3.5. Implications of the research for pronunciation-teaching principles
The ®ndings indicate that:
1. suprasegmental features are seen by teachers as paramount, but also as difficult
to teach and learn;
2. certain aspects of segmental features, e.g. clustering, linkage phenomena, schwa
and its relationship to word-stress and rhythm, are considered important;
3. pronunciation should not be taught to learners as an isolated phenomenon,
and the practice of pronunciation should be integrated in some way, particularly to create strong relationships between listening and speaking, i.e. perception and production, between spoken and written forms, and to facilitate
transfer to learners' linguistic behavior beyond the classroom;
4. pronunciation is best dealt with as the need arises, rather than in an extremely
pre-determined way;
5. the controlled practice of speaking (where attention may be focused on pronunciation, among other aspects of form), is obviously still regarded as
important by teachers generally;
6. learners' facility with phonemic script is important for access to books on
pronunciation and dictionaries; and
7. RP may be held as a target for learners or as a reference point for teachers.
We will elaborate these implications in Section 4.