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.