The book contains contributions from practitioners and theoreticians who explore the pronunciation of English from various perspectives: phonetic, phonological, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic. In accordance with the unifying theme of the volume, individual contributions investigate the characteristics of a foreign accent, its production and perception, study the development of methods and techniques in pronunciation teaching, evaluate their use in classroom materials and in the classroom itself, and investigate the conditions for second language learning and teaching from the perspective of learners and teachers. The book offers a unique combination of a scholarly research with practical applications, inspired over the years by the work of Professor Włodzimierz Sobkowiak, who has researched pronunciation teaching and pioneered technology-oriented, corpus-based approaches to the study of English pronunciation in Poland.

The volume constitutes a state-of-the-art account of issues related to teaching, learning and testing speaking in a second language. It brings together contributions by Polish and international scholars which seek to create links between theory, research and classroom practice, report the findings of studies investigating the impact of linguistic, cognitive and affective factors on the development and use of speaking skills, and provide concrete pedagogic proposals for instruction and assessment in this area. As such, the book will be of interest not only to second language acquisition theorists and researchers, but also to foreign language teachers willing to enhance the quality of speaking instruction in their classrooms.

Second language phonology is approached in this book from the perspective of data-based studies into the English sound system as used by native and non-native speakers of the language. The book offers a unique combination of psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pedagogical approaches, with individual contributions investigating the effect of selected conditioning factors on the pronunciation of English. With all the richness of approaches, it is a strong phonetic background that unifies individual contributions to the volume. Thus, the book contains a large body of original, primary research which will be of interest to experienced scientist, practitioners and lecturers as well as graduate students planning to embark on empirical methods of investigating the nature of the sound system

The volume constitutes a state-of-the-art account of issues related to teaching, learning and testing speaking in a second language. It brings together contributions by Polish and international scholars which seek to create links between theory, research and classroom practice, report the findings of studies investigating the impact of linguistic, cognitive and affective factors on the development and use of speaking skills, and provide concrete pedagogic proposals for instruction and assessment in this area. As such, the book will be of interest not only to second language acquisition theorists and researchers, but also to foreign language teachers willing to enhance the quality of speaking instruction in their classrooms.

The book contains contributions from practitioners and theoreticians who explore the pronunciation of English from various perspectives: phonetic, phonological, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic. In accordance with the unifying theme of the volume, individual contributions investigate the characteristics of a foreign accent, its production and perception, study the development of methods and techniques in pronunciation teaching, evaluate their use in classroom materials and in the classroom itself, and investigate the conditions for second language learning and teaching from the perspective of learners and teachers. The book offers a unique combination of a scholarly research with practical applications, inspired over the years by the work of Professor Wlodzimierz Sobkowiak, who has researched pronunciation teaching and pioneered technology-oriented, corpus-based approaches to the study of English pronunciation in Poland.

Second language phonology is approached in this book from the perspective of data-based studies into the English sound system as used by native and non-native speakers of the language. The book offers a unique combination of psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pedagogical approaches, with individual contributions investigating the effect of selected conditioning factors on the pronunciation of English. With all the richness of approaches, it is a strong phonetic background that unifies individual contributions to the volume. Thus, the book contains a large body of original, primary research which will be of interest to experienced scientist, practitioners and lecturers as well as graduate students planning to embark on empirical methods of investigating the nature of the sound system

Developing the ability to speak in a foreign language is an arduous task. This is because it involves the mastery of different language subsystems, simultaneous focus on comprehension and production, and the impact of a range of social factors. This challenge is further compounded in situations in which learners have limited access to the target language. Thus, there is a need to explore issues related to teaching, learning and testing speaking with a view to translating the guidelines based on theoretical positions and research findings into feasible and context-specific pedagogical recommendations. This is the rationale behind this book, which considers speaking from leading theoretical perspectives, investigates individual variables which affect its development, and reports the results of studies focusing on different aspects of its instructed acquisition.

The volume brings togrether contributions form scholars ctiveint eh field of pronunciation teaching and those more concerned with theoretical phonetics and phonology. The foucs of the book is on English phonetics and phonology viewed and studied fromteh perspective of foreign learners, teachers and teacher trainersl. Contributiosn are divided into three sections: accents, speech and applications. The first section discusses a variety of issues related to accents: description of accents in Britain today, theoretical perspectives on accent study and the problem of reference accent in teaching. The main concern of the contributions in the second section is the context for phonetics and phonology teaching atthe university level and in teacher training with emphasis on awareness raising. The third section presents studies in interlanguage phonetics and phonology, speech processing and pronunciation teaching. Contents: John Wells: Accents in Britain todya--Joanna Przedlacka: Early New Estuary English? Its contemporary background--Dorota Glowacka: Yod-palatalisation in Englishin Natural Phonology--Przewmyslaw Ostalski: (Non) Rhoticity in optimality theory (categorical rules, free variation and fuzzy ranking of constrints)--Joanna Prezdlacka: Glottaling in the teenage sppech of the Home Counties--Janina Ozga/Anna Mankowska: Students' awarenss of the socio-symbolic values of RP-Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk: Conscious competence of performance as a key to teaching English--Jan Majer: 'In French is six millions docks.' Wher error, please?--Jp; amta Szpyra: In defence of 'practical' phonology--Ewa Waniek-Klimczak: Context for Teaching English Phonetics and Phonology--Jan Majer: Sick or seek?Pedagogical phonology in teacher training--Wlodzimierz Sobowiak: English speech in Polish eyes: What university students think about English pronunciation teaching and learning--Peter Roach: Studying rhythm and timimg in English speech: Scientific curosity, or a classroom necessity?-0-Visnja Josipovic: The Prosody of english spoken with a Croatian accent--Anna Baczkowsa: Intonation patterns and turn-taking--Eva Waniek-Klimczak: How to predict the unpredicatable-English word stress from a Polish prespective-Robert Lew: Differences in the scope of obstruent voicing assimilation in learners' English as a consequence of regional variation in Polish--Klementina Jurancic Petek: How to do ti to do it right(?) Is near native-like pronunciation teachable/learnable?--Cjros Defty/Barbara Nowak/Agnieszka Pietrzak: Teaching pronunciation to Polich primary and secondary school learniers of English--Natalia Mamul: Micro-narrativers in face-to-face interaction--Magdalena Deska: The perception fo English sounds by Polish speakers--Anna Baczkowska: Some issues concerning modular and connecttionist approaches to speech processing and production--Malgorzata Baran: The advantage of auditory perceivers and sharpeners in learning foreign language pronunciation--Kamila Ciepiela: Acquisition of the phonological system in childhood development aphasia.