Teaching pronunciation through the use of web tools and applications as a motivational agent to improve the oral competence of 7th graders in a public school in Armenia Quindío
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Matiz Buitrago, Pablo Enrique | 2020-06-06
Currently, globalization plays a fundamental basis in the economic, political and social
development of a country. That is how, the interest of establishing English as a lingua franca has
become a fundamental pillar for the governments around the world. In this sense, the Colombian
Ministry of Education, in its Bilingual Program created in 2004, started the dream of developing
biculturality to be able to face the new challenge of breaking the barriers of communication among
speakers of different cultures. In fact, the relevance of speaking English as a second language
requires the development of the communicative competences which are reading, writing, listening
and speaking. When talking about the last one, pronunciation plays an important role because if it
is not well approached, students can feel insecure of speaking without knowing how to pronounce
a word correctly. As a result, their motivation to produce orally is negatively affected. According
to Folse and Ivone (2005) (as cited in Fernandez 2008, p. 5) “some students are good at speaking
in a natural way and tend to participate in all conversation exercises, while others can be quiet and
reserved”. It means there is still a notable difference between the input the students receive and the
output the students produce. In other words, many students are able to understand the English
language, but they are still unable to speak it in the local context.
LEER