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Seminars & Events

English Language Teaching and its “Cinderella”

English Language Teaching and its “Cinderella”

Marianna Kyprianou

Wednesday 5 March 2014, 11:00-12:00, Room CY007

This presentation will briefly review current research in the area of learning English as a foreign language, its importance in both professional and social success and in becoming active “cosmopolitan citizens” with a critical mind (Guilherme 2007: 77-81). It will also discuss what learners can do to improve their proficiency with an emphasis on pronunciation, termed as the “Cinderella” of ELT (Kelly 1969, Dalton 1997, Underhill 2013). Although pronunciation has been neglected in the past in terms of foreign language instruction (McDonald 2002), there is a renewed interest in promoting and improving pronunciation, moving from segmental phonology teaching to integrating pronunciation in the curriculum (Keys 2000, Gilbert 2008). Pronunciation pedagogy is receiving a great deal of attention in many languages lately (for example PTLC, EPIP, New Sounds, PSLLT, Accents, ACTA, and the IATEFL and TESOL Special Interest Section conferences and events). This renewed interest in pronunciation instruction has strong references to instructional technology and computer-assisted pronunciation instruction (for a discussion see Tanner and London, 2009). The final part of the presentation will give an overview of recent trends and directions in practicing pronunciation in terms of instructional technology and web-based resources: Online dictionaries, social networking services, file sharing resources and finally mobile and tablet applications.

Marianna Kyprianou is an English Language Instructor at the University of Cyprus Language Centre, where she teaches advanced English for Academic Purposes courses as well as ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses (English for Law and English for Technical Purposes). She also supervises General Academic and ESP courses. Undergraduate studies, University of Athens (B.A. in English Language and Literature). Graduate studies, University of Birmingham, UK (M.A. in Translation Studies). Graduate studies, University of Cyprus (M.A. in Applied Linguistics). Doctoral Candidate in Linguistics (University of Cyprus).

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