Experienced teachers' perspectives on priorities for improved intelligible pronunciation: The case of Japanese learners of English

The current study was designed as an exploratory investigation of the usefulness of experienced teachers' perspectives as a means to identify teaching and learning priorities for a particular group of L2 learners (i.e. native speakers of Japanese (NJs) learning English in EFL settings) to acquire intelligible pronunciation. A total of 120 experienced teachers (61 native speakers of English (NEs) and 59 NJs) rated 25 problematic features on a 5-point scale ranging from "very important to teach" to "not very important to teach." The ordered ranking suggests the teachers' opinion is that the syllabus needs to include not only (a) pronunciation problems which are generally problematic in other ESL/EFL classrooms but also (b) sound features which are highly specific to NJs. The construct validity of the experienced teachers' judgment will be discussed in light of relevant findings in L2 pronunciation research.