Some Recent Developments in Standard British English Pronunciation and the Teaching of Efl

In most English departments at German universities the teaching of practical English phonetics has enjoyed a long and well-established tradition. In more recent times, such courses have not only dealt with the groundwork of English (mostly articulatory) phonetics, but also added relevant aspects of modern phonological theory, sociolinguistics and dialectology. Since the availability of language laboratories and adequate practice material, pronunciation exercises have become an efficient means of pointing students individually in the direction of a “near-native” pronunciation – to what A.C. Gimson called the target of “high acceptability” (Cruttenden, 2000, 299).