Pronunciation Instruction for Brazilians (eBook)

Departing from an emergentist approach to Second Language Acquisition, Pronunciation Instruction: Bringing Theory and Practice Together presents a discussion of the sources of difficulties which are likely to be faced by Brazilian learners during the process of acquiring English phonetics and phonology, by presenting empirical data garnered from Brazilian studies of this issue and by proposing communicative activities aimed at helping speakers of Brazilian Portuguese to overcome their pronunciation difficulties in English. This book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1, Cognition and Second Language Acquisition, briefly introduces the reader into the world of cognition, focusing on issues such as L1-L2 transfer, the link between language perception and production, as well as the effects of explicit instruction. This chapter is of special interest for teachers who are interested in Second Language Acquisition or graduate students in the field of Applied Linguistics. Chapter 2 deals with transfer processes used by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese when undertaking the acquisition of North-American English L2 phonology. These transfer processes will be described and discussed, along with presentation of empirical data providing evidence of the need for explicit instruction. This will set the scene for the proposal laid out in the Chapter 3, which presents instructional activities designed to help students overcome the difficulties reported in the empirical findings. These practical classroom activities are organized in nine separate units - from Intro to Unit 8 - which can be worked from beginning to end or just by choosing some exercises in the range that is presented within each unit. The practical part can be used by Brazilian learners of English in the classroom or for self-study, as the book includes an answer key and CD.The target readers of Pronunciation Instruction: Bringing Theory and Practice Together are teachers and Brazilian students of English, living in Brazil or abroad, in any level of proficiency, who intend to work on their pronunciation, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of TSLA/TESL/TEFL and Applied Linguistics.