Exploring Instructional Approaches and Pronunciation Challenges: A Study of English for Communication Students' Perception and Problematic Consonant Sounds

Abstract

Effective English pronunciation has been presented as a key factor for successful communication and it is a challenge of English as a foreign language learners. This study aimed to explore the instructional approaches in a phonetics course and investigate the problematic consonant sounds faced by the first-year students majoring in English for Communication at a university of Technology in a Thai university. Research instruments are survey questionnaires and pronunciation tests. The findings conclude that reading phonetic symbols and transcriptions aids correct pronunciation and increase students’ confidence. The problematic consonant sounds are /θ/and /z/. The implication of this study can be applied into pedagogical approaches to design and assign instructional resources for enhancing pronunciation training. This study has certain limitations of the small number of participants and the focus on consonant sounds in the pronunciation test. Therefore, future research should include a larger number of participants and consider pronunciation testing of word stress and sentence stress.