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This book bears witness to the renewed interest in the teaching of pronunciation. It is interesting to note that pronunciation has been relatively neglected in recent years – many courses do not deal with it specifically at all, preferring to leave it to a process of osmosis – yet most learners attach great importance to it. The way we sound when we speak a foreign language has a strong influence on the assumptions other people make about us and the judgements they make about the sort of people we are. Our pronunciation is also intimately connected with our feelings about ourselves: our confidence (or lack of it), our sense of identity, and our self-esteem.

This book starts from the premiss that, when dealing with pronunciation, what goes on inside our heads (and our hearts) is at least as important as what we do with our mouths. It has been customary to present pronunciation work in an atomistic, analytical, and segregated way. Here by contrast the approach is holistic, synthesizing, and integrative. It is holistic in that it involves both physical and personality factors. It is synthesizing in that emphasis is placed on suprasegmental features such as rhythm and stress rather than on isolated phonemic features. It is integrative in that it places pronunciation work in the framework of other language learning activities, rather than separating it off completely.

This selection of highly original activities therefore works to lower the learners’ threshold of resistance to the foreign-ness of the foreign language and to create positive attitudes, both to the language and to their own ability to handle it. It works largely by ‘aiming off for wind’, using holistic activities involving relaxation, rhythm, music, and physical movement as a way of approaching pronunciation obliquely, rather than confronting it head-on. It presents, in short, a radical alternative to the teaching of pronunciation as previously conceived. It will be invaluable to all those teachers looking for ways to ‘help their learners learn the unteachable’.

Alan Maley

The English language is a kingdom and a sleeping beauty. You must awaken her in yourself, and the whole kingdom will come to life and be yours.

L. L. Szkutnik