Integrating pronunciation and meaning: Teacher cognition on pronunciation teaching in the EFL classroom against the backdrop of communicative language teaching

In this thesis I explore teachers' cognitions on pronunciation among lower secondary teachers of English as a Foreign language. Where the audiolingual method focused on correct' pronunciation and imitation, communication has now become the means and the goal for language teaching in didactic theory and national curriculums. Furthermore, findings within linguistic research have sown doubts concerning the efficacy of making the learners sound like native english speakers, or if there are other aspects that need addressing in order to improve the learners' communicative abilities. Experiments indicate that proper use of intonation and stress in spoken language has just as big a role in communication as correct pronunciation of single phonemes and nonnative english speakers' ability to sound as a native speaker. My goal has been to investigate what teachers consider it important to work with when teaching pronunciation, how they wish to work with it, and the goals they set for their pronunciation teaching. To this end, I interviewed four English teachers and conducted a survey with respondents from several places in the country. The results show that pronunciation teaching is to a large extent thought of as correcting learners' speech, with a focus on phonemes. This is for the most part done through imitation exercises, which narrows down the alternatives. For some this entails the use of older methods, while others avoid teaching pronunciation altogether in order to ensure that participation is as agreeable possible. There seems to be an unused potential for recognising situations where one might work with pronunciation without seeing it as a corrective endeavour, and where the effects which different aspects of pronunciation can have on communication are highlighted. This necessitates a conception of pronunciation learning as an unfinished process where learners always have a potential for development