Talking about pronunciation: Socially constructing metalanguage

This article reports on the qualitative aspects of a classroom-based study of second language pronunciation teaching. It focuses on one of the themes which emerged: how the learners and the teacher communicated about pronunciation. The research method involved a detailed analysis of the classroom interactions which took place during a series of six 90-minute lessons aimed at teaching pronunciation of syllable codas. This analysis revealed that the four learners and the teacher had worked cooperatively to develop common ways of describing their perceptions of the target pronunciation. This was based on learner-initiated ways of talking about pronunciation which were built on by the teacher when providing explanations and feedback. The study concludes that this type of metalanguage, described as Socially Constructed Metalanguage (SCM), may play a critical role in successful pronunciation teaching and learning and offers some guidelines for teachers.