Examining English pronunciation instruction in Galician secondary education textbooks

The importance given to instruction in English pronunciation has fluctuated with each new teaching methodology. Currently, it is receiving increasing attention in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. Nevertheless, there is a lack of regulation regarding the teaching of this skill, and teachers may resort to the textbooks employed in class as their sole guidance. The question would thus be whether textbooks of EFL provide the necessary materials to teach English pronunciation. Nowadays, this is especially relevant in the region of Galicia (Spain), where notions of English phonetics are tested in the university entrance exam. The present research aims to discover whether coursebooks utilized in secondary high schools in Galicia offer an adequate source of pronunciation instruction. For this reason, 24 textbooks from obligatory and post-obligatory education are analysed in terms of the presence of pronunciation activities, their integration with the rest of contents, the elements covered and the type of exercises featured. The findings suggest that there is still a lack of consistency among books, a prevalence of segmental instruction over suprasegmental, and a preference for the listen-and-repeat type of activities over other types of tasks.