EFL Teachers’ Cognition of Teaching English Pronunciation Techniques: A Mixed-Method Approach

In recent years, a great number of attempts have been made on teachers’ cognition with the aim of understanding the complications reinforcing the teachers’ cognitions and their classroom practices. Such studies shed light on how teachers’ cognitions expand over time and how they are reflected in their classroom practices. The aim of the present study was to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ cognition particularly in terms of the pronunciation techniques they apply in the oral communication classrooms and their knowledge about their language learners’ characteristics. To achieve the goals of the study, the cognitions of five English teachers in the oral communication classrooms were explored. The teachers were requested to answer two semi-structured interviews to obtain the data about their cognitions regarding the pronunciation techniques. Furthermore, their students were asked to fill out a questionnaire to express their opinions about the techniques applied by their teachers during instruction of English pronunciation. The qualitative and quantitative results showed that there was an intricate relationship between language teachers’ experience with their cognitions about their language learners. Moreover, those teachers who were in higher level language courses showed to have broader cognitions about both the techniques they used in classrooms and the language learners’ characteristics as well.