Teaching Pronunciation and the New EFL Curriculum in Iran: The Wind of Change is Blowing

This qualitative study aims to investigate the status of teaching pronunciation in Iran among two contexts of teaching:public schools and private language institutes. Ten teachers (four from public schools and six from private languageinstitutes) took part in a structured interview and expressed their views towards teaching pronunciation in their contextof teaching considering four themes: the role of pronunciation in the curriculum, teachers’ self-efficacy in teachingpronunciation, their attitudes towards pronunciation, and their needs to in-service training courses. The transcripts of therecorded interviews were coded, analyzed, and interpreted. The findings of the study were promising considering thestatus of teaching pronunciation by teachers of the new curriculum in public schools. The teachers reported to be awareof the time and content of teaching pronunciation. They were also quite competent in their teaching methodology andthe comprehensibility of their accent and showed positive attitudes towards teaching pronunciation. They expressedtheir desire to take part in in-service training courses, but they complained about the unavailability of these coursesaround them. Private institute teachers reported to be aware of the value and status of pronunciation in the curriculum;however, they reported that they often skip teaching pronunciation in their classes. They were less competent with theirEnglish pronunciation and believed that teaching pronunciation is not important, as achieving native accent is almostimpossible and exposure is more important than instruction. Most of them had positive attitudes towards teachingpronunciation; however, some were not competent of their teaching methodology and expressed their desire to take partin in-service training courses

کلیدواژه ها:

pronunciation ، curriculum ، teaching ، teachers