Pronunciation in textbooks in Swedish as L2 from a comprehensibility perspective
Keywords:
comprehensibility, pronunciation, textbook analysisAbstract
This study focuses on how pronunciation is presented in Finnish textbooks in Swedish as L2 (n=10). The textbooks are aimed for upper secondary school students at intermediate level. The pronunciation features presented in the textbooks are analyzed from the perspective of comprehensibility.
It is well known that prosodic features have a great impact on comprehensibility of speech. Concerning Swedish, sentence rhythm is one of the most important features. Yet, this analysis showed that individual speech sounds and single words are paid a lot of attention to. Also, whole sentences are practised in some exercises, but there is a lack of rules or instructions on how to produce prosodic features. Explicit instructions and awareness raising have been suggested to be effective, or even necessary, in learning prosody. The learning goals at this proficiency level is to gain comprehensible pronunciation and to be able to apply several pronunciations rules. The absence of rules and instructions in textbooks makes the teacher’s role more important in reaching the goals. Presenting and practising prosodic features should be in a key position in language teaching that aims for easily comprehensible pronunciation.
