Włodzimierz Sobkowiak

Raising phonetic awareness through trivia

Postcards, advertising leaflets and billboards, xerox-, SMS- and internet-lore can be ample sources of linguistic trivia of all kinds, including those where some aspects of pronunciation are brought to the fore, usually through punning. These materials can, and should, be used to boost the metaphonetic competence (awareness, intuition) of foreign language learners in all areas of segmental and suprasegmental phonetics. This metacompetence is instrumental in teaching and learning foreign pronunciation, as part of the declarative-knowledge component thereof. Examples are provided of many categories of metaphonetic trivia.