The end of the road
Back (way back) in 2001 I spoke at the TESOL-SPAIN Annual Convention about English pronunciation. My talk was entitled RP RIP? Wherever Next With Pronunciation? and was a first approach to what would later become pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Last weekend I spoke at the 47th TESOL-SPAIN Annual Convention in Cáceres, Extremadura, and, I hope, came to the end of the road of my pronunciation journey.
In 2001 I unwittingly helped to set up what would go on to become quite a confrontational issue, with one side advocating teaching pronunciation for international intelligibility, and the other re–affirming the need to stick with native-speaker (NS) oriented approaches. In the ensuing conflict, advocates of the goal of a NS accent described ELF as a ‘fledgling ugly duckling’ or ‘a broken weapon’, among other things I’m not going to put into print. The confrontation was mostly conducted in a civilised manner. Mostly. But it was confrontation at the end of the day, with learners and teachers faced with opposing and mutually exclusive pathways for their learning. On the one hand, the goal of a native-speaker accent, on the other, the goal of international intelligibility.
I am firmly on the side of working towards international intelligibility, as you will already know if you know anything about me and my work. But I also hate unnecessary confrontation and felt very early on that by viewing a NS accent and international intelligibility as diametric opposites, we were inadvertently creating an opposition that didn’t exist. My talk in Cáceres was to show that this is, in fact, the case, and that rather the being mutually exclusive, these two goals are part of the same journey. Hence the subtitle to this post. Over twenty years after first speaking at a TESOL-SPAIN convention, I’ve come to the end of the road.
If you want to see why two apparently opposite pronunciation goals are truly part of the same journey, you can take a look at my presentation here.
And if you are a really sick person, you can follow my talk on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/live/4F2sA8YK6Js?si=9UYkHV6ZgZ8cptpL. Skip to minute 5 if you want to go straight to the heart of the matter.
Finally, if you want to spare yourself the agony of seeing me in full conference mode, but want the main ideas covered in my session and illustrated in the pdf of the presentation, then you can read about what I said here:
But Cáceres was the end of the road for more than one reason. Yes, my journey with pronunciation – from teaching towards a NS accent as we all did in the 80s, through teaching towards international intelligibility at the turn of the century, to teaching towards whatever my students want today – has now come to an end. But so to, at the same time, has my ELT career in Spain. If things go as planned, this was my last appearance at a TESOL-SPAIN convention. I’ve been semi–retired since the pandemic and now, with last month’s publication of Teaching English Pronunciation for a Global World with OUP, seemed an appropriate time to take the semi closer to full. The journey is almost over. But wow, what a journey!
englishglobalcom 
Robin, so sorry not to be there in Cáceres with you this weekend. But I’m one of the ‘sick’ ones who watched the talk, and what a great way to go – that was a great talk.
I tell a lie, I didn’t watch all of it, but that’s because I know the message so well. I’ve heard you speak so many times, and I never got sick of hearing it.
You’ve left your mark on ELT. You’ve left your mark on me. Our little corner of teaching will miss you terribly, but you can retire knowing that you’ve changed it for the better.
Wishing you all the best in retirement n mate!
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Great to have been able to meet you on various occasions over the years. Your ideas are very helpful in my teaching. Happy retirement!
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