The Lingua Franca Core and
the Polish learner |
|
Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska (Lublin) |
The paper examines and evaluates one
of the most hotly debated and controversial recent proposals in the area
of English pronunciation pedagogy -
Jennifer Jenkins’s (2000) Lingua Franca Core (LFC) – a selection of phonetic
features which, according to her, should constitute didactic priorities in the
teaching of English as an international language. The analysis is carried out
from the perspective of the Polish learner (and teacher). More specifically,
we inquire into the issue to what
extent this model is pedagogically feasible in the Polish context and whether
it fulfills its promise to provide a more realistic syllabus for pronunciation
teaching.
We argue that the LFC comprises many
features which, on the one hand,
diminish the teaching/learning load for Poles, but on the other hand,
constitute no simplification of this task at all. Of all the elements of the
LFC the omission of the dental fricatives, rhotic pronunciation, general
disregard for vowel quality, rhythm,
intonation and weak forms are the major elements that can contribute to
the easier acquisition of English phonetics, whereas insistence on preserving
vowel length (contextually determined in particular), aspiration, the velar
nasal, the long schwa, the glottal fricative and native articulatory setting
can be seen as the main difficulties and most objectionable aspects of this
model from the perspective of the Polish learner of English. Some features of
the LFC are questioned on grounds of phonetic universals and the frequency of
certain segments in languages of the world.