Pronunciation Instruction for Brazilians

This captivating book is a precious resource for teachers and students interested in pronunciation matters. Specially designed for English teachers who have Brazilian Portuguese (BP) learners as their pupils, the book is extremely helpful to fill a common gap regarding phonological/phonetic instruction. It is very common to find English teachers who recognize the importance of pronunciation instruction, but do not feel confident enough to teach it in their classes or are not aware of...
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This captivating book is a precious resource for teachers and students interested in pronunciation matters. Specially designed for English teachers who have Brazilian Portuguese (BP) learners as their pupils, the book is extremely helpful to fill a common gap regarding phonological/phonetic instruction. It is very common to find English teachers who recognize the importance of pronunciation instruction, but do not feel confident enough to teach it in their classes or are not aware of many mispronunciation problems that may hinder communication in a foreign language. In the first chapter, the book is successful in providing teachers with the most relevant theories concerning cognition and second language acquisition, speech perception/production, and it also stresses the importance of explicit instruction to help learners improve their English pronunciation. In Chapter 2, the authors report the results of many empirical studies that reveal the main pronunciation difficulties faced by BP learners. This chapter calls the readers' attention not only to well known pronunciation difficulties, such as the proper articulation of the th sounds or the pronunciation of -ed endings, but also to aspects which are not so commonly tackled in English classes to Brazilians, such as the pronunciation of the dark /l/ or the nasals in word-final position. After setting the theoretical background, the exercises and tips suggested in Chapter 3 help the teacher/instructor raise the learners' awareness about sound articulation and/or perception, thus working on the differences between the native language sounds and the American English sounds which do not exist in Portuguese or which are slightly different from Portuguese. Activities are creative and simple, all possible to be applied in many teaching contexts at any school, i.e., no fancy technology is required. This is definitely a well designed and appealing step-by-step guide for teachers who would like to improve their understanding about the pronunciation difficulties faced by their students (and by themselves!). The sets of exercises carefully prepared to overcome each difficulty are ready to be used, thus saving teachers' time to prepare efficient tasks. Importantly, besides focusing on the perception/pronunciation of specific segments or structures, there are many creative contextualized exercises which help the learners practice the pronunciation of the learned information in a more natural way. Enjoy the book and help your pupils improve their American English pronunciation as early as possible! Andreia S. Rauber (University of Minho, Portugal)