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 dicult
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, particu-
larly to create strong relationships between listening and speaking, i.e. percep-
tion and production, between spoken and written forms, and to facilitate
transfer to learners' linguistic behaviour 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 pro-
nunciation, 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.