A short report from

the sixth Foreign Language Phonetics Teaching conference

Mikorzyn, Poland, 8-10 May 2006

(This is a report prepared for publication in The Phonetician,

the journal of the International Society of Phonetic Sciences)

The sixth Foreign Language Phonetics Teaching ("Dydaktyka fonetyki języka obcego w Polsce") conference took place in Mikorzyn, 8-10 May 2006. It is an annual meeting of researchers and teachers of phonetics from all over Poland, organized by Neophilology Departments of two Vocational Schools: in Konin and in Płock. The principal aim of these conferences, which started in 2001, is bringing together foreign pronunciation specialists for intensive discussion of the most fundamental, intriguing and practical issues having to do with phonetics teaching and learning in the setting of Polish schools and universities. Some of the most frequently reoccurring topics in the six years of the conference were:

· theory versus practice in pronunciation teaching and learning

· practical versus theoretical phonetics in Polish universities

· methods and techniques in teaching pronunciation

· pronunciation and phonetics textbooks and courses

· pronunciation teaching tools and aids

· ICT in teaching and learning pronunciation

· standards and models of phonetic correctness

· syllabuses and curricula in teaching pronunciation

· pronunciation testing

· the role of transcription in pronunciation teaching and learning

Programmes, reports, abstracts, selected presentations and photo galleries from all six conferences are to be found at this internet address: http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/~sobkow/. The six proceedings volumes, containing about 130 papers altogether, can be purchased directly from the two respective schools.

The sixth conference in Mikorzyn near Konin attracted forty participants and covered a wide spectrum of phonetic interest: from learner strategies (Mirosław Pawlak), through criticism of Lingua Franca Core (LFC, see Jennifer Jenkins's writings; Agnieszka Bryła), review of available phonetics teaching materials (Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska) to discussion of rhythm (Beata Grzeszczakowska-Pawlikowska) and 'teacher-talk' (Ewa Waniek-Klimczak). The full programme of the conference is available at http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/~sobkow/MikoProg.htm. The preferred language of the conference was Polish, but some presentations were delivered in English. Most of the contents of the proceedings volume use English as metalanguage. As a bonus to readers of this volume, professor Szpyra-Kozłowska appended three reviews of recently published phonetics textbooks:

· Hancock, M. English Pronunciation in Use. 2003. Cambridge University Press.

· Ashby, P. Speech Sounds. 2005. London & New York: Routledge.

· Ashby, M & J. Maidment. Introducing Phonetic Science. 2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

According to the reviewer of the proceedings volume, professor Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (my translation – WS), "most of the submitted papers are practically oriented phonetics teaching presentations [...] There are also academically grounded papers, using a more empirical methodology, as well as review papers. The best achievements in each of the three categories are:

1. Radosław Święciński, in his "Teaching English articulatory setting features to Polish students of English – a study of phonation", shows that, by using appropriate techniques and exercises one can force change even in such a seemingly poorly consciously controlled phonetic parameter as the setting of the articulatory base. The experimental group achieved a statistically significant improvement over controls in mimicking English phonatory habits (e.g. vocal fold tenseness).

2. Włodzimierz Sobkowiak i Wiesława Ferlacka ("Calibrating the Phonetic Difficulty Index") attempt an empirical 'calibration' of the Phonetic Difficulty Index (PDI) proposed by Sobkowiak in his writings. It turns out to be inadequate on the lower levels of English proficiency. Briefly: errors of pronunciation predicted by PDI occur rarely, while many of the actually attested ones are not accounted for by the index. The value of this paper is in the stimulus it provides for further work on this important and neglected aspect of pronunciation teaching.

3. Mirosław Pawlak's "On the use of pronunciation learning strategies by Polish foreign language learners" is a brilliant and methodologically mature questionnaire study conducted on a large sample of subjects and based on well selected literature. The main theme is the application of appropriate pronunciation learning strategies, i.e. the extension onto phonetics of the most hotly debated field of reflection in contemporary foreign language teaching and learning theory."

The conference programme also included three unpublished workshops:

· Włodzimierz Sobkowiak & Aleksandra Siekierska-Wojnowska: "PDI for everybody!"

· Wiktor Gonet: "Check your pronunciation"

· Geoffrey Schwartz: "Can you always trust your ears?"

The first concerned the beta version of the PDI user interface (see above), allowing interactive querying of PDI-enabled Phonetic Access Dictionary. The other two demonstrated how to use freely available acoustic tools to assist the EFL pronunciation learner in perceiving and producing subtle phonetic contrasts (e.g. degree of aspiration, vowel quality and length, voicing).

Włodzimierz Sobkowiak

1 June 2006