The Situation of English Pronunciation in Primary Education Classrooms in Spain

Abstract

This study arises from the need to approach the current reality of English
pronunciation in primary education classrooms in Spain. Nowadays, English
pronunciation is still not given importance for the development of students’
communicative competence. Thus, pronunciation is not sufficiently valued, and
therefore, we can detect certain deficiencies in the oral expressions of our students.
The main objective of this study was to investigate the situation of pronunciation
in primary education in Spain. The hypothesis we planned was whether
pronunciation was given appropriate importance and had sufficient presence in the
classroom. We conducted a quantitative method being framed within what is
known in educational research as a non-experimental or ex-post-facto design,
defined as that which is carried out without the researcher deliberately
manipulating the independent variables. The instrument used was a personal
questionnaire delivered to 55 English teachers, of whom 32 responded, in primary
education from Granada in Spain. From the data obtained from the teachers
participating in the study, we can conclude that although teachers consider oral
expression as one of the main skills to be worked on in the classroom, they do not
consider pronunciation to have a direct and significant relationship with improving
it.