Pronunciation-Learning Strategies and the Communicative Competence

Abstract

The English language has four skills which are Listening, Speaking, Writing and Reading, but this research focuses only on one of them which is the speaking skill. For the learning of this skill as well as the other three, it is necessary to use certain strategies. In this case, the research will focus on pronunciation strategies. This research aims to analyze the Pronunciation-Learning Strategies and their relationship with the communicative competence in students of the ninth semester of Idiomas major at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. The methodology was qualitative and quantitative approached. First, the question two of speaking part from CAE exam was applied to determine the communicative competence of students. A rubric was used to grade the student’s participation in the CAE exam. Then, to determine the study groups, the students’ speaking academic performance was used. As Szyszka (2015) did on her research titled “Good English pronunciation users and their pronunciation learning strategies”. The class was divided into Good Pronunciation Users (GPU) and Average Pronunciation Learners (APL). Once the students were classified in the study groups, an observation sheet was applied during several classes. Then, the information obtained from the observation sheets was analyzed. It was possible to determine that the most PLS used by GPU are the cognition (direct strategies) and metacognitive and affective (indirect strategies). It is reflected in their communicative competence scores so that it is concluded that there is an influence of the PLS in the Communicative Competence