Chapter 14

La enseñanza de la pronunciación a estudiantes de español como lengua adicional con Trastornos de los Sonidos del Habla

La existencia de dificultades en la producción articulatoria o el uso funcional de sonidos/fonemas, con consecuencias variables en la inteligibilidad comunicativa, genera obstáculos en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje para los estudiantes de español como lengua adicional (ELE) que presentan Trastornos de los Sonidos del Habla (TSH). Esta situación puede influir de manera diversa en la comprensión y expresión lingüística, agregando una capa de complejidad al ámbito educativo. Por ello, este capítulo tiene como objetivos: (1) ayudar a comprender la sintomatología de los TSH mediante la descripción de sus diferentes alteraciones y manifestaciones; (2) describir cómo es el aprendizaje de la pronunciación del alumnado de ELE con TSH; y, por último, (3) ofrecer al profesorado pautas y modelos didácticos de cara a diseñar programas educativos adecuados y progresivos que se adapten a las necesidades de este alumnado.

Teaching pronunciation continues to be a field of significant difficulty for teachers in the classroom of Spanish as an additional language (ELE). Without any doubts, its role is becoming increasingly important in language teaching (Navarro, 2022). Therefore, the objectives of this chapter are to help understanding the symptomatology of Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) through the description of their different alterations and manifestations; to describe how ELE students approach the learning of Spanish pronunciation by identifying their most frequent errors; and finally, to provide teachers with guidelines and strategies for designing educational programs adapted to the changing needs of these students.

Traditional approaches, which perceive the teaching and learning of pronunciation as challenging or conduct phonetic correction in isolation, are being surpassed. Consequently, it is unsurprising that, in the quest for solutions, training, and resources, teaching Spanish pronunciation is of emerging interest for research (Demir & Kartal, 2022). However, despite the remarkable growth and development of pronunciation, there are still areas, such as the case of students with speech sound disorders, the treatment of which is still under opacity in terms of training, resources, strategies, or teaching methodologies. Hence, the reality experienced by this target group in the classroom is very different from those who present typical development (Rojas & Susanibar, 2019).

Therefore, given the existence of alterations which entail obstacles in the articulatory production and/or in the functional use of sounds/phonemes and which affect communicative intelligibility to different degrees, there is a need for pedagogical tools and quality interventions. These tools must move away on the one hand, from the focus on writing and, with this, from the partial or total dissociation from oral language, and, on the other hand, from the unique application of the communicative approach. This approach has not yet succeeded in solving the role and place that the teaching of pronunciation should play in the ELE classroom with students with disorders in phonetic-phonological acquisition and development.

Most of the scarce existing research carried out in this area (Csizér & Kontra, 2020), focuses on students with hearing or intellectual disabilities. It has been shown that the common pronunciation errors of learners with disorders in phonetic-phonological acquisition not only limit the production of individual phonemes, but also arise due to the phonetic context in which the sounds are found. Therefore, there is a major obstacle in learning and a wide amalgam of interferences whose intervention is becoming increasingly difficult.

In short, in the case of students with speech sound disorders, we must consider two aspects: fist, the fact that the greatest negative effects of learning a foreign language are clearly manifested in the field of language development and correct pronunciation (Soares et al., 2019), and second, that the needs must be assessed and considered at the different curricular levels.