todoELE

Tras años de desatención en la metodología y en las aulas, la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de la pronunciación están viviendo un retorno a las aulas acompañados de un creciente interés en la investigación (Gil Fernández 2007, 2012). En Australia, en comparación con otras lenguas —especialmente las asiáticas— de mayor tradición en la educación, el español no ha gozado de una gran presencia y tampoco ha recibido la atención necesaria en la investigación pedagógica, incluidas las opiniones y necesidades de los docentes. En este artículo ofrecemos un estudio de las creencias y las actitudes de profesores australianos de español como lengua extranjera (ELE) en relación con la enseñanza de la pronunciación. Los datos proceden de profesores de varios niveles educativos y de diferentes estados o territorios australianos. En el estudio mostramos que a la comunidad docente no solamente le interesa la pronunciación, sino que también ha recibido algún tipo de formación. También establecemos una comparación con las conclusiones más relevantes a las que han llegado trabajos similares en otros países. Este tipo de estudio es esencial para poder dar a conocer la opinión entre los profesores de ELE en Australia (Pajares 1992; Borg 2003, 2006). De este modo, queremos contribuir a llenar un vacío existente en los estudios de ELE en esta parte del mundo.

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After years of neglect both in theory and in classrooms, the teaching and learning of pronunciation is undergoing a classroom revival and increasing research interest (Gil Fernández 2007, 2012). In Australia, compared to the situation of other much more established school languages—especially Asian languages—Spanish has not enjoyed a big presence and has not figured equally as a language of pedagogical study. This shortage extends to the opinions and needs of the teachers. In this article we present a study of the beliefs and attitudes of teachers of Spanish in Australia with regards to teaching pronunciation. The data were obtained from teachers of different educational stages and working in several Australian states or territories. In this study we show that the surveyed teachers are interested in pronunciation and are well trained. We also carry out a comparison with the most relevant conclusions reached by similar studies undertaken in other countries. A study of this nature is crucial to uncover the opinions in this teaching community (Pajares 1992; Borg 2003, 2006). With this article we want to contribute to closing the current gap in the field of Spanish language teaching in this part of the world.

Texto completo

This article presents the Spanish version of the Computer-Assisted Listening and Speaking Tutor (CALST), an online platform that can be used to complement pronunciation training in the classroom. The Spanish CALST offers listening, speaking, and spelling exercises for Northern-Central Peninsular Spanish as an L2. Exercises are tailored by an automatic comparison with the learner’s native language based on a database of phonetically specified phoneme inventories for over 500 languages, with the result that learners with different L1s are exposed to different exercises adapted to their specific needs. In this article, we present a description of the exercises as well as the criteria used to develop Spanish content for CALST. We discuss the limitations of the platform, the logging of user results as a partial solution to these limitations, and the possible future use of the logged data to increase our understanding of L2 acquisition.