Learning to Teach Intelligible Pronunciation for ASEAN English as a Lingua Franca: A Sociocultural Investigation of Cambodian Pre-service Teacher Cognition and Practice

Abstract

English has been referred to as a lingua franca for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As the region moves towards establishing the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the diversity of pronunciation of the ASEAN member states is seen as a forefront issue for English language teaching (ELT). From a sociocultural perspective, this study explored teachers’ cognitions about pronunciation instruction and their classroom practice. The findings were based on qualitative data collected from three pre-service non-native English teachers. All the findings were based on these multicultural and multilingual context. Data were obtained from interviews and practicum-teaching observations and were coded and analysed thematically to understand the teachers’ emic perspectives of pronunciation instruction. Four themes emerged from the data and were discussed in relation to the 2015 AEC, based on which I challenge the current status of English as a foreign language in the Cambodian ELT mindset. Briefly, these themes include the teachers’ self-acknowledgement of their own pronunciation, the perceived goal of pronunciation instruction, their approaches to teaching pronunciation and their attitudes towards ASEAN English as a lingua franca (ELF). The article concludes with implications for English language teacher education in Cambodia and beyond and calls for more research to expand the ASEAN ELF literature.

Keywords

Pronunciation instruction intelligibility teacher cognition English as a Lingua Franca ASEAN

Introduction

A widely-known conceptual framework for English varieties studies is associated with Kachru’s (1992a) ‘World Englishes’ (WE). By his classification, WE includes three country groups: the Inner Circle (e.g. Australia, UK and USA), the Outer Circle (e.g. India, Nigeria, Philippines and Singapore) and the Expanding Circle (e.g. Cambodia, Korea and Indonesia). In Asian contexts, such studies have, for example, been conducted by Bolton (2012), Deterding and Kirkpatrick (2006), Kachru and Nelson (2006) and Murata and Jenkins (2009). As multicultural communication abounds across these circles, English has been branded a global language (Crystal, 2003), an international language (Sharifian, 2009), and/or a lingua franca (Kirkpatrick, 2010). These generic labels arguably are taking over the traditional statuses of English, such as English as a native language (ENL), English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL). According to Kachru (1992b), this latter triad has been criticized for its semantic ambiguity.

One of the main foci of English varieties studies concerns the diversity of English pronunciation of users of the Outer and Expanding Circles and the implications it has on English language education. Two contemporary labels generally linked to this investigation are English as an international language (EIL) and English as a lingua franca (ELF). ¹ The latter is relevant to the present study investigating the role of pronunciation in Cambodian English language teaching (ELT) within the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In light of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC),² one can expect an increase in international and intercultural communicative exchanges amongst the ASEAN member states, and the role of ELT is seen as an important indicator of promoting effective and successful communication in this context (Stroupe and Kimura, 2015).

This study examines the role of pronunciation instruction from the emic perspectives and practices of Cambodian pre-service teachers of English at a higher educational institution. It seeks to understand how teacher trainees conceptualize this role and how their conceptualizations are related to the sociocultural situations in which they work and live. The study is motivated, on the one hand, by the fact that despite its apparent importance in intercultural communication, pronunciation appears to be the least focused activity in the ELT curriculum, and on the other hand by the apparent incompatibility between ELF for ASEAN (Kirkpatrick, 2010) and EFL for Cambodia. For this latter reason, it is observed that the EFL status in the Expanding Circle countries is driven by the native English speaker (NES) norm hegemony (Jenkins, 2006; Jenkins, 2009). This ideology has been found to prevail amongst not only Cambodian teachers of English (Boun, 2014) but also ELT administrators. For the latter, for instance, in a November 2015 article Holman (2015) quoted the Head of the English Department at a prominent university in Phnom Penh as follows:

People all around the world want to learn English, but especially since it is the lingua franca of ASEAN, it is normal that Cambodians are prioritising learning English [sic] over languages like Chinese or French […] Learners in Phnom Penh are relatively lucky, as they have great opportunities to interact with native speakers from a range of backgrounds, which is not the case in the provinces.

Although the Head of the English Department recognized that English is the lingua franca for ASEAN, he clearly suggested that the NES was the preferred model for instruction. This NES hegemony or ideology, as I argue below, needs challenging given the emerging ELF status in Cambodia (see also, Seidlhofer and Widdowson 2009). Although ELF might not be realized in the near future, the present study is premised on this phenomenon becoming some sort of reality within ASEAN.

In Cambodia, English has generally been received as a foreign language (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, 2004) especially since the language was introduced as the language of Aids and Assistance agencies in the country (Clayton, 2006). English is presently taught from Grades 7 to 12 and in the near future from Grade 4 onwards (Tweed and Som, 2015). This received EFL situation entails communication between non-native English speakers (NNESs) and NESs (Jenkins, 1998). (In this article, I refer to this communication as the EFL context or communication.) In contrast, in the light of the AEC, the status of English in this region has been referred to as ELF (Kirkpatrick, 2010) entailing more communication between and amongst NNESs themselves than that found in an EFL context. (I refer to this situation as the ELF context or communication.) This new, emerging regional ideology³ has direct implications for pronunciation pedagogy in this local context, as well as in other countries with similar situations. In either EFL or ELF context where multicultural interactions occur, intelligibility assumes a central locus for pronunciation research, but how intelligibility is determined is yet subject to another conceptual discussion. Although I am more interested in how the term itself was perceived by the teachers, I view the term as comprised of three sub-constructs: intelligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability – comprehensively explicated in Smith and Nelson (2006).

An important discussion of intelligibility as a construct is its point of reference, and this relates directly to the contexts of communication I pointed out earlier: the EFL-vs-ELF contexts. In other words, the criteria that warrant intelligibility in the EFL context do not necessarily apply to those in the ELF context. According to Jenkins (1998), in EFL communication, intelligibility is studied from the perspectives of the NES (as the hearer) who interprets the NNES’s intelligible speech via suprasegmental features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation.⁴ In ELF communication, on the other hand, these suprasegmental features might not be as relevant (see for e.g. Deterding, 2013). This leads to my next point.

Intelligibility as the Goal of Pronunciation Instruction

Intelligibility has been targeted as the goal in communication instruction (see for e.g. Derwing and Munro, 2005) but what model or norm should it be based on? Since Smith and Rafiqzad’s (1979) study, researchers have been sceptical about whether the NES model matters much in international communication. Smith and Rafiqzad (1979: 375), who conducted a large-scale investigation on intelligibility in English cross-cultural communication, found that the NES Americans were amongst ‘the least intelligible speakers’, a finding that led them to suggest the NES norm should not be the target of pronunciation instruction. This suggestion has been lauded especially for ELF contexts such as ASEAN (e.g. Deterding, 2013).

Within the ELF framework, Jenkins (2000: 95) proposes a standard – ‘some sort of international core for phonological intelligibility: a set of unifying features which, at the very least, has the potential to guarantee that pronunciation will not impede successful communication in EIL settings’. This set of features is called the Lingua Franca Core (LFC), a point of reference for teachers to teach intelligible ELF pronunciation. The LFC proposal deals with three phonological areas: segmentals, suprasegmentals and articulatory settings, grouped into two categories: the core and non-core features. While the former are found to impede mutual international intelligibility, thus requiring focused instruction, the latter are found to be intelligibility-tolerant and can be set aside from explicit teaching and learning. Deterding (2013) summarizes the core and non-core features of the LFC reported in Table 1.

Table 1.

A Summary of LFC Core and Non-core Features from Deterding (2013: 7).

Core Features	Non-core Features
all the consonants of native-speaker English except [θ] and [ð] aspiration on initial voiceless plosives initial and medial consonant clusters vowel length distinctions the quality of the NURSE vowel the placement of the intonational nucleus	the TH sounds final constant clusters dark-L vowel quality (except for the NURSE vowel) vowel reduction (especially in the weak forms of function words) rhythm word stress the shape of the intonational contour (rising, falling, etc.)

The LFC has been viewed as a practical model in pronunciation instruction because it promotes ELF intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation. On this basis, Jenkins (2000) calls for an overhaul in English language teacher education, especially in the phonology domain, if English teachers are to be trained to teach for the ELF context.

In the context of ASEAN ELT, Kirkpatrick (2013) argues that English is learned as an additional language with its primary role being a lingua franca; therefore, in terms of pronunciation, ELF users just need to be ‘internationally intelligible’ – which does not have to be native-like pronunciation. He argues that ‘[i]n the context of Cambodia, therefore, it would make sense to derive linguistic benchmarks for Khmer speaking children from Khmer speakers who operate successfully in English on the regional and international stage’ (Kirkpatrick, 2013: 19). For ASEAN that includes countries of both the Outer and Expanding Circles, Kirkpatrick (2013) proposes that a multilingual speaker model to ELT be adopted (see also Kirkpatrick, 2010).

Pronunciation Instruction and Teacher Cognition

In the literature of pronunciation instruction, researchers also attend to the cognitive aspects of the teachers – a domain that, however, seems to receive little attention (Baker and Murphy, 2011). The importance of this research strand is the emphasis placed on the teachers described as the ‘executive decision makers of the curriculum’ (Barnard and Burns, 2012: 2) because they make instructional decisions before teaching, while teaching (known as interactive decisions [Tsang, 2004]) and after teaching (Richards and Lockhart, 1996). Therefore, understanding the teachers’ conceptions, attitudes, beliefs, thinking and knowledge (collectively referred to as teacher cognition) about pronunciation instruction and how such cognition is realized in the classroom allows us to capture the complexity of the learning and teaching processes. Findings from such research in turn reflect how teachers learn to teach in their contexts, especially when approached from a sociocultural perspective (discussed in the Research Methodology section).

However, this strand of research in the ASEAN ELF context is to date under represented and in the present context, Cambodia, it is virtually non-existent. Therefore, to contribute to the literature of ASEAN ELF, I explored pre-service teachers’ cognitions about pronunciation instruction and how their cognitions were related to their classroom practices. I examined (1) how teacher trainees conceptualized teaching pronunciation in relation to two apparently incompatible macro contexts, the received EFL and the emerging ELF, and (2) how their conceptions were realized in their classroom practices during their practicum teaching. Elaborated shortly later, the study adopted the Vygotskian sociocultural theoretical framework in order to map how these sociocultural situations shaped the teachers’ ways of learning how to teach pronunciation.

Research Methodology

Context, Participants and Data Collection

The pre-service teachers (PT) comprising one male (PT01) and two female (PT02 and PT03) teachers were in their early twenties.⁵ At the time of the study, they were in their final stage of a four-year Bachelor’s degree programme majoring in teaching English as a foreign language (BEd in TEFL) at a university in Cambodia. During this stage, the teachers took three major courses: Applied Linguistics, Foundations of Education and Teaching Methodology – none of which covered pronunciation instruction or the role of pronunciation in ASEAN communication – and conducted a six-week teaching practicum. The practicum students were a group of university, non-English major students whose English levels ranged from elementary to intermediate.

Data were collected over a period of six months through interviews, teaching observations and documentation. Between their first language and English, the teachers chose English as the language of their interviews and used it as the medium of their instruction. English was also the language of all the documents collected (including lesson plans, handouts and textbooks).

I interviewed each teacher twice, each interview lasted for approximately 75 minutes. For this I used semi-structured interview protocols. The first interviews, conducted before the practicum, elicited the teachers’ cognitions about pronunciation instruction based on their learning and professional training experiences. The second interviews, conducted after, were both to follow up what was asked in the first interviews and to ask the teachers to reflect on their practicum experiences. I was able to observe PT01 four times and PT02 and PT03, twice each. Each practicum teacher had between four and six teaching sessions; therefore, at least 50% of the practicum lessons were observed. Each observation was followed by a 15-20 minute recall interview that shed light on the teachers’ rationale of certain pronunciation instructional activities identified during the observation.

This study adopted a qualitative case study approach focusing on the particularity of a phenomenon rather than the generalizability of its findings, hence the limited number of its participants. Nonetheless, its findings could be relevant to other similar contexts.

Approaches to Data Collection and Analysis

I adopted the Vygotskian sociocultural⁶ theoretical perspective that views (human) learning as originating from social activities in which the individual participates (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1985). One of the main claims of this perspective is that the thinking processes are dialectically related to the sociocultural environments. It is these relationships that shape or mediate the ways an individual learns and develops (Wertsch, 1991). In this regard, as the teachers oriented their thoughts towards the context of ASEAN and the received EFL mindset in Cambodia, their cognitions about pronunciation instruction were shaped accordingly. Within this framework, cognitions are referred to as psychological tools.

The analysis of the data was qualitative, grounded in the teachers’ own verbal reports, activities and written documents, aiming to gain an emic view of the phenomenon and to interpret it accordingly (Borg, 1998; Duff, 2008); therefore, the interviews played a pivotal role in creating a platform for the teachers to talk about themselves and about what they thought, believed and knew about pronunciation instruction. The smallest unit of analysis ranged from a group of words or phrases to sentences or paragraphs that reflected the teachers’ mentation about pronunciation and pronunciation instruction. As these meaningful units were coded from segmented data, they were compared within and across the data sets, repeated until saturation was reached at thematic levels (Saldaña, 2009; Hancock and Algozzine, 2006). Critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) was also employed to frame the analysis of the teachers’ choices of words and the language used in the teaching documents that reflected certain ideologies of pronunciation instruction. Focusing on the relationships between language and ideologies, this approach claims ‘ideologies reside in texts’ (Fairclough, 1995: 71). Within the Vygotskian sociocultural theory, language is treated as a semiotic mediating psychological tool. The written documents are referred to as culturally and historically developed physical tools. Both physical and psychological tools are concepts used in the Vygotskian sociocultural framework to explain how, by employing such tools, the teachers appropriate and internalize socially oriented conceptions and eventually make them their own (see for e.g. Golombek and Johnson, 2004).

Four interrelated themes were arrived at from these analyses: (a) the teachers’ self-acknowledgement of their own pronunciation as not native-like (b) intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation instruction (c) the teachers’ approaches to teaching pronunciation and (d) the teachers’ attitudes towards ASEAN ELF in the classroom. These themes are presented and discussed below.

Findings and Discussion

Self-acknowledgement: Self-empowerment

One of the major themes emerging from the data was the teachers’ self-perception of their own pronunciation and their identity as NNES teachers. The teachers acknowledged that their English pronunciation was not native-like, but they embraced it favourably. In fact, they seemed to be proud of their pronunciation and believed that, with adequate preparation, they could teach English pronunciation as effectively as a qualified NES teacher could. The following excerpts (reproduced here verbatim) illustrate how these teachers viewed their own pronunciation:

My pronunciation, I think, may not be close to the native speaker. But if we view it from the perspective of English as a lingua franca, I think it’s intelligible… Personally I accept any variety as long as we can understand… Although I don’t adopt the British accent or […] the American accent, it doesn’t matter. It’s my own style (PT01-Interview 01).

[It’s] not native-like accent… but it’s understandable… though with mistakes my speech is still comprehensible (PT02-Interview 01).

The native speakers, they are accurate, they are fluent in English. But we as non-native speakers don’t have that fluent, that perfect English… [but] is clear and understandable (PT03-Interview 02).

This finding relates to teacher identity. Research on NNES-vs-NES teachers is well-documented showing that the former group generally feel inferior to the latter (e.g. Reves and Medgyes, 1994). This sense of inferiority has also been reinforced by the NNES teachers’ low success rate in securing certain jobs in the ELT industry (Lippi-Green, 2012). Research also shows that most NNES teachers identify (or would want to identify) themselves as having NES accents (Jenkins, 2005; Sifakis and Sougari, 2005), a means by which they hope to legitimize themselves as qualified English teachers (Golombek and Jordan, 2005). The teachers in this study, however, seemed to comfortably accept their own pronunciation and accents although they acknowledged that they had to improve themselves in order to teach even better. This acceptance seemed to empower and allow them to construct their identities as NNES teachers.

Self-acknowledgement of one’s own limitations is crucial because it reflects one’s self-esteem and self-efficacy beliefs, important variables that explain not only the teachers’ teaching behaviours but also their long-term commitment to the profession (Chacón, 2005). Self-efficacy has long been proven as an important attribute of human agency, an attribute that explains and predicts human motivations and achievements (Bandura, 1986; Betz and Hackett, 1986).⁷ The novice teachers in this study appeared to have strong self-esteem and self-efficacy beliefs about their own pronunciation, a quality that would likely empower them as NNES teachers in the ELT profession.⁸

Intelligibility as the Goal of Pronunciation Instruction

In line with the literature reviewed earlier, the teachers characterized intelligible pronunciation as their teaching goal. They believed that the goal of pronunciation instruction was for their students to be able to communicate effectively, which did not have to be native-like.

I like the concept of intelligibility so I think what [the students] need to do is as long as they can understand the others saying and as long as they make other people understand, that should be ok. But it’s good to maintain what we call the standard pronunciation. It may not be British or it may not be American but it may be a clear way of pronouncing the words so that they make themselves understood (PT01-Interview 01).

[…] So intelligibility here refers to how much we are understood by the others. So if we focus on this it seems that anything that my students use, as long as I can understand them, it is considered as acceptable. It’s not, back in the old day, that we had to be accurate, we had to follow the standard (PT01-Interview 02).

The goal in speaking English is not to have perfect English [but] to help the students communicate, and as long as they can understand each other or they can understand other people talking, I think that the goal of learning English [pronunciation] is achieved (PT02-Interview 02).

I think as long as I can understand them [the students] and I don’t misinterpret their meaning, I think that’s fine… English no longer belongs to only the Americans or the Britons. It’s like the world language (PT03-Interview 02).

These teachers conceptualized intelligibility as comprehensible, understandable, interpretable or acceptable speech that did not have to be native-like. Nevertheless, especially for PT02 and PT03, there seemed to be ambivalence in their conceptualization about the point of reference for such intelligible speech. For instance, PT02 frequently referred to ‘correct pronunciation’ that conformed to ‘American’ English. She said ‘before I […] teach that certain word I have to be able to pronounce it correctly so that I will teach my students correct pronunciation and I will not risk humiliating myself in front of the students’ (PT02-Interview 01). She explained what she meant by that before she meticulously stated that ‘I trust American English’.

It’s a pronunciation that the native speakers==you know==it’s like the pronunciation that==um it’s correct. It’s aligned with the phonetic symbol in the dictionary, the one that um everybody can understand (PT02-Interview 02).

Her reference to the phonetic symbols in the dictionary confirmed further that, to her, pronunciation had to conform to the NES norm. Similarly, PT03 made reference to ‘correct pronunciation’ when she weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of being a NNES teacher: ‘The disadvantage is that many of us are not fluent in English, you know, don’t accurately use correct grammar or correct pronunciation’ (PT03-Interview 01). As a result, although these teachers (except PT01) seemed to agree in principle that the goal of pronunciation instruction is intelligible speech, the NES norm was still the preferred point of reference.

While it is not wrong for them to reference the NES norm in teaching internationally intelligible pronunciation (and it would be prescriptive to say otherwise), the insistence on relying only on such a norm is impractical, specially given the emerging status of ELF in their context. In discussing teaching intelligibility, Nelson (2011: 87) begins as follows:

In teaching/assessing pronunciation of “English,” however that language-designator may be construed, we can focus on a necessary sound inventory – some number and distribution of vowels and consonants, each one and each set (as, stops, round vowels, and so on) described in terms appropriate to the context in which the teaching/learning is going on [emphasis added].

Such a necessary sound inventory has in fact been created (e.g. the LFC) and can be appropriate to the present ELF context of teaching and learning. I further this discussion in a subsequent section that presents the teachers’ attitudes towards ASEAN ELF.

Approaches to Pronunciation Instruction

There were a few pronunciation instructional activities during the observed lessons (embedded in the main focuses of teaching writing and reading). Pronunciation issues were spontaneously dealt with as they arose on the spot – thus supporting Tsang’s (2004) findings on interactive decisions – and selectively. For the reason of space, only one teaching extract from PT01’s lessons where pronunciation was focused on is presented here; however, there were similar instances found not only in PT01’s other lessons but also in PT02’s and PT03’s lessons. The illustrative example showcases how the teachers intervened with particular student pronunciation and modelled their pronunciation through recast.

As Table 2 shows, different students had trouble pronouncing particular words as they read sentences out loud, but PT01 only chose to intervene with S1’s pronunciation of the past tense verb lied, which was pronounced [lid] by S1. Teachers’ selective intervention in student pronunciation was evident in most of the lessons, and when asked why he did it selectively, PT01 referred to intelligibility concerns.

I think pronunciation is important when it concerns with intelligibility […] Sometimes we [don’t have to] pronounce the word accurately. If the other people can understand, then pronunciation should be ok. But the confusion between [lʌɪd] and [lɪd]==[they’re] very far different. So I decided to correct that (PT01-Recall-Interview).

Table 2.

An Illustrative Example of Teachers’ Intervention in Student Pronunciation and Their Mode of Correction.

Mode of Correction	Separated Instances
● Recast	S1: I [lid] to my mum
	PT01: I [lʌɪd] to my mum
	S1: I [lʌɪd] to my mum
	S2: I got a bad [grɛd] grade
	PT01: (no immediate intervention)
	S3: I [it] ate an apple
	PT01: (no immediate intervention)

From his viewpoint, the two pronunciations – [lʌɪd] and [lɪd] – were significantly distinctive and could potentially threaten intelligible speech. Although he did not elaborate on the other two cases (i.e. ate and grade respectively pronounced [it] and [grɛd]), it could be inferred that he anticipated they would not cause intelligibility problems. In common with PT01, PT02 explained that:

I just want to make sure that they can use, they can understand the meaning of the word, but at the same time they can pronounce it correctly so that when they communicate, everyone else can understand them easily. And wrong pronunciation can lead to different words. For example, the word theme some of them might pronounce it as [ti:m]. Team and theme are different (PT02-Recall-Inteview).

While PT01 was concerned about his students’ enunciation of vowel sounds, PT02 was concerned about consonant sounds. However, recall that [θ] is exempted from the LFC core features (see Table 1); therefore, PT02’s concern with its negative effect on intelligible speech might not be warranted, which reflected her lack of awareness of the ELF framework.

The analysis of the syllabuses in which these practicum teachers were engaged showed pronunciation instruction was largely determined by the contents of the textbooks being used. Since the lessons these teachers taught were not devoted to pronunciation instruction, pronunciation was incidentally dealt with when the teachers deemed appropriate.

Teachers’ Attitudes towards ASEAN English Varieties in the Classroom

The teachers exhibited positive attitudes towards the ASEAN English varieties and felt it was important to introduce such varieties into their classrooms. (The term ELF was used in PT01’s accounts). They believed that the AEC would bring about opportunities as well as challenges for intercultural communications amongst the ASEAN peoples. For PT01, for instance, the AEC would present the students with a ‘real’ communication opportunity and as a result he believed his ways of teaching English would need fine-tuning.

I think [AEC] can influence us because we need to interact with a group of peoples now […] Nowadays, even though we focus on communication [i.e. communicative language instruction] it may not be practical. We may ask the students to talk but they may not have to interact with other peoples [outside the classroom]. But for ASEAN integration they may have to interact with people from ASEAN countries. […] English is the only language they can use. So I think it influences our teaching. We need to make sure, I think, in the future we will focus less on grammar. We will focus on just how to make ourselves intelligible in the global context. So that’s why […] my concern is about pronunciation. People seem to focus less on pronunciation […] Now from the perspective of English as a lingua franca it seems that English has no standard anymore. The standards are used only in the proficiency tests but in real communication it seems that we can use it in any way we want as long as we are intelligible (PT01-Interview 02).

For PT02, communication amongst the ASEAN peoples could be challenging stemming particularly from pronunciation issues because the peoples were accustomed to their own linguistic experiences. She commented that:

pronunciation […] can be an issue because [of] the way that [different ASEAN peoples] pronounce. For example, Singaporeans, they have their Singlish and the intonation somehow is influenced by the Chinese language. And they might be used to that, that kind of pronunciation. When it comes to Cambodia, our pronunciation is different from [theirs]. Yeah there might be some misunderstanding or some problems due to the pronunciation (PT02-Interview 02).

She believed extensive exposure to the English varieties was the key to minimizing communication problems stemming from pronunciation issues. Therefore, as far as pronunciation instruction is concerned, she considered exposing her students to ASEAN English varieties.

Let them get exposed to non-native language as much as possible [through] listening activities which are included in the book or probably movie sessions. We might get them exposed to those other standards as well such as the English used in Malaysia and Singapore and English of the Vietnamese, of the Thai (PT02-Interview 02).

Likewise, PT03 recognized the vital role English would play in the region. She observed that her students had limited vocabulary knowledge to express English effectively and would also ‘encounter problems understanding’ Englishes as used by other ASEAN peoples.

It’s like word difficulty. It’s not the matter of pronunciation because when it comes to pronunciation I think Cambodians speak really clearly and accurately [which] can be understood by other ASEAN members. […] For my students I think they will find it difficult [to understand other ASEAN peoples’ English] because I think from the ten ASEAN countries they have different accents. They have different pronunciation and for some countries I have to admit it’s really hard to understand what they are saying, especially when we don’t have much time to get exposed to their language, English language (PT03-Interview 02).

In this regard, she pondered she could help her students by providing auditory input during class time. She said:

I think listening is one of the core skills that you should teach. Instead of bringing the native speakers’ transcripts [to the classroom], why not bring those, you know, Singaporean variety of English, or Thai English, or some other speakers’ English from ASEAN countries and play the tape for them to listen so that they can get exposed to it (PT03-Interview 02).

Despite their positive attitudes towards ASEAN English varieties, the teachers believed that they would not be very welcome by the students. This is understood as a root cause of the teachers’ ambivalent cognitions and tensions. It is this sub-theme to which I now turn.

The Teachers’ Ambivalent Cognitions and Tensions

Tensions are reflected through ambivalence. Two sources of the teachers’ ambivalent cognitions about pronunciation instruction were identified: the students’ learning expectations (micro factors) and the contradicting sociocultural environments (macro factors).

Despite their positive attitudes, the teachers were reluctant to introduce the ASEAN English varieties into their classrooms, citing concerns about their students’ perceived reactions to the varieties and about them being judged negatively by their students if they introduced to the class English that was not ‘native’. PT01 commented that ‘the students always value native speakers. We have a key term native speakerism the idea that we are so obsessed with what the native speakers do’ (PT01-Interview 02). PT03 believed that the ASEAN English varieties ‘will be shocking [to the students] at first’ (PT03-Interview 02), while PT02 predicted that her students ‘would think that their teacher is crazy because normally when students come to the class they expect to hear the language of the native speaker, the US or the British English. Why would my teacher want me to listen to those varieties of English instead?’ (PT02-Interview 02).

It is generally understood that students, as well as teachers, look up to the NES norm, but that is because of the prevalent NES hegemony in that context, e.g. through the use of NES norm-bound textbooks, parental expectations, the perceived high status of NES, inter alia. For example, PT03 commented that she would introduce ‘non-standard’ English varieties to her students only when such varieties were pre-determined in the textbook she used – a type of physical tool embedded with the NES values and norms (Shin et al., 2011). PT03 further explained that, ‘if the lesson is something about that variety of English [for instance] about how the Philippines use English, I might introduce them a bit about how those people use English’ (PT03-Interview 01). Instances such as this illustrated how these teacher trainees’ conceptions and approaches to pronunciation instruction were shaped by the culturally developed (physical and psychological) tools realized in their teaching. This constituted the micro level ambivalence.

At the macro level, on the other hand, the present teachers seemed to be caught up in between two incompatible ideologies. As mentioned, English has an established status as an EFL in Cambodian ELT (Thong, 1985; MOEYS, 2004), thus generating a received view amongst the practitioners. However, as indicated earlier ELF is the emerging status in this context (and its extending context – ASEAN). The ASEAN integration appears to have become the social buzzword in Cambodia, for its effects stretch well beyond the economic dimension. They directly affect the educational sphere, particularly the role of ELT (Stroupe and Kimura, 2015). This sociolinguistic reality can be said to have shaped how the teachers thought about teaching pronunciation, i.e. promoting intelligible pronunciation, but the established EFL mindset appeared to compete against this conception. It is these competing situations that to a large extent contributed to the teachers’ ambivalent cognitions and practices. It can be said, therefore, that these teachers were in the transitional phase of knowledge base transformation. In other words they came to realize, at least in themselves, that the practice of ELT in their own context, more specifically pronunciation instruction, needed to respond to its evolving macro context – the AEC.

Conclusions

From a sociocultural perspective, this study investigated pre-service teachers’ cognitions about pronunciation instruction and navigated how such cognitions were realized in actual teaching within the context of Cambodia and its schools. It showed that, first of all, the teachers accepted their identities as NNES teachers whose pronunciation was not native-like. Second, they set the goal of pronunciation instruction to be intelligible speech. The teachers’ corrections of their student pronunciation were linked to intelligibility. To that end, the teachers used recast and repetition drills to model their pronunciation – an approach supported by Kirkpatrick (2010). However, intelligibility as a construct for ELF was ambivalently conceived; its reference point was still bound to the NES norm. With this equivocation, the teachers showed signs of tensions. Despite their positive attitudes, they were found to be unwilling to introduce the NNES pronunciation multilingual model into their classroom, citing their students’ learning expectations and possible negative judgements. Raising awareness amongst the students themselves is thus seen as a necessary step in promoting ELF pronunciation.

The tensions the teachers experienced can also be accounted for by the sociocultural contexts in which these teachers live and work. The local EFL context and the regional ELF context were pulling in opposite directions. While the former apparently has gained the historical and cultural value, the latter could, however implicit and realistic, exert its socio-political influence onto the practice of ELT in that very same context. The recent edited publication by Stroupe and Kimura (2015) is a testament to how ELT professionals in the region react to their sociocultural context. As a solution, I argue that Cambodia, as well as the rest of ASEAN member states, officially adopt and proclaim the emerging ELF status at the very least to resolve the conflicting ideologies. The European Commission also recognizes the role of ELF in replacing EFL (Directorate-General for Translation, 2011).

To conclude, I allude to the following implications and recommendations. First, related to the finding on the teachers’ identity as a NNES teacher, the ramification of the conflicting ideologies can hinder that identity which otherwise is meant to empower the teachers in this ELF context. It follows that Cambodian teachers of English need to make explicit their NNES teacher identity by means of, for example, discussing the dichotomy of NES/NNES teachers. Research has shown that through such discussion teachers come to navigate and negotiate their identities, revealing teacher identity empowerment (Park, 2012). From the sociocultural perspective adopted in this study, this kind of discussion mediates the teacher’s thinking process, leading to learning and development.

As for teaching pronunciation for ELF communication, I propose that Cambodian teachers of English be made aware of ELF models. These models can either be the alternatives to the historically and culturally well-established NES model or the complements to it. An example of an ELF pronunciation model is Jenkins’ (2000) LFC. Other useful resources include the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (see, https://www.univie.ac.at/voice/) and the Asia Corpus of English (see, http://ec-concord.ied.edu.hk/ace/index.php?m=music&a=index). These are materials that can be incorporated into English language teacher preparation or development programmes.

If English is to be learnt efficiently and used effectively within the ASEAN context, the use of NES norms as a point of reference in pronunciation instruction may not be necessary and insistence on adopting it (solely) might be detrimental to both the teaching and learning outcomes or, according to Kirkpatrick (2010), a waste of time. In their analysis of English conversations performed by a group of ASEAN speakers, for example, Deterding and Kirkpatrick (2006) found that some phonological features considered as non-standard (compared to the NES norm) were in fact facilitating intelligibility amongst the ASEAN speakers. Finally, to tailor the ELT curriculums for the intercultural and multilingual communication within ASEAN, Cambodian ELT more than ever needs more research of this kind to inform this field and more broadly expand the ASEAN ELF literature.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Emily Edwards, Sovicheth Boun, and Chivoin Peou for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. I thank the reviewers for their insightful feedback. I also thank the editors of the journal and the publishing team for their assistance. All flaws remain mine, however.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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