SOME WHYS AND HOWSOF TEACHING PRONUNCIATION:

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE.

María Alicia Maldonadomarilimaldonado@gmail.com

www.marilimaldonado.blogspot.com

‘the phonemic -based view of pronunciation has largely given way to a broader, discourse-based view, which includes the interaction between segmental features, voice quality settings and prosodic features.’

Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (1996)

Develop a deep and internally experienced awareness of how we produce sounds manipulating our vocal musculature and how the internal sensation of using the muscles relates to what is heard through the ears.Underhill (1994)

Words spoken in isolation consist of a ‘flow of sound’ which is different from the sum of the individual phonemes. Neighbouring sounds modify each other as the vocal muscles join together and take short cuts. Underhill (1994)

The distribution of energy across the syllables creates an energy profile, called word stress, that is typical and generally characteristic of a particular word when spoken on its own.

Underhill (1994)

Underhill (1994)

In the stream of speech sounds are simplified and reduced, and the energy profile is extended from individual words to groups of words, that is from word stress that is relatively fixed to prominence (emphasis) and intonation (music) that is chosen by the speaker.

Kelly (2000)

•A good grounding in theoretical knowledge.

•Practical classroom skills.•Access to good ideas for classroom activities.

iː

e

æ ʌ

ɑːɒ

Ɔː

Ʊ

Uː

ɪ

ɜː

Ə

i

e

a

o

u

12 5 8 8

/ə/

Generalities of vowels compared:

1. Spanish vowels tend to be short and tense while English vowels tend to be laxed and of different length.

2. In Spanish, vowels remain the same quality no matter what happens with stress.

3. English shifting stress turns a vowel weakened.4. There are closing and centring diphthongs in English,

while there are only closing diphthongs in Spanish.

Recamán (1980)

Bilabial Labio- dental

Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar

PalatoAlveolar

Palatal Velar Glottal

Plosive p b

t d

k ɡ

Fricative f v θ ð

s z

ʃ ʒ h

Affricate tɹ dɹ tʃ dʒ

Nasal m

n ŋ

Approximant r

Flap

Roll

Lateral l

Approximant w

r j

w

p b

t d k ɡ

r

ɲ

Ʒ

l

m n

f s

tʃ

x

ʎ

β

ŋ

ð Ɣ

ɾ

juncture

First consonant lenɡtheninɡ

Priorities in the teaching of pronunciation

• Comprehensibility• Social acceptability• Ease of production• Functional load (number of familiar words)• Likely to be a bad habit affecting other sounds

Priorities in the teaching of pronunciation

• Comprehensibility• Social acceptability• Ease of production• Functional load (number of familiar words)• Likely to be a bad habit affecting other sounds

Priorities in the teaching of pronunciation

• Comprehensibility• Social acceptability• Ease of production• Functional load (number of familiar words)• Likely to be a bad habit affecting other sounds

[pʰet]

[tʰɪn]

[kʰæt]

Priorities in the teaching of pronunciation

• Comprehensibility• Social acceptability • Ease of production• Functional load (number of familiar words)• Likely to be a bad habit affecting other sounds

Collins & Mees (2008) Kenworthy (1987)

Category 1:Errors which lead to a breakdown in intelligibility

High Priority:Errors which are vital for intelligibility

Category 2:Errors which give rise to irritation or amusement.

Low Priority:Errors which often do not affect intelligibility, e.g. sound which occur relatively rarely, such as /ʒ/

Category 3:Errors which provoke few such reactions and may even pass unnoticed.

Optional attention:Errors which might contribute to a very noticeable foreign accent, will usually lead to intelligibility problems because: 1)native learners are used to them.2)They exist in some regional accents or varieties of English.3)The feature is “close enough” to the native feature.4)Relatively few words are kept appart by the feature or sound.

Priorities in the teaching of pronunciation

• Comprehensibility • Social acceptability • Ease of production• Functional load (number of familiar words)• Likely to be a bad habit affecting other sounds

[hiː wɒz æn intʰelɪdʒənt -b.ɔɪ]

[ð̥.eə weə tʰeŋ ɡɜːɫz æt skuːɫ]

INTONATIONSIGNIFICANT

SYSTEMATIC

CHARACTERISTIC

O’Connor and Arnold (1976)

AWOMANWITHOUTHERMANISNOTHING

A ‘WOMAN ║WITHOUT ‘HER ║ ‘MAN IS ‘NOTHING ║

A ‘WOMAN WITH‘OUT HER ‘MAN ║ IS ‘NOTHING ║

Wells (2006)

TonalityTonicityTone

What we do Why we do it

Speech is devided into ‘chunks’. These show the listener which pieces of information belong together.

English speech is a mixture of stressed and unstressed syllables.

This is fundamental for the rhythm of English.

Some stressed syllables are accented.

They highlight the most important pieces of information.

The last accent in any word group is the nucleus.

It is strongly associated with the main focus of attention in the word group.

The pitch pattern which starts on the nucleus is the nuclear tone.

It tells us a lot about the speaker’s attitude, the relation with other groups and as cue of turn-taking.

We use a relatively wide or narrow pitch range (high or low key)

Key has an organising function. A switch to high key can signal a new topic or something unexpected.

House (2006)

Category A: distinctions between one phoneme of a language and another phoneme of the same language.Category B: anything in the pronunciation of a person which, though not causing one word to be pronounced in place of another, is judged to constitute a gross foreign accent.

Category C: mispronunciations which are comparatively easy to put right without much expenditure of time.Category D: matters which might be quite difficult to get right, but which contribute notably to the authenticity of pronunciation.

Category E: finer points in the pronunciation of a language.

Mac Carthy (1978)

Humour

Homophones

Homophones

Homophones

Focus

Word stress

GRAMMAR LEXIS

PHONOLOGY

TIBERIO and MALDONADO (2011) What’s Up? 3 Extra Practice. Pearson Education. Buenos Aires

Identify possible problem spots:

Initial clusters in: speak – study – Skype – slowly - strong – speakers

Difference in the pronunciation of: thing - sing think - sink

Final clusters in: scientists – thoughts – let’s – looks – loves -

• True or false?• Corrective feedback.• Answer questions.• Ask questions.• Find the differences.• Cloze exercise.• Spot the words you find difficult to pronounce.

• Brainstorming of words having those problem sounds.

Choose a title from the ones below (first, circle the correct option):

A)Let’s sink/think about learning English.B)My friend loves/loved studying English.C)Connie, an English teacher/student

Listen and spot what’s wrong according to the text:

1. Many people teach English.2. Alex communicates via Gmail.3. Connie’s dad prepares his homeworks

in English.4. Annie loves listening to students of

English.5. We all need to speak English as a

native speaker.

Category A: distinctions between one phoneme of a language and another phoneme of the same language.Category B: anything in the pronunciation of a person which, though not causing one word to be pronounced in place of another, is judged to constitute a gross foreign accent.

Category C: mispronunciations which are comparatively easy to put right without much expenditure of time.Category D: matters which might be quite difficult to get right, but which contribute notably to the authenticity of pronunciation.

Category E: finer points in the pronunciation of a language.

Mac Carthy (1978)

“A teacher training course which claims to enable a person thoroughly to teach a foreign language should include a complete analysis of the would-be teacher and his prospective students’ mother tongue, and its corresponding practice [as well as] a deep knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of English”

“The [would-be teacher should] possess ‘a sound knowledge’ of the phonological and phonetic characteristics both of English and Spanish, a pronunciation of the target language close to the model chosen, and the ability to predict errors and use adquate techniques of correction.”