Event

The Phonology of English as an International Language

Saturday, July 5th, 2003, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Speaker: Jennifer Jenkins, King's College, University College London

Oxford University Press and The British Council are proud to sponsor this series of biannual talks by distinguished scholars, on areas of interest to language teachers in Japan. This summer's program features presentations in seven cities by Dr. Jennifer Jenkins, Professor of English, King's College, University College London. She teaches Sociolinguistics and Phonology/Phonetics courses on the MA in English Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics, of which she is Programme Director. Her book, The Phonology of English as an International Language, reflects her main research interest in recent developments in World Englishes in general and English as an International Language in particular, in terms of both their description and their implications for teaching and learning English as a second language. The topic of this presentation is The Phonology of English as an International Language. The goal of English pronunciation teaching was traditionally a native speaker accent, usually either Received Pronunciation or General American. With the growing realisation that such a goal was rarely achieved by the vast majority of learners, it was modified to one of 'comfortable intelligibility'. In other words, the non-native speaker's pronunciation was supposed to be comfortably intelligible to a native speaker listener, with any differences between the non-native speaker's pronunciation and native speaker norms still being regarded as errors. However, this overlooks the fact that English has become an international language used most frequently as a lingua franca among its non-native speakers. In this presentation Jenkins will describe her research into EIL phonology, the Lingua Franca Core that resulted, and the importance of accommodation strategies for pronunciation in EIL interaction.
Note: If you plan to attend the reception following the presentation please pre-register: www.oupjapan.co.jp/bc.

Organization: The British Council Tokyo Centre (Tokyo British Council)

Cost: free (preregister at www.oupjapan.co.jp/bc )

Venue: Ibaraki Christian University, 6-11-1 Omika-cho, Hitachi-shi, Ibaraki

Location: Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

Contact Tokyo British Council

Neil Stead