CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION: ACCENT RECOGNITION AND DRILLING

Abstract

The article explores how cultural and historical background information can be integrated into the teaching of modern English pronunciation and used as a facilitator for accent recognition and drilling. In the problem statement, we argue that philology students today are expected to recognise and approximate several major varieties of English (mainly British and American), yet often experience accents as long lists of technical rules and struggle to construct a coherent “accent map”. In the review of research, we draw on sociolinguistic and sociophonetic studies by Wells, Labov, Trudgill, Kerswill and others, which show that the distribution of English accents is closely linked to historical migration, urbanisation, dialect contact and social stratification. We also refer to pronunciation teaching frameworks by Celce-Murcia, Jenkins and Cauldwell, which emphasise intelligibility, multiple accents and authentic speech. The aim of the article is to describe and test a set of teaching sequences in which brief cultural and historical “accent profiles” and simple scenarios are used to support learners’ accent recognition and to make pronunciation practice more meaningful. The methodology combines literature analysis with classroom-based action research in our Modern English Pronunciation course for upper-intermediate and advanced philology students. The materials include authentic recordings from the International Dialects of English Archive and the Speech Accent Archive, BBC Learning English videos, as well as teacher-written texts and role-play scripts. Accent-focused tasks are accompanied by student questionnaires and short pre- and post-tests on accent identification and self-reported motivation. The results suggest that students remember differences between accents better when they can link them to regions, historical developments and social groups rather than to abstract phonetic charts. Short accent profiles and guided listening with maps help learners build a clearer internal “accent map” and notice a limited set of key features (for example, rhotic vs non-rhotic /r/, the TRAP–BATH split, flapping in General American). Role-plays based on cultural and historical scenarios (a mid-20th-century BBC newsreader, a contemporary London professional, an American campus conversation) lead to more focused and motivated drilling. In the conclusion, we argue that integrating cultural and historical background into accent work is a practical way to connect phonetic accuracy with sociolinguistic awareness and that the proposed teaching sequences can be adapted to other institutional contexts and learner groups.