Abstract

The prevalence of English monolingualism in the Global North means that there is a notion of an ideological “Standard English” in educational, institutional, and workplace contexts (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Lippi-Green, 2012; Ramjattan, 2025a, 2025b). Communicative Language Teaching promotes a strict "English-only" classroom and monolingual, native-speaker standards (Cook, 2001). As a result, accents of speakers of English as an additional language may be considered non-standard and may therefore subject individuals to accent discrimination, or accentism (Ramjattan, 2025a). Due to this phenomenon, students may seek out pronunciation classes designed to change or reduce a speaker’s accent. To argue against native-speakerist and racist ideologies and adapt to global multilingual communication, teachers are in need of more equitable pronunciation-specific materials. Responding to a call for anti-racist pronunciation pedagogy by Ramjattan (2024), I have designed and piloted lesson plans which value and integrate students' diverse language backgrounds and pronunciation needs. My three lesson plans were grounded in four principles of pedagogical translanguaging (e.g. Cenoz & Gorter, 2021): the integral use of students’ full linguistic repertoire, the development of students’ metalinguistic awareness, the fostering of critical metalinguistic awareness, and the centering of students’ multilingual identities. 
Five learners of diverse backgrounds who had previously sought out “accent reduction” classes participated in my lesson plan piloting process. While piloting these lessons, I gathered observations on student engagement and my own reflections. Through review of my observations and reflections, I developed refined lesson plans and insights into possibilities for more equitable instruction. The recommendations chapter of this thesis offers suggestions and activities for other teachers who are looking to engage in more equitable pronunciation instruction, especially through pedagogical translanguaging, coming from a teacher who was originally trained in Communicative Language Teaching.