Promoting remedial pronunciation instruction through social media

Abstract

With English now serving as the dominant language of global communication, pronunciation instruction requires detailed investigation to establish priorities and foster further research. The role of pronunciation in ELT has been extensively documented and it is well known that it has changed numerous times throughout the past two centuries: from being completely ignored in the Grammar Translation Method to later being at the forefront of instruction during the Audiolingual/Oral Method and then being referred to as "the orphan" (Derwing & Munro, 2005; Gilbert, 2010) during the Communicative Approach, its emphasis is heavily connected with teaching methods and approaches (Brown, 2007; Celce-Murcia et al., 2010). In the case of Portugal, pronunciation has been widely neglected both from a curricular point of view and among the coursebooks recognised for official instruction. This contribution aims to provide a glimpse of what is happening in Portugal and how social media could be used for remedial work.