Pronunciation Journeys: 10-Year L2 Teacher Trajectories

Many recent studies have looked into how teachers learn to teach English pronunciation. However, most of these studies focused only on the learning process during training programs for teachers who teach English as a second language (L2) (Burri, 2016; Buss, 2017; Kochem, 2023). Very few studies have explored what happens after teachers start their careers (Burri & Baker, 2020; 2021; Burri, 2021). In this presentation, I'll share what I've learned from my ongoing research project about the careers of L2 teachers. I'm particularly interested in how their teaching practices and thoughts about teaching and learning English pronunciation develop over time.

I collected information through surveys before and after a course, an assignment during a graduate program, watching classes, group discussions, narrative frames, and four rounds of interviews. This happened over ten years, starting from when teachers were learning about teaching pronunciation in a graduate program, and continuing into their professional lives. This period also covered two years of dealing with COVID-19 lockdowns. After analyzing the data, I found that each teacher in the study had a unique and complex professional journey influenced by many different factors. The presentation ends with a discussion about what this means for teachers who help train other teachers, as well as for teachers themselves and researchers.

Presenter

Michael Burri is a Senior Lecturer in TESOL at the University of Wollongong, Editor of English Australia Journal, and editorial board member of TESOL Quarterly. He has taught and conducted research in various contexts in Australia, Japan, and Canada. Michael’s professional interests include pronunciation instruction, teacher education and learning, Mind Brain Education, and non-native English-speaking teacher issues. He has published in many leading journals, and his longitudinal research on learning to teach English pronunciation was awarded the TESOL Award for an Outstanding Paper on NNEST Issues (2015) and the MAK Halliday Prize for Outstanding Research in Applied Linguistics (2019).