Relatore Chiar mo Prof. Graziano Serragiotto Correlatore

1.3. How good does the student
s’ pronunciation need to be? 
In recent discussions of English language teaching, 
“the unrealistic idea that learners should 
sound and speak like native speakers is fast disappearing
” (Burns, 2003: 5). In fact, Celce-Murcia et 
al. believe that 
“the goal of teaching pronunciation is not to make students sound like native speakers 
of English
” (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996: 8). They claim that, “with the exception of a few highly gifted 
and motivated individuals, such a goal is unrealistic. A more modest and realistic goal is to enable 
learners to surpass the threshold level so that their pronunciation will not detract from their ability to 
communicate” (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996: 8). Harmer agrees, as he states: “students should be able 
to use pronunciation which is good enough for them to be always understood
” in order to 
communicate effectively (Harmer, 2001: 184). Morley formulated four learner goals:
a)
“functional intelligibility”,
b)
“functional communicability”,
c)
“increased self-confidence”,
d)
“speech monitoring abilities and modification strategies for use beyond the classroom”
(Morley, 1991: 500).
According to Burns, it is 
“important that speakers of English can achieve: 
a)
Intelligibility (the speaker produces sound patterns that are recognisable as English); 
b)
Comprehensibility (the listener is able to understand the meaning of what is said); 
c)
Interpretability (the listener is able to understand the purpose of what is said)
”

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(Burns, 2003: 5). 
Furthermore, as Hewings claims, it is also important to remember that 
“a person’s 
pronunciation contributes significantly to the impression of their identity that is conveyed to others”, 
and therefore, probably, “most people would wish to retain identifiable traces of their national or first 
language identity when they speak 
English” (Hewings, 2004: 13-14).