Assignment – FP005 TP

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This assignment must be done individually and has to fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: between 6 to 8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if

there are any-).
- Font type: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Font size: 11.
- Spacing: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be written in this Word document and has to follow the
instructions on quotes and references detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, the assignment has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the
document: “Subject Evaluation”. Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not allowed.

It is strongly recommended to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the
document “Subject Evaluation”.

Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the
next page (the cover). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions will
not be corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover.

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 Assignment – FP005 TP

Student’s full name: Jorge David Gomez Gomez

Group: FP-TEFL-2017-10

Date: October 31st, 2018

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 Assignment – FP005 TP

Assignment instructions:
Choose two problems of transfer which you consider to be obstacles to
efficient communication. Those problems need to be specific to Spanish
and English (that is, specific to Spanish speakers who are English
learners). The problems can either be segmental or suprasegmental.

FIRST, describe, as precisely as you can, the causes of the problems in

phonetic or phonological terms.

SECOND, explain and illustrate how these problems could be addressed

within the usual framework of a language course - the level, age and type
of student presumably being determined by the type of problem you have
chosen. Nonetheless, you should consider the problems in terms of the
three ’E’ variables, and with reference to Brinton’s five variables,
mentioned in Chapter 9.

Index

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1. Introduction

2. Word and Sentence Stress

3. Approaches to Teaching Word and Sentence Stress

4. Conclusion

5. Bibliography

1. Introduction

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The main goal of students learning English as a Second or Foreign Language is being
able to communicate successfully with speakers of the language. Mastering correct or
at least intelligible pronunciation of English is, therefore, essential to achieve
communicative competence. Traditionally, the practice of teaching English
pronunciation has focused greatly on the segmental aspects of the language. That is,
the production of individual vowels and consonant sounds. However, language
research has shown that mastery of individual sounds of English, while important, does
not guarantee communicative competence. Despite correct pronunciation of
phonemes, a student’s speech may still sound confusing due to prosodic errors – those
related to the supra-segmental features of English.

The suprasegmental features of English are comprised of stress in words and

connected speech, rhythm, pitch, loudness, vowel length, quality, tone and intonation.
These play a vital role in English speech production and perception. Munro and
Derwing (1999) observed that suprasegmental errors seem to affect intelligibility more
than phonetic errors. In many cases, native-speakers and fluent non-native speakers
who produce individual sounds differently from the rule are understood without
problems. Likewise, Ann Cook (2000) states that while pronunciation among native
speakers varies from one region to another, the basic components of English remain
the same – the speech music and the word connections. According to Sabater (1991),
appropriate use of the prosodic features of English is “more important for intelligibility
than the correct pronunciation of isolated segments” (p. 145). Thus, prosodic features
have a great impact on the way ESL/EFL students’ speech is perceived by others.
Even if students pronounce individual sounds correctly, communication breakdowns
will occur if they do not use appropriate rhythm, stress and intonation patterns.

Gilbert (2008) emphasizes the importance of teaching correct use of the rhythm and
melody of English. She claims that “Without a sufficient, threshold-level mastery of the
English prosodic system, learners’ intelligibility and listening comprehension will not
advance, no matter how much effort is made in drilling individual sounds” (p. 8). In
addition, Gilbert argues that learners who speak English with interference from their
first language and notice that their speech sounds unnatural, may develop negative
feelings towards the language, which could affect the improvement of intelligibility.

Teachers should give higher emphasis to prosody whenever they have time for
teaching pronunciation in their classes. On this assignment, therefore, I have decided
to focus on suprasegmental features of the language. I will discuss two common

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problems of transfer made by Spanish speakers when communicating in English,

considering research on the topic of pronunciation as well as my own experience as a
teacher.

2. Word and Sentence Stress

Dale and Poms (2005) define stress as “the amount of volume that a speaker gives to
a particular sound, syllable, or word while saying it” (p. 84). A major characteristic of the
English language is its use of strong and weak stress. Stress is present at the word
and phrase level. In any utterances, some syllable and words carry more weight or
volume than others; that is, they are said louder, longer and with a higher pitch. In fact,
the appropriate use of stressed and unstressed syllables and words accounts for the
natural, rhythmic pattern of English. For that reason, stress affects greatly the extent to
which English learners can communicate effectively and the degree to which they may
understand the utterances they hear.

Many languages have their own rules for accenting words. Spanish, for example, has a
fairly regular stress pattern which is easy to remember and use (Ball, n.d.). Most words
are accented on the last or second to last syllable. When words do not stick to the rule,
an accent mark or “tilde” is used to indicate stress. However, English does not use
regular patterns for stressing words, and this usually causes difficulty for Spanish
learners when attempting to accent syllables correctly.

A common pronunciation problem made by learners is placing the stress on the wrong
syllable. This a lot of times happens because students transfer accent rules from
Spanish into English. In turn, communication breakdowns occur because wrong stress
makes it difficult for listeners to understand a word or it may change the meaning of the
word completely. For example, the word “committee” may sound like “comedy” if not
stressed correctly. Many years ago, when I was learning English, I was talking to a
native speaker and we had a little communication problem. I asked him if he had a CD
but he could not fully understand what I meant. He heard the word “city” instead
because I stressed the wrong syllable. The main reason for this kind of problem is that
in English a lot of words sound differently not because of their spelling but their accent,
while in Spanish this is not a very common situation.

Another issue that Spanish learners face is making the distinction between stressed
and unstressed vowels in syllables. Most beginner learners, if not all, have problems
reducing the vowels in unstressed syllables because in Spanish vowels are given equal

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emphasis in the word. Spanish does not have short sounds for vowels like the
unstressed shwa of English. So, when L2 learners stress all vowels in a word, as they
do in their native language, their messages is distorted. As Sabater (1991) comments,

the pronunciation of a word with the inappropriate accentual and rhythmic

pattern makes the word unintelligible not only because the misplaced main
stress distorts the shape of the word, but also because there is no unstressing
of the other syllables with the consequent phonetic reductions (p. 145-146).

Thus, as Kenworthy (1987) points out, “correct word stress patterns are essential for
the learner’s production and perception of English (p. 28). This means that even if
individual sounds are well pronounced, incorrect stress use will make a learner’s
message difficult to understand. Similarly, if the learner has expectations about word
stress patterns, especially from using their L1 rules, they will perceive messages from
native and other non-native speakers incorrectly. Simply put, the messages they hear
will not match the information stored in their mental dictionary (Kenworthy, 1987).
Furthermore, English learners store words in their mental lexicon based on their stress
pattern and they rely on these patterns in order to identify words when they hear them
(Brown, 1977). For that reasons, English speakers have difficulties to “interpret an
utterance in which a word is pronounced with the wrong stress pattern” (Brown, 1997,
p. 51). When this situation occurs, listeners try to look up possible options for the word
stress heard, which may result in a different interpretation of what the speaker intended
to say, as was the case with the example shown for the words “comedy” and
“committee”.

However, Sabater (1991) argues that stress problems become more important at the
phrase and sentence level. Sentence stress focuses on the portions of the sentence
that are more important for the speaker or the information on which the speaker wants
the listener to pay attention. In English, higher emphasis is given to lexical items, also
known as content words which includes major parts of speech like nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, and question words (Dale and Poms, 2005). These words convey
meaning in a sentence, so they are spoken louder to make them stand out. In contrast,
function words such as articles, prepositions, pronouns, helping verbs and conjunctions
are not stressed. According to Orion (1988) in conversations “successful listeners
interpret content words to figure out the message” (p. 41). Consequently, nonnative
speakers should learn how to stress content words and unstress the function words
that serve as grammatical links. However, this is usually difficult for Spanish speakers

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because in their language all words are given equal importance in a sentence, and
meaning is signaled through grammar.

Dale and Poms (2005) highlight some common problems that Spanish speakers may
make due to improper stress in sentences. For example, the sentence “He lives in the
green house” which means the house painted green may sound like “He lives in the
greenhouse” which means a place where plants grow, thus resulting in a change in the
meaning of the sentence. In addition, speakers may change the intended meaning of
an utterance by placing stress in the incorrect word. For example, the sentence (a)
“Steve’s my cousin” is different from (b) “Steve’s my cousin”. In sentence a, the
speaker means that it is Steve and not another person is his/her cousin. In sentence b,
the speaker means that Steve is his/her cousin and not his brother. In addition, Gilbert
(2008) also recognizes the importance of signaling correct proper stress to convey
meaning. These signals, she claims, “communicate emphasis and make clear the
relationship between ideas so that listeners can readily identify these relationships and
understand the speaker’s meaning” (p. 2). For instance, in the sentences (a) “Is that
Mister Fogg?” the speaker is talking about a person; and in sentence (b) “Is that mist or
fog?” the speaker is talking about the weather. However, in terms of pronunciation, the
difference between both examples is the stress, and the pitch pattern is what
distinguishes one sentence from the other.

English, therefore, is considered a stress-timed language. The alternating pattern of

stressing and unstressing words in a sentence makes up for the rhythm of the
language. Spanish, in contrast, is considered a syllable-timed language, which means
that each syllable takes up about the same time when being spoken. This pattern of
unstressing syllables and squashing weak forms in between stressed syllables does
not occur in Spanish. Hence, it is not natural for Spanish speakers to signal meaning
through stress. For that reason, learners usually have a lot of difficulty knowing when to
use and not to use strong stress in sentences. A lot of times, they are not able to use or
recognize the signals that native listeners count on to help them follow meaning in a
conversation (Gilbert, 2008). When L1 Spanish speakers transfer sentence stress
patterns from their mother tongue, the result may sometimes be barely comprehensible
to native English speakers.

3. Approach to teaching word and sentence stress

The differences in suprasegmental features between English and Spanish are

important aspects that students should be aware of and consciously practice and study.

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This idea is supported by Jenkins (2000) who claims that pronunciation teaching must
consider teaching the natural pronunciation of suprasegmentals. Gilbert (2008) also
suggests that instruction should focus on giving learners a prosodic framework for
pronunciation and explain how English speakers depend on rhythm and melody to
organize ideas, signal importance words and make sure their listeners understand the
messages they convey. In addition, she argues that prosodic training helps leaners
improved their ability to clear up misunderstandings during conversations and make
quick repairs. If learners are aware of how prosodic features affect meaning, they
should be able to identify and avoid possible sources of confusion during exchanges.

When teaching pronunciation, however, teachers should consider Brinton’s five

variables: learners, setting, institutional, linguistic and methodological. This assignment
was written keeping in mind a group of beginner adult learners. The students are
enrolled in an English program offered by the university free of cost. They attend
classes once a week for a period of 4 hours, which in my opinion is insufficient. The
students use the book American English File 1, which was selected by the coordination
of the English program. Each course covers 6 units from the book, so for this course,
Basic 2, learners are studying the contents from the second half of the book.

The methodology used in class combines three different approaches: communicative

learning, task-based instruction, and cooperative learning. Students perform an active
role in their learning process, and the teacher acts as a facilitator. The methodology
relies heavily on oral and written production, with the aim of developing communicative
skills that will allow students to use English in real life. Both the objectives and contents
are selected by the institution, so teachers are not allowed to change them.

Due to time constraints, whole pronunciation lessons are not developed in class or the
contents of the syllabus will not be covered in full. However, some time is dedicated to
pronunciation in every class. For example, every unit from the book comes with a
vocabulary exercise. This is a great opportunity for practicing word stress. As Dalton
and Seidhofer (1994) propose, by exercise learners will be able to identify stress
features. This requires providing them with enough practice, so they can perceive the
stress patterns within words and produce these stress patterns correctly when
speaking. Therefore, in addition to doing vocabulary activities such as matching words
with pictures and definitions or fill in the blanks, learners listen to the words and
practice how to say words using appropriate stress. Another exercise that is great with
beginners is to have them listen to the words and classify them according to their

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stress patterns. At this point, explicit phonetic rules are avoided, as they would be too
confusing for students.

Within the units, especial attention is also given to sentence stress since the very
beginning. Since the book focuses heavily on communication, a lot of activities include
listening to and practicing dialogues, doing role plays, interviewing classmates and
working on information gap exercises. Thus, students spend most of the class time
doing speaking activities, especially asking questions to each other. Each unit comes
with a segment that contains dialogues that highlight the stressed words in sentences
and questions. These words are shown in bold and with a bigger font size to show
leaners that they need to be emphasized. Through this kind of technique, learners are
exposed to the sentence stress patterns of English, but without having to analyze the
rules explicitly. As Ball (n.d.) mentions, “the assumption is that students will make
sense of the distinctions presented to them, either by inference or by imitation” (p. 84).
This type of pronunciation practice is not done in isolation, but rather integrated into a
context, according to the topic covered in the lesson.

Jenkins (2000) even suggests that pair work activities are both practical and effective
ways to practice pronunciation and improve communicative skills. If enough exposure
and practice is given, leaners will eventually be able to reduce pronunciation errors that
make their speech difficult to understand. In turn, this helps Spanish learners to
become aware of features of phonological difficulty and to work on developing new
habits that promote intelligibility.

4. Conclusion

There is no doubt that pronunciation plays a major role in learners’ ability to

communicate successfully. Though there are common constraints, teachers should
dedicate at least some time during their lessons to teaching pronunciation and
providing students with a solid base in phonetic and phonological features, through
constant exposure and practice. What to teach and how to teach will depend greatly on
different variables, which teachers should consider when planning pronunciation
activities. These activities should be practical and have a true communicative aim, so
learners can improve their speaking skills inside and outside the classroom.

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5. Bibliography

Ball, P. (n.d.). Teaching Pronunciation. FUNNIBER

Cook, A. (2018). American Accent Training With Audio. Simon and Schuster.

Dale, P., & Poms, L. (2005). English pronunciation made simple. Longman.

Gilbert, J. B. (2008). Teaching pronunciation: Using the prosody pyramid. Cambridge

University Press.

Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford

University Press.

Orion, G. F., & Orion, G. F. (1988). Pronouncing American English: sounds, stress, and
intonation. Newbury House.

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