Tackling Pronunciation

TACKLING PRONUNCIATION

A theoretical overview on understanding pronunciation classes

Prof. Rogério Azeredo 2

“In his comprehensive history of language teaching, Kelly (1969) dubs pronunciation the “Cinderella” area of foreign language teaching. He shows that western philologists and linguists have studied grammar and vocabulary much longer than pronunciation. For this reason, grammar and vocabulary have been much better understood than pronunciation, which began to be studied systematically before the beginning of the twentieth century.” (Celce-Murcia, 2002, p.2)


“The Communicative approach, which took hold in the 1980s and is currently dominant in language teaching, holds that since the primary purpose of language is communication, using language to communicate should be central in all classroom language instruction. This focus on language as communication brings renewed urgency to the teaching of pronunciation, since both empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a threshold level of pronunciation for nonnative speakers of English; if they fall below this threshold level, they will have oral communication problems no matter how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar and vocabulary might be.”

(Celce-Murcia, 2002, p.7)


“Almost all English language teachers get students to study grammar and vocabulary, practise functional dialogues, take part in productive skill activities, and become competent in listening and reading. Yet some of these same teachers make little attempt to teach pronunciation in any overt way and only give attention to it in passing. It is possible that they are nervous of dealing with sounds and intonation; perhaps they feel they have too much to do already and pronunciation teaching will only make things worse. They claim that even without a formal pronunciation syllabus, and without specific pronunciation teaching, many students seem to acquire serviceable pronunciation in the course of their studies.” (Harmer, 2005, p.183)


“Morley ( 1987:2) suggests that there are currently four groups of English language learners whose oral communication needs mandate a high level of intelligibility and therefore require special assistance with pronunciation:

1. foreign teaching assistants - and sometimes foreign faculty - in colleges and universities in English-speaking countries.

2. foreign-born technical, business, and professional employees in business and industry in English-speaking countries.

3. international business people and diplomats who need to use English as their working lingua franca.

4. refugees (adults and adolescents) in resettling and vocational training programs wishing to relocate in English-speaking countries


To Morley’s categories we should add at least two more groups:

5. teachers of English as a foreign language(EFL) who are not native speakers of English and who expect to serve as the major model and source of input in English for their students.

6. people in non-English-speaking countries working as tour guides, waiters, hotel personnel, customs agents, and the like, who use English for dealing with visitors who do not speak their language.”



“Braj Kachru (1985:12-150 )suggests the division of the English-speaking world into three concentric circles. This classification is widely used and may help us to think about English around the globe.

In the world of so many Englishes, therefore, we have to consider which is the variety we should encourage our learners to aim for.”

(Harmer, 2005, p.8)


“There is a strong case for saying that they [highly proficient users of English] speak a new variety of English which depends neither on childhood acquisition nor on cultural identity, and is often used in communication in which no native speaker is involved. This is often referred to as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). What matters in its use is clarity and comprehensibility rather than conformity to one of the existing standards.”

(Cook, 2003. p.29)


“The degree to which students acquire ‘perfect’ pronunciation seems to depend very much on their attitude on how they speak and how well they hear. In the case of attitude there are a number of psychological issues which may well affect how ‘foreign’ a person sounds when they speak. For example, many students do not especially want to sound like native speakers; frequently they want to be speakers of English as an International Language and this does not necessarily imply trying to sound exactly like someone from Britain or Canada, for example. Frequently foreign language speakers want to retain their own accent when they speak the foreign language because that is part of their identity. Thus, speaking English with, say, a Mexican accent is fine for the speaker who wishes to retain his or her ‘Mexican-ness” in the foreign language.”

(Harmer, 2005, p.184)


“Many learners of foreign languages feel that their ultimate goal in pronunciation should be accent-free speech that is undistinguishable from that of a native speaker. Such goal is not only unattainable for virtually every adult learner, but in a multilingual, multicultural world, accents are quite acceptable. With the rapid spread of English as an international language, native accents have become almost irrelevant to cross-cultural communication. Moreover, as the world community appreciates and value people’s heritage, one’s accent is just another symbol of that heritage.”

(Brown, 2001.p. 284)


“Students may wish to improve their pronunciation in order to make themselves more comprehensible but, at the same time, they may not be interested in sounding like native-speakers of English. Such considerations become important in setting realistic goals in the pronunciation class.” (Avery, 1992. p.xiv)


“Despite what we have said about identity, some may wish to sound exactly like a native speaker. In such circumstances it would be churlish to deny them such an objective.”

(Harmer, 2005, p.184)


“Scovel(1988) suggests that when native speakers compliment a foreigner on “perfect” pronunciation there is usually some exaggeration involved - for example, when people say, “I’m amazed that you sound just like a native speaker!” they really mean, “You speak my language brilliantly - especially for a foreigner!””



“Given that biological, socio-cultural, and personality factors may prevent a student from ever attaining native-like pronunciation in a second language, it is important that teachers set realistic goals. Attempting to completely eradicate a foreign accent is an unrealistic goal. However, this is not to say that pronunciation should be ignored in the ESL classroom. We know that it is possible for adult learners to improve their pronunciation. And sometimes these improvements can be quite dramatic.” (Avery, 1992. p.xvi)


THEORIES AND PHENOMENA RELATED TO LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

LATERALIZATION - Scovel( 1969) - critical period -puberty Krashen(1973) - 5 years old Recent researchers - sensitive periods

“Biological factors impose limitations much the same as psychological and sociocultural factors…, but none of these variables in isolation impose an absolute upper bound on [second language acquisition].”

(Jacobs (1988: 327) in Celce-Murcia, 2002)


INPUT HYPOTHESIS - Krashen(1982) - exposure to the target languagePHONEMIC CODING ABILITY - Skehan (1989)INTERLANGUAGE - Selinker(1969) - unique systemINFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY - Schneider and Schiffrin (1977) schemataFOSSILIZATION


“For most of its history, the teaching of pronunciation has been biased toward segmental aspects of the sound system. However, with the development of communicative approaches to language teaching, the importance of stress, rhythm, and intonation has been acknowledged. In a key survey article in 1986, Pennington and Richards argue in favor of a suprasegmental approach on the grounds that ‘teaching isolated forms of sounds and words fails to address the fact that, in communication, many aspects of pronunciation are determined by the positioning of elements within long stretches of speech.’ Other commentators have pointed out that faulty stress, rhythm, and intonation patterns cause greater difficulty for hearers than the inaccurate pronunciation of individual sounds.”

(Nunan, 1999, p.107)


“We believe that the traditional approach to teaching pronunciation gives priority to the wrong aspects of pronunciation. This stems from a failure to grasp the importance of suprasegmentals - ‘those features of speech which extend over more than one segment, such as intonation [and stress]’ (Crystal, 1980:314). Suprasegmentals are extremely important in the communication of meaning spoken language. It is the suprasegmentals that control the structure of information.” (Avery, 1992. p.185)


“The key to successful pronunciation teaching however, 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 videotape or from the teachers themselves. The more aware they are the greater the chance that their own intelligibility levels will rise.”

(Harmer, 2005, p.185)


REFERENCES

1. AVERY, Peter; EHRLICH, Susan. Teaching American English pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

2. BROWN, H. Douglas. Principles of language learning and teaching.4.ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2000.

3. ______. Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy.2.ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2001.

4. CELCE-MURCIA, Marianne; BRINTON, Donna M.; GOODWIN, Janet M. Teaching pronunciation: a reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

5. COOK, Guy. Applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

6. HARMER, Jeremy. The practice of English language teaching. 3. ed.London: Longman Pearson. 2001.

7. NUNAN, David. Second language teaching and learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999.

Tackling Pronunciation

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