English pronunciation teaching at Dutch secondary schools: Taught or caught.

This chapter investigates the lack of concrete targets for English pronunciation in Dutch secondary education and the concurrent lack of English pronunciation lessons. The chapter aims to answer two questions. Firstly, is mispronunciation really something of no concern? And secondly, how can the existing void best be filled? The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 reports on findings from previous research into the effects of inadequate pronunciation on the listener. In Section 2 we outline the criteria that the Dutch government has set for the English proficiency of secondary school pupils and in Section 3 the qualifications required of secondary school teachers of English. Section 4 presents the results
of an empirical study in which the first author surveyed the views of secondary school teachers of English regarding teaching pronunciation. Section 5 is the discussion in which we discuss the implications of the results and we make recommendations regarding teacher training and pronunciation lessons for secondary education in the Netherlands.