Learning Strategies For Improving EFL Adults' Pronunciation Skills

Working with adults in the field of English Foreign Language (EFL) is quite a challenge and a very interesting process; it gives teachers the opportunity to know different ways to improve students’ skills to help them to be successful EFL learners, and to integrate them according to the special characteristics that this kind of students have; particularly, it is of a significant importance to teach them appropriate learning strategies, specifically focused on pronunciation, to engage students in their learning process by applying the adequate skills in order for them to improve their oral production. Learning strategies, when applied adequately, improve adult students’ pronunciation.

Published literature about the topic is currently limited, but there enough articles that provide excellent information about it. The pioneer in the field of adult learning was Malcom Knowles, who identified the following characteristics of adult learners: Adults are autonomous and self-directed, adults have accumulated a foundation of self-directed and knowledge, adults are goal-oriented, adults are relevancy-oriented, adults are practical, and adults need to be shown respect. In this sense, unlike children and teenagers, adults have many responsibilities that they must balance against the demands of learning. Concerning to pronunciation and its teachings, it is a subject worldwide debated currently in the language teaching; there are many aspects to be considered regarding good pronunciation when learning another language, and teachers are supposed to pay attention to them, especially when we as teachers, want our students to communicate well. The focus is always on what sounds represents, not how they are produced, so that the listener can find the significance of the utterance and the speaker is able to send out a meaningful and understandable message. As stated by some researchers, the application of interactive speaking activities in which learning strategies are included, with specific focus on strategy training, availed by a careful selection of speaking activities planned according to students’ needs and a nice environment, it results in a considerably improving of adult EFL students’ oral production. Therefore, it is very important to be aware that the learning strategies used by teachers to help students cope with the new language, is the leading key that will make a difference in the learning process.

To teach learning strategies to EFL adult students requires delimiting the different steps on how to support the teaching process of them. When initiating the learning process, it is crucial to integrate learning strategies as part of the activities, in order to make a sense of awareness on what they are learning. Explaining the purpose of learning strategies and the help that they provide to EFL adult students, it is essential to understand the significance of them and the different ways in which a task can be learnt. During the learning process, teachers must take into account the different ways that students can learn or solve a task, providing different learning strategies that will help them to improve their pronunciation. For example, to teach students suprasegmental activities to improve pronunciation, results in a better understanding on how sounds are uttered, and therefore, confidence in speaking is augmented. Finally, as part of the steps, learning strategies must be assessed by the teacher, in order to know if students are applying them, the way they are working them out, and most important, if students are integrating them as part of their learning

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