Assessing English L2 Pronunciation: Perceptions of Select English Teachers from Arts and Engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

This small-scale study conducted with a group of 20 English teachers from arts and engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu primarily aims at understanding how these teachers rate English pronunciation. In the process, it also throws light on these teachers' awareness of prosodic features and the factors that they consider to be important for intelligibility. The study uses the stimulated recall method to collect data. Results reveal that English teachers from Engineering colleges tend to score slightly lower. The justifications given by them for awarding these bands also reveal that they tend to base their assessment on various other factors rather than focusing exclusively on actual features of pronunciation.