‘THE COURSE SHOULD BE OBLIGATORY!’: ATTITUDES OF POLISH FUTURE EFL TEACHERS TOWARDS A COURSE ON PRONUNCIATION TEACHING

To help EFL students reach a level of international comfortable intelligibility, we need teachers who know how to teach pronunciation during integrated-skills courses of English at all levels of education. Several observations, however, show that teachers do not feel confident and competent in this area. It seems that general courses of FL teaching are insufficient, and classes focusing exclusively on pronunciation teaching are necessary for teachers to gain adequate knowledge and skills to be able to teach pronunciation to their learners. Next to objective data verifying the effectiveness of such training, we should also examine future teachers’ perceptions of such courses, i.e. whether they consider them helpful and needed. As a response to this need, the paper presents results of a study exploring the opinions and attitudes of Polish teacher trainees towards an on-line course on pronunciation teaching they participated in. With the use of a draw-a-picture technique, questionnaires and interviews, qualitative and quantitative data were gathered among BA and MA students. They supported the fact that prior to the course, the participants' confidence and competence in pronunciation teaching was (very) low. Their knowledge related to and attitudes towards pronunciation teaching improved significantly after the classes. Many of the subjects claimed that such courses should be obligatory for all FL (future) teachers.