INTEGRATING PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES AND TECHNOLOGY IN DESIGNING A COMPREHENSIVE ENGLISH DICTION CURRICULUM FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING
It is not new that the English language is a very important language in the world, particularly in African countries colonized by the British. In Nigeria (with over 400 indigenous languages), English language plays very important roles: language of education, language of inter-ethnic interaction, language of business, etc. Many schools, especially private schools, now spend extra money to employ the services of experts to coach their students in standardizing their spoken English which they call Diction/Elocution. But the challenge has always been that they only teach the pronunciation of words in isolation which covers only the suprasegmental features. However, without the proper teaching of the prosodic/suprasegmental features like stress, intonation, rhythm, etc., it will be impossible to adequately help students improve their spoken English. Hence this paper looks at how to bring all these elements of segmental and suprasegmental features to develop not only a curriculum but also instructional materials and curriculum-based textbooks for English diction. It also goes further to discuss the use of technology-based instructional materials in delivering the lessons since it requires audio/visual aids.
Keywords: English Diction, Phonology, Curriculum Design, Technology, Instructional Materials
