Pronunciation the implications of segmental and suprasegmental phonology used in everyday teaching...

Teaching Pronunciation

Dan Levy TE710

The Teacher's Role

Planning Lessons

Responding to Students in Class

Intelligibility

Perception and Production

Why teach Segmental phonology?

Why teach Suprasegmental phonology?

Communicative Pronunciation

The Teacher's Role

”Teachers of pronunciation need:

A good grounding in theoretical knowledge

Practical classroom skills

Access to good ideas for classroom activities"

(Kelly, G. 2000)

The teacher's role

• Helping learners hear sounds

• Helping learners make sounds

• Providing feedback

• Pointing out what's going on

• Establishing priorities

• Devising activities

• Assessing progress

(Kenworthy, J. 1987)

Why we don't teach it.

• ”Many experienced teachers would admit to a lack of knowledge of the theory of pronunciation and they may therefore feel the need to improve their practical skills in pronunciation teaching”.

• ”In spite of the fact that trainees and less experienced teachers may be very interested in pronunciation, their concern with grammar and vocabulary tends to take precedence”.

• ”Not all pronunciation difficulties necessarily get in the way of communication”

• ”Teachers need to prioritise, and not correct everything”

(Kelly, G. 2000)

Why we should teach it.

• ”Integrating pronunciation teaching fully with the study of grammatical and lexical features has the further incremental benefit that learners will increasingly appreciate the significance of pronunciation in determining successful communication”. (Kelly, G. 2000)

• a) we can persuade learners of the importance of good pronunciation for ease of communication.

• b) We can continually emphasise that a 'native-like' accent will not be imposed as a goal. (Intelligibility and communicative efficiency are the only realistic goals . They can be achieved as much, if not more, by the way the teacher reacts and the stance he or she adopts as by merely making statements.

• c) We can demonstrate concern for learners' pronunciation and their progress in it.


Can pronunciation be taught?

• ”The critical period hypothesis, (Burrill, 1985), claims that it is virtually impossible for adults to acquire native like pronunciation in a foreign language”.

• ”Krashen (1982), insists that pronunciation is an acquired skill and that focused instruction is at best useless and at worst detrimental”.

• ”Teachers and classrooms', Purcell and Suter claim, 'seem to have very little to do with how well our students pronounced English”.

(cited by Jones, Rodney H, 1997)

Planning lessons

”While planning, teachers should decide what pronunciation issues are relevant to the particular structures and lexis being dealt with

in the lesson”. (Kelly, G. 2000)

Three main types

• Integrated lessons, in which pronunciation forms an essential part of the language analysis and planning process, and the language presentation and practice within the lesson.

• Remedial (reactive) lessons, where a pronunciation difficulty which arises in class is dealt with there and then, in order to facilitate the successful achievement of classroom tasks.

• Practice lessons, in which a particular feature of pronunciation is isolated and practised for its own sake, forming the main focus of a lesson period.

(Kelly, G. 2000)

The coursebooks

New English File Advanced (Oxenden, C. & Latham-Koenig, C. 2010)

New English File Advanced (Oxenden, C. & Latham-Koenig, C. 2010)

(Kay, S., Jones, V. & Moore, J. 2009)

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

New Inside Out: Intermediate

New Inside Out: Intermediate (Kay, S., Jones, V. & Moore, J. 2009)

(Gairns, R. & Redman, S. 2002)

Natural English: Intermediate

???

(Baker, A. 2006)

Ship or Sheep (Baker, A. 2006)

How to teach Pronunciation (Kelly, G. 2000)

(Swan, M. & Smith, B. 2003)

Learner English. (Swan, M. & Smith, B. 2003)

Learner English (Swan, M. & Smith, B. 2003)

Ship or Sheep (Baker, A. 2006)

Problems with materials

• ”Materials writers should approach predicting pronunciation problems based on learners' native language with caution. On the one hand, activities and methods that encourage inappropriate equivalence classification, such as overemphasis on orthography or use of simplified systems of phonetic transcription based on the L1, should be avoided”. ( Pennington, 1996).

• ”(Sections on contrastive analysis), usually alerting teachers to 'special problems' likely to be encountered by particular L1 speakers, are often simplistic and misleading, treating the production of specific sounds and sound contrasts divorced from the natural stream of speech and usually ignoring suprasegmental features of nonnative accents”. (Jones, Rodney H, 1997)

Responding to students in class

”It tends to be reactive to a particular problem that has arisen in the classroom rather than being strategically planned” (Kelly, G.

2000)

Psychological and sociological factors

• ”Pronunciation is an extremely personal matter, and even in monolingual groups, different students have different problems, different needs and different attitudes to the subject”.

(Harmer, J. 2007)

• ”A number of researchers have claimed that work on pronunciation ' needs to be tied in with work on the individual's value set, attitudes and socio-cultural schemata” (Pennington, 1995, P. 104).

• ”Targets for pronunciation teaching should be appropriate for the particular sociological context in which the teaching takes place”.(Brown, 1989).

• ”Not only does personality or emotional state show in pronunciation....but the converse is also true: speakers can control their nerves or inner states by speaking properly. This is the basic tenet of successful programs in voice training and public speaking”.(Acton 1984, p.75)


Learner centred diagnostics

• ”Differentiated teaching is especially appropriate because students may be more aware of their pronunciation problems - and be able to explain what they are - than they are with grammar or vocabulary issues”.

• ”When we are working with phonemes, get the students to identify their own individual pronunciation difficulties rather than telling them, as a group, what they need to work on. So, for example, when revising a list of words we might ask individual students which words they find easy to pronounce and which words they might find difficult. We can then help them with the 'difficult' words”.

(Harmer, J. 2007)

What is intelligibility?

• ”The more words a listener is able to identify accurately when said by a particular speaker, the more intelligble that speaker is”. (Kenworthy, J. 1987)

Speakers intentions

• Look at this short extract from a conversation (A has been telling B a story when suddenly B bursts into laughter):

A: What are you laughing at?

B: (stops laughing) Oh.....sorry.

A: No, I didn't mean you shouldn't laugh .... I really want to know what you found funny.

B thought A's question was intended as a command to stop laughing, as a criticism ( perhaps because of their relationship or A's facial expression). But it was simply a straightforward information question. So B understood every word A said, B misunderstood what A intended by those words.


Assessing intelligibility

Three ways of gauging a learner's intelligibility;

• The sample - reading aloud or spontaneous speech

• The topic of the sample - because of the role that context plays in listening.

• Getting a tape recorded sample - if there is a large number of learners who need to be assessed


Judges of intelligibility

• ”Because of this constant exposure, teachers develop special skills as listeners, but these skills make them atypical listeners and therefore unsuitable as judges of intelligibility”.

• ”Teachers should not be used as judges of improvement in pronunciation; what may be assessed as better pronunciation may actually be better listening on the part of the teacher”.

• ”.The best source of this type of judge is, of course, other learners of English in the class or school”.


Perception and Production

”Students need to learn to hear the difference between phonemes, for example, particularly where such a contrast does not exist in their L1. They then need to carry that knowledge through into their production.” (Kelly, G. 2000)

Perception

• ”There are two different ways of dealing with this: in the first place, we can show students how sounds are made through demonstration, diagrams and explanation. But we can also draw the sounds to their attention every time they appear on a recording or in their own conversation. In this way, we gradually train the students' ears. When they can hear correctly, they are on the way to being able to speak correctly”. (Harmer, J. 2007)

• ”The key to successful pronunciation teaching is not so much getting students to produce correct sounds or intonation tunes, but rather to have them listen and notice how English is spoken - either on audio or video or by their teachers themselves. The more aware they are, the greater the chance that their own intelligibility will rise”. (Harmer, J. 2007)

• ”Pronunciation teaching methods should more fully address the issues of motivation and exposure by creating an awareness of the importance of pronunciation and providing more exposure to input from native speakers”. (Jones, Rodney H, 1997)

Drilling

• ”It appears that although both imitation and discrimination drills have an important place in the teaching of pronunciation as a means to help articulation become more automatic and routinised, they are best seen as a step toward more meaningful, communicative practice”. (Pennington, 1996).

Who benefits from drills?

• ”One study has indicated that those with high phonetic abilities benefit from pronunciation drills, tasks in which particular sounds are heard and the learner has to imitate again and again. Their innate abilities enable them to exploit all the opportunities to compare what they're doing with the model presented”.

• ”'Poor discriminators' do not seem to benefit from drills very much. In fact, drills seem to cause their attempts to stabilise before they reach an accurate production of a sound”.


Perception or production

• ”Which half of the 'listen and repeat' equation results in increased accuracy?”

• ”Some teaching materials emphasise the importance of sound discrimination, insisting that students who cannot hear a particular English contrast have no chance of reproducing it”. ( O'Connor & Fletcher, 1989)

• ”Listening and repeating seem to be a two way street: Focused learning can improve oral production and practice in oral production can improve auditory perception”. ( Pennington, 1996)


• ”Not all 'problems' will be at the level of production; some will be associated with perception. The techniques used need to mirror the types of 'problems' the learners are encountering. A diagnosis of learners' spoken English will provide information as to the types of activities and techniques that will be required”.

• ”Between perceiving aural input and the production of output, learners need time to filter, assimilate, recognise, fix, store and structure information. In order to process the information, learners need to hear the auditory input many times”.

(Hebert, Julie, 1993)

• ”Many materials have sought to integrate perception and production as equal components in pronunciation training. Gilbert (1984, 1993) and Roberson and Gilbert (1990) promote their books as both pronunciation and listening comprehension courses. Other materials writers have begun to recognise the importance of other modalities (visual and kinaesthetic) in pronunciation training, combining pictures, gestures and physical activities ( such as the stretching of rubber bands ) with drills, along the lines of Total Physical Response (Acton, 1984; Gilbert, 1993; Pennington, 1996)”.


6.Why teach segmental phonology?

"This involves us showing students which parts of the mouth they need to use...". (Harmer, J. 2007)

http://www.heatherhightower.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/IPA-face-image.jpeg

(Kelly, G. 2000)

http://periodictabledevelopment.wikispaces.com/file/view/periodic_table_of_elements.jpg/189245863/880x517/periodic_table_of_elements.jpg

http://englishforit.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IPA_Chart.jpg

Phoney phonemes

• ”When a learner says, for example, soap in a situation such as a restaurant where they should have said soup, the inaccurate production of a phoneme can lead to misunderstanding (at least on the part of the waitress)”.

• ”A learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand”.

• ”This can be very frustrating for the learner who may have a good command of grammar and lexis but have difficulty in understanding and being understood by a native speaker”.

(Kelly, G. 2000)

Firth's diagnostic profileSegmental level

Consonants

1. Substitution. Is the learner substituting one phoneme for another?

2. Omission. Is the learner omitting consonants?

3. Articulation. Is the consonant being articulated properly (e.g., is /p/ aspirated word-initially)?

4. Clusters. Are consonant clusters articulated properly?

5. Linking. Are consonants linked to each other?

Vowels

1. Substitution. Is one vowel being substituted for another?

2. Articulation. Is the learner articulating vowels correctly (e.g., lip rounding)?

3. Length. Do vowels have their appropriate length?

4. Reduction. Are vowels reduced in unstressed syllables?

5. Linking. Are vowels properly linked to other vowels across word boundaries?

(Firth, S. 1987)

Consider the context

• ”Where the articulation of particular phonemes is causing the learner 'problems', these should be felt with in context. For example, the way in which /p/ is articulated depends on its occurrence with other phonemes. Consider, for example, /p/ in pin, spit, upper, captain and topmost”. (Kelly, G. 2000)

Orthography

”English is bedevilled, for many students, by an apparent lack of sound and spelling correspondence (though in fact most spelling is highly regular and the number of exceptions fairly small), it may make sense for them to be aware of the different phonemes, and the clearest way of promoting this awareness is to introduce the symbols for them”. (Harmer, J. 2007)

(Oxenden, C. & Latham-Koenig, C. 2010)

Other reasons for using phonemic symbols

• ”Paper dictionaries usually give the pronunciation of headwords in phonemic symbols. If students can read such symbols, they can know how the word is said even without having to hear it”. (Harmer, J. 2007)

• ”When both teacher and students know the symbols, it is easier to explain what mistake has occurred and why it has happened”. (Harmer, J. 2007)

Why teach suprasegmental phonology?

”When we speak, we reveal our interest and attitudes toward the topic being discussed and toward the people we are speaking with. These messages are largely conveyed through the prosodic features of language: stress and rhythm, intonation, pitch variation and volume. For these reasons, it would seem essential that phonology be learned in context and not treated incidentally and/or separately”. (Hebert, Julie, 1993)

History

• ”In the late 1980's researchers called for a more 'top-down' approach to pronunciation teaching (Pennington and Richards, 1986; Pennington 1989), emphasising the broader, more meaningful aspects of phonology in connected speech rather than practice with isolated sounds, thus ushering pronunciation back into the communicative fold„.

(Jones, Rodney H, 1997)

Suprasegmental level

General speaking habits

1. Clarity. Is the learner’s speech clear?

Are there instances where there is a breakdown in communication?

What are the major factors?

2. Speed. Does the learner speak too quickly?

Is her speech unintelligible because she speaks too quickly?

3. Loudness. Does the learner speak too softly?

Does the lack of volume affect intelligibility?

4. Breathing. Does the learner speak with appropriate pauses, breaking each utterance into thought groups?

5. Fluency. Does the learner speak with either long silences between words or too many ‘filled pauses’ (e.g., ‘ah . . .ummm’)?

6. Voice. Is there enough variation in pitch?

7. Eye gaze. Does the learner use eye-gaze behaviour appropriate to the context (e.g., facing a conversational partner or looking at the audience if delivering an oral presentation)?

8. Expressive behaviour. Does the learner overuse gestures? Does the facial expression match the utterance?(Firth, S. 1987)

Why teach Intonation?

Intonation

1. Is the learner using appropriate intonation patterns in utterances? Can the learner use

intonation contours to signal whether utterances are statements, lists, wh- questions or

yes/no questions?

2. Is the learner changing pitch at the major stressed words? (Firth, S. 1987)

• ”A speaker can show that he or she is asking for information, or asking for confirmation, seeking agreement, or simply making a remark that is indisputable or 'common knowledge', thought the intonation of the voice”.

• ”If a foreign speaker always uses very low pitch, without much variation in the melody of the voice , listeners may get the impression that they are 'bored' or 'uninterested' when this is really not the case”.


(Kelly, G. 2000)

Stress

• ”If the learner doesn't stress one syllable more than another, or stresses the wrong syllable, it may be very difficult for the listener to identify the word. This is because the stress pattern of a word is an important part of its identity for the native speaker”. (Kenworthy, J. 1987)

3. Linking. Is the learner linking words appropriately? Are identical consonants linked (e.g., top position)?Are vowels linked (e.g., pay up)? Are consonants linked to vowels (e.g., top of )?

Stress and rhythm1. Word-level stress. Does the learner produce the schwa in unstressed syllables?Does the learner use loudness and length to differentiate between stressed andunstressed syllables? 2. Sentence-level stress. Does the learner stress each syllable equally?Is she able to produce appropriate strong and weak stresses?Are lexical words stressed and ungrammatical words unstressed?Does the learner place the tonic stress on the appropriate words?

(Firth, S. 1987)

Why teach stress?

• ”Experiments have demonstrated that often when a native speaker mishears a word, it is because the foreigner has put the stress in the wrong place, not because he or she mispronounced the sounds of the word. Here are some examples:

• the word 'written' was pronounced with the stress on the second syllable instead of on the first. The listener thought the speaker had said 'retain'.

• 'comfortable' was pronounced with stress on 'com-' and on '-ta-'. The listener heard this as 'come for the table'.

• 'productivity', which has the pattern pro duc tiv i ty, was pronounced with a stress on '-duc-' and one on '-ty-' (pro duc tiv i ty). This was heard as ' productive tea' ( and caused considerable confusion!)”.


Why teach Rhythm?

• ”If the speaker doesn't use the characteristic rhythm, then the listener will be placed in the position of someone who walks out onto the dance floor with a partner, expecting to waltz, but finds that the partner starts some strange set of syncopated steps which are thoroughly unpredictable and impossible to follow, or marches up and down in a perfectly steady beat, which doesn't seem like dancing at all to the waltz lover!”


(Kelly, G. 2000)

Segmental or suprasegmental?

• ”Some teachers might feel that accuracy is important and therefore might be focused more on the segmental level; others might feel that the learner's overall intelligibility is more important than the correct articulation of particular phonemes”.

• ”With lower levels the focus should be on improving the learner's intelligibility; that is to say, to focus primarily on the suprasegmental level. If a learner's intelligibility is affected because her volume is too low, then it doesn't really matter how she articulates a particular phoneme”.

(Hebert, Julie, 1993)

• ”A learner's intelligibility will not be affected if she substitutes one phoneme for another. For example, /dis iz di kæt/ instead of / ð is iz ð ə kæt/. However, if she says the former with a rising intonation contour when her intent is to impart information, the listener will encounter some difficulty in understanding her meaning. All ESL learners want to be understood by others, but not all will want to sound like native speakers; psychosocial and individual factors will influence their attitudes and motivation to modify their accent”. (Hebert, Julie, 1993)

Communicative Pronunciation

”It is obvious that creating a stronger link between pronunciation and communication can help increase learners' motivation by bringing pronunciation beyond the lowest common denominator of 'intelligibility' and encouraging students' awareness of its potential as a tool for making their language not only easier to understand but more effective”. (Jones, Rodney H, 1997)

Communication and contextualisation

• ”It is 'artificial' to divorce pronunciation from communication and other aspects of language use”. (Pennington and Richards, 1986).

• ”In order to become a competent speaker and listener, a language learner needs to attend to not only the strictly mechanical, articulatory aspects of pronunciation, but also the to the meaningful correlates of those articulatory features in the immediate linguistic context, as well as the larger context of human communication”. (Pennington, 1996)


Communicative pronunciation

• Bradford (1988) organises her course according to discourse functions (highlighting, telling and referring, etc.) rather than the traditional phonological categories.

• Other writers have included interactive activities where there is a phonological 'information gap' such that only proper pronunciation and perception can lead to the correct outcome in the task ( see, for example, Gilbert,1993).

• There has also been an attempt to make repetitive practice of rhythm and sound more natural and meaningful through the use of poetry and song (Gilbert, 1993; Maley, 1987).

• Several materials writers have attempted to integrate pronunciation practice into broader communicative activities by either finding lexical/grammatical contexts with naturally occurring instances of target sounds or features ( Celce-Murcia,1987)


Discourse analysis

• ”By making learners aware of the role of phonological elements in discourse, we provide them with a means for decoding and encoding meaning in exchanges: who the people are, what their perceived status is, how they feel about what they are saying, cues for signalling a change in topic, the status of a message ('I'm imparting information, you listen', 'I'm asking you, answer me' or ' I'm not sure about what I'm saying') and boundary marking ( I'm finished, 'I'm not finished yet'). We provide learners with a key to how culture is articulated through language and how to use language. Without this key, it is difficult to understand 'why and how' people convey their intended messages”. (Hebert, Julie, 1993)

Bibliography

Acton, W. (1984). Changing fossilized pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 18(1), 69–83.

Baker, A. 2006, Ship or sheep?: an intermediate pronunciation course, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Bradford, B., (1988). Intonation in context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, A. (1989). Models, standards, targets/goals and norms in pronunciation teaching. World Englishes, 8(2), 193–200.

Burrill, C. (1985). The sensitive period hypothesis: A review of literature regarding acquisition of a native-like pronunciation in a second language. Paper presented at a meeting

of the TRI-TESOL Conference. Bellevue, WA, 15 November.

Celce-Murcia, M. (1987). Teaching pronunciation as communication. In J. Morley (Ed.), Current perspectives on pronunciation (pp. 1–12). Washington, DC: TESOL.

Firth, S. (1987). Pronunciation syllabus design: A question of focus. TESL Talk, 17(1).

Gairns, R. & Redman, S. 2002, Natural English, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Gilbert, J. B. (1993). Clear speech: Pronunciation and listening comprehension in North American English. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Harmer, J. 2007, The practice of English language teaching, Pearson Longman, Harlow.

Kay, S., Jones, V. & Moore, J. 2009, New inside out, Macmillan, Oxford.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Fairview Park: Pergamon.

Kelly, G. 2000, How to teach pronunciation, Pearson Education, Harlow, Essex.

Kenworthy, J. 1987, Teaching English pronunciation, Longman, London.

Maley, A. (1987). Poetry and song as effective language learning activities. InW. M. Rivers (Ed.), Interactive language teaching (pp. 93–109). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

O’Connor, J. D., & Fletcher, C. (1989). Sounds English. Harlow, UK: Longman.

Oxenden, C. & Latham-Koenig, C. 2010, New English file advanced, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Pennington, M. C. (1995). Recent research in second language phonology: Implications for practice. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation, pedogogy and theory: New views, new directions (pp. 94–108). Alexandria, VA: TOESL.

Pennington, M. C. (1996). Phonology in English language teaching: An international approach. London: Longman.

Pennington, M. C., & Richards, J. C. (1986). Pronunciation revisited. TESOL Quarterly, 20(2), 207–225.

Purcell, E., & Suter, R. (1980). Predictors of pronunciation accuracy: A reexamination. Language Learning, 30(2), 271–287.

Richards, J.C. & Renandya, W.A. 2002, Methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

• Pg 178: Jones, Rodney H. Beyond ‘listen and repeat’: pronunciation teaching materials and theories of second language acquisition. Reprinted from SYSTEM, 25(1), 103–112, 1997, with permission of Elsevier Science.

• Pg 188: Hebert, Julie. PracTESOL: it’s not what you say, but how you say it. This chapter originally appeared in TESOL in Context, 3(1), 15–22, 1993. Reprinted by permission.

Swan, M. & Smith, B. 2003, Learner English: a teacher's guide to interference and other problems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Pronunciation the implications of segmental and suprasegmental phonology used in everyday teaching...

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