Workshop, 18.11.23 Pronunciation

English as a Lingua Franca Pronunciation Features for Russian Learners of English

November 18, 2023:

with Tatiana Skopintseva

November 18, 2023
Time to be confirmed

Moscow
Avia Plaza, Aviamotornaya street, 10 b.2 (4th floor)
and Online

Guest Speaker:

Tatiana Skopintseva

(Chair of the Humanities and Languages Department at New
Economic School in Moscow, Moscow State Linguistic University graduate,
Ph.D. and an Assistant Professor (Department of English Phonetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Applied Sciences). At MSLU Tatiana taught English phonetics for TEFL undergraduates, graduates, students of other majors and led teacher-training seminars for Russian in-service teachers)

About the Speakers

Tatiana Skopintseva

Tatiana Skopintseva is Chair of the Humanities and Languages Department at New Economic School in Moscow. She graduated from Moscow State Linguistic University (former Maurice Thorez Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages), where she earned her Ph.D. (“kandidat nauk”) and an Assistant Professor (“docent”) degrees from the Department of English Phonetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Applied Sciences. At MSLU Tatiana taught English phonetics for TEFL undergraduates, graduates, students of other majors (economists, lawyers, political analysts), and led teacher-training seminars for Russian in- service teachers.

Since Tatiana joined New Economic School in 2008, she has taughta variety of ESP and EAP courses for upper-intermediate and advanced students, has designed a pronunciation courseWell Pronouncedfor NES M.A. students, and is currently supervising the Public Speaking component of the M.A. ELT curriculum.

Tatiana is an IREX scholar exchange program alumna, a frequent speaker at international conferences (IATEFL, ASIATEFL, HAAL), and an invited speaker and teacher-trainer for Russian Universities and ELT organizations (HSE, ITMO, MISiS, TPU, KELTA, FEFU).

Fields of professional interest and teaching specialization: phonetics and phonology, ELF, EMI; English accent and pronunciation, diction, fluency, public speaking.

About the Workshop

English as a Lingua Franca learning and teaching pedagogy emerged about two decades ago and has been challenging the traditional EFL/ESL approach ever since. The majority of classroom research data collected in multicultural academic settings testify that the pragmatic approach ELF entails is of undeniable importance for the real-world communication practices.

Back in 2000 Jennifer Jenkins, a strong proponent of ELF, published the results of her classroom research at an international university and put forward the so-called “ELF pronunciation core” for non-native learners of English claiming that pronunciation transfer from L1 to English may affect intelligibility and even cause complete breakdown in communication between speakers whose mother tongues are different.
In the first part of the seminar, I am going to answer the following questions:

What factors have caused the emergence of ELF pedagogy?
What are the benefits and hindrances of implementing ELF pedagogy in ELT?
Why and how does pronunciation impact intelligibility in ELF communication contexts?

In the second part of the seminar, I will share my classroom and research expertise of teaching English pronunciation to Russian learners and point out segmental and suprasegmental elements that are, from my point of view, crucial for Russian learners of English. The findings are based on extensive research at the Department of Phonetics at Moscow State Linguistic University and are viewed from ELF perspective.