English as an International Language and its Impact on the Teaching of Phonology in Teacher-Training Colleges

Buenos Aires

Jornada; I Jornadas Internacionales de la Fonética de las Lenguas Extranjeras; 2009

Universidad Nacional de San Martin

In the light of the unquestionable status of English as an International Language (EIL), the teaching of phonology takes on a particularly thorny tinge given the imperative necessity to choose a new and adequate phonological model. As the notion of an acceptable standard variety becomes more and more blurry, so does the issue of intelligibility, and these phenomena entail moving further away from native speakership and English-speaking or even Western culture-bound methodology. The need to address these concerns is fuelled by the ever-increasing number of non-native speakers of English worldwide, who are driven by myriad motivations to learn the language. It is in the context of this fluctuating reality that the teaching of phonology to future teachers of English in an academic environment such as teacher-training colleges calls for revisiting. This lecture will seek to bring to the forefront and to explore issues such as the phonological model to be taught, and the teaching aims to be pursued in an ever-diversifying motivational and cultural reality whereby the ?native speaker fallacy? seems to finally have been proved right.