Asian Journal of English Language Teaching Vol. 13, 95-105
© 2003 The Chinese University Press

 

REPORT

An Input-based Approach to Task Design in Teaching Phonetics

Joanna RADWANSKA-WILLIAMS
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
It has long been recognized that input is vital for language acquisition (Krashen, 1985) and, more recently, that focused input processing tasks promote the acquisition of grammatical form (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993; VanPatten, 1996). However, the traditional approach to teaching phonetics has been oriented towards output, i.e., pronunciation practice. By contrast, this paper advocated focusing on input to promote the students' processing of the phonetic features of English. It reports on the design of a task of phonetic transcription of authentic discourse. It is argued that the transcription task raises students' awareness of different accents, and promotes their acquisition of English phonology.


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