. The possibilities for the assessment of pronunciation were further explored by examining the teachers’ views regarding which applied approach facilitated more appropriate evaluation of the learners’ pronunciation of target sounds. The findings of pre-test and post-test examinations were
analysed, and the results show positive effects in favour of Kagan’s Structures. Even though the present study can be regarded as a pilot study due to a relatively small number of participants, based on the findings of the conducted investigation, suggestions are provided to teachers for the reintroduction of the slightly marginalized segment of EFL teaching, i.e. the almost entirely neglected phonetic instruction.
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