CHALLENGES AND TECHNIQUES IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN NIGERIA

The teaching of pronunciation in Junior Secondary School in Nigeria has not received the attention it deserves. This is due to a number of factors ranging from inexperienced teachers to adoption of inappropriate techniques as well as unavailability of education media such as audio-visual materials. This situation is compounded by the simultaneous co-existence of native-speaker and non-native speaker varieties of English which has made the choice of a model to teach a difficulty. However, in the context of English as an international language (EIL), the teacher has to tackle the challenge of paying attention to those features that will enable the learners to achieve both national acceptability and international intelligibility to enable them participate effectively in wider communication. To achieve this objective, the teacher needs to adopt certain techniques and approaches. This paper discusses the challenges facing the teaching of English pronunciation and the techniques to be adopted for the amelioration of the situation at the Junior secondary school level in Nigeria.