Chapter 12

Hacia una evaluación comunicativa y eficaz de la pronunciación del español

El presente trabajo analiza cuestiones fundamentales relacionadas con la evaluación de la pronunciación de una lengua adicional (L2) en los contextos de enseñanza. Con este fin, en la primera parte el capítulo introduce un análisis sobre las principales perspectivas (inteligibilidad, comprensibilidad y acento extranjero) desde las que se puede abordar la evaluación de la pronunciación, revisa algunos factores no lingüísticos que pueden afectar las evaluaciones de estas dimensiones y trata las implicaciones que los resultados de las investigaciones tienen para el aula. En la segunda parte, se ofrece una guía de actuación con recursos prácticos y recomendaciones para que el profesorado de español pueda realizar una evaluación eficaz de la pronunciación. Finalmente, el capítulo concluye con una reflexión sobre futuras líneas de investigación.

Since the mid-1990s, the field of L2 pronunciation research has experienced a remarkable growth that has transformed the way pronunciation was traditionally taught and assessed. Part of this expansion can be attributed to a shift in focus from attaining a native-like pronunciation (also known as the nativeness principle) to being intelligible and easily understood by one’s interlocutor (intelligibility principle). Although pronunciation research and pedagogical practice today continue to struggle between these two opposing principles, the turning point was the publication, in 1995, of a landmark paper by Munro and Derwing that disentangled three related but partially independent constructs of pronunciation assessment: intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness.

This chapter explains how these constructs were defined and operationalized by Munro and Derwing (1995) and how they have had an immense impact on the field, leading other researchers to endorse intelligibility and comprehensibility as the appropriate assessment criteria for measuring L2 pronunciation performance (Spanish in our case). As we will see, the growing consensus among researchers is that, when it comes to successful oral communication, the most important requirement is that listeners can understand the speaker’s intended message (intelligibility) without much effort (comprehensibility). A foreign accent, per se, does not necessarily prevent effective communication, is a natural consequence of second language learning, is extremely difficult to eliminate, and is so closely linked to identity that some speakers wish to retain it.

Given that attaining a native-like pronunciation is neither necessary nor achievable, this chapter explains the need to set feasible assessment goals based on intelligibility and comprehensibility, and to prioritize segmental and prosodic components that are detrimental to these dimensions. In addition, the chapter discusses how researchers have examined psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and extra-linguistic variables that have the potential to influence L2 pronunciation ratings, threatening both reliability and validity.

In view of these theoretical and methodological concerns, it is therefore very important that Spanish language teachers understand how to approach pronunciation assessment and what the most relevant aspects are. As this chapter discusses, in the Spanish L2 classroom, the dimension of pronunciation to be assessed is usually not defined, there is no differentiation between types of pronunciation errors, the rubrics used are too vague, the sources of variance that may influence the scores are not considered, and there is no reflection on why and for what purpose the assessment is done (i.e. whether it is done to diagnose and know the learner’s needs, for follow-up, to place the student at a certain level, for self-assessment, or to check the performance achieved). This chapter addresses, precisely, the application of findings from empirical research that Spanish L2 teachers need to know and bring to the classroom when assessing pronunciation.

In summary, we begin with a brief overview of the situation of Spanish L2 pronunciation assessment in classroom contexts. Then we present an exploratory approach to the three dimensions of pronunciation, review the linguistic and main non-linguistic factors that influence listeners’ ratings, and proceed to an analysis of the implications that research has for classroom-based pronunciation assessment within a communicative approach. Next, the chapter offers some practical resources and recommendations for assessing pronunciation effectively and provides guidance for classroom implementation. Finally, the chapter concludes with a reflection on future directions for research.