Hiroko often says "led" when she should say "red." Jasmine sounds like she's speaking too quickly because of an unfamiliar speech rhythm. Pierre seems to emphasize the wrong word in a sentence, making it hard to follow his ideas.
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ost language teachers are familiar with students such as these and agree that intelligible pronunciation is vital to successful communication. Similarly, most students see pronunciation as an important part of learning to speak, and therefore ask that more class time be devoted to pronunciation. Despite the recognized importance of pronunciation, teachers often remain uncertain about how to incorporate it into the curriculum. Given that most courses emphasize general oral communication over pronunciation (Murphy, 1991), teachers must seek creative ways to integrate pronunciation into speakingoriented classes in a manner clearly related to the oral communication goals of the course.
We assume that it is desirable to address pronunciation teaching in the context of speaking (Firth, 1993), and that a speaking-oriented approach serves the communication needs of students more effectively than approaches focusing on either fluency or articulatory goals alone (Morley, 1991). Murphy (1991) echoes this belief by saying that pronunciation instruction "needs to be integrated with broader level communicative activities in which speakers and listeners engage in . . . meaningful communication" (p. 60). Although we believe it is best to achieve this integration without shifting the focus of the class to pronunciation, we acknowledge that implementation remains a work in progress. Approaches favoring the integration of pronunciation into oral communication have been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have received little clear direction about how to accomplish this integration.
In this article, we address the practical challenges related to integrating pronunciation into oral communication. First, we describe the central difficulty in integrating pronunciation into the speaking classroom. Next, we suggest all-skills principles to guide the incorporation of pronunciation into oral communication courses. Finally, in the context of four typical classroom activities, we explore possible implementation strategies that can be applied to a wide variety of instructional settings. For the most part, the activities focus on suprasegmental features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation, not because segmentals (i.e.,