An Input-based Approach to Task Design in Teaching Phonetics
Joanna RADWANSKA-WILLIAMS
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
It has long been recognized that input is vital for
language acquisition (Krashen, 1985) and, more recently, that focused input processing
tasks promote the acquisition of grammatical form (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993;
VanPatten, 1996). However, the traditional approach to teaching phonetics has
been oriented towards output, i.e., pronunciation practice. By contrast, this
paper advocated focusing on input to promote the students' processing of the phonetic
features of English. It reports on the design of a task of phonetic transcription
of authentic discourse. It is argued that the transcription task raises students'
awareness of different accents, and promotes their acquisition of English phonology.
