AD+-+UFOMATA


 * Ufomata talks about the problems in Nigerian pronunciation teaching, but it can illustrate what is inadequately done in the English teaching in other countries as well. One of these problems is that most teachers have no training in the teaching of pronunciation and they cannot be said to represent suitable models.**

**We can use the following situation as an example in our essay:** **English spoken by Nigerians is often difficult for others to understand because each syllable is of nearly the same length and given the same stress. There is a tendency to stress the final syllable in a sentence, even if it is not a personal pronoun. The effect of this is not just that a Nigerian accent is different from any other, but that the message that the speaker wishes to convey is not carried efficiently by the medium; undue importance is given to grammatical items while those words with full lexical meaning are deprived of their prominence (K.J. Stevenson, 1969:231).**

**Here are some of the author´s suggestion on how to improve English Pronunciation Teaching:**

**1. The model for teaching and testing should be more realistic. A more realistic approach would be to teach and test the local standard provided core features of the language are retained to maintain international intelligibility and social acceptability within the country.** **2. Vowels** **The focus should be on durational differences as they are more crucial for intelligibility. Not much is lost with the monopthongization of diphthongs as can be seen from native speaker accents such as the Irish.** **3. Consonants** **Emphasis should be placed on voiced/voiceless contrasts which are very productive in English.** **4. Sounds in Combination** **The notion that clarity involves near spelling pronunciation should be discouraged. More spoken material need to be introduced into teaching. ESL teachers should be exposed to the rhythm of English through native speaker speech and appropriate teacher training courses, coupled with occasional refresher courses which should be organised regularly. Differences between the rhythm of English and the indigenous languages need to be understood by teachers as a basis for planning strategies for teaching English rhythm** **5. Stress and intonation** **Students need to be made to realise that every word in English has its own accentual pattern and that the fact that tone is not lexical in the language does not imply a free - for - all situation. In the teaching of intonation, the focus should be on simple intonational patterns, as complex ones are hardly used in ESL contexts where usage to a large extent is limited to formal situations.**