The use of technology in foreign language pronunciation teaching at higher education level

Abstract

Higher education institutions are experiencing a transformation process to fit the demands of the Knowledge Society and the ICT leading role, in all the aspects of our lives. In the field of education, it has generated a new learning ecology centered in the student who, accompanied by the teacher as a guide or facilitator, uses ICT to accomplish their goals. Everything happens in a new scenario where the educational process is influenced by the ubiquity and the blurring of barriers between formal and informal learning. In foreign language teaching, there is a growing interest in the communicative approach that gives more importance to the oral transmission, for which pronunciation is a path toward intelligibility. In this respect, new technologies offer several advantages that go from linguistic immersion to the use of resources for practice and self correction. However, it is not possible to guarantee student autonomy unless them and their professors have developed the digital competences required for learning. The aim of this paper is to examine the use of technology for teaching English pronunciation at University. The first part of the paper presents the relevance of pronunciation for oral performance. The second part, provides an overview of the use of technology for foreign language teaching. And, the last part, discusses the competences that are required to accomplish the learning goals.