29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof.

DANIELA FARR

HOW TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION

INTELLIGIBILITY It is being understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation. When we set intelligibility as our goal, rather than native-like pronunciation, in practical terms this means we are aiming for something close enough.

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3. Building awareness and concern for pronunciation BY Joanne Ken worthy It is our job as teachers to create awareness so we have to order the components from basic to complex and showing the learner why each component must be learnt. English has various components such as sounds, stress and variation in pitch and the learners need to understand the function of them. Learners also need to develop a concern for pronunciation. They must recognize that poor, unintelligible speech will make their attempt to communicate frustrating and unpleasant for bother the listener and the speaker.

Activities: STRESS London London O o if we have a magnetic board, we can drink circles or disks and move them in order to show stress pattern. Following up activities: a tape analysis, native speaker pronouncing non-native places, students have to write the names down and check if they are correct. BAG with objects: we can prepare a worksheet with columns and we write: it is a wallet Oo

RHYTHM Alternation of strong and weak syllables. Introductory activities: rhymes, verse, tongue twisters . First, students have to identify content words: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. We read firstly. So they can notice the strong and weak beats. Follow-up activities: given them an incomplete phrase in which they have to write a word which fit the meaning of the line but with the required stress pattern.

Ceci Castellucci

29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof. DANIELA FARR

SENTENCES STRESS: MAIN SENTENCE STRESS In order to put stress on the words which carry the most information, students need to be aware of this. Students need to be selective so in order to teach them to be like this, we prepare an activity: You give them a special task; they have to send a telegram so tell them they shouldnt use many words, each word will cost X, and they have X amount of money and they have to give all the necessary information. They can omit pronouns and prepositions and make them read it using gesture for the important words. They can also write headlines in which articles, auxiliary verbs and prepositions are often omitted. Collect a few examples of headlines from newspapers. We can use recording in order to listen to how they are read. Shifting stress: important words are stress but sometimes when they are repeated they are not. Make them write dialogues with repeated words so they can work in groups of two and A asks a question placing the stress on the new word and B answers shifting the stress to another word. Two groups: one has the list of ingredients they need for recipe and the other group has the list of ingredients available in the shop so they ask and answer shifting stresses.

INTONATION They can prepare a dialogue and hum it instead of reading. They can also prepare role-plays and suggest specific attitudes so make students try to convey those messages though attitudes. Use gestures, noises and facial expressions. They can play a game called getting warmer: an object is hidden and instead of saying warmer they should use noises and colder.

SOUNDS: MINIMAL PAIRS Select the sounds you want to work on. Prepare sets of minimal pairs. Put on the tape and students should tick the correct one. Game: phonetic bingo: select words to test the perception of the sounds in English. Mouse / mouth . use problematic consonants and vowel sounds. Teaching pronunciation by Kelly, Gerald Why teach it? y y y y It can lead to misunderstandings It can be frustrating for the speaker not to communicate It can lead to problems of reception: invitation, command. Mood

Ceci Castellucci

29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof. DANIELA FARR

Problems with pronunciation teaching: y y It tends to be neglected When it is not neglected, it is reactive to a particular problem.

Neglected because of the lack of interest of teachers in the subject and a feeling of doubt as to how to teach it. But learners show enthusiasm for pronunciation. Teachers need theory, classroom skills and good ideas for classroom activities. But when planning, teachers tend to make grammar their first concern. We need to include features of pronunciation in order to give them a full picture of the language. Integrated lessons: include pronunciation. Remedial or active lessons: Practice English is spoken by many people as a second language so there is disagreement over the model of English one should teach. RP was the model but it is associated to social status, the BBC but nowadays it is decaying and only a 3% of the pop. Speak it. We need to work on issues of production and reception, enabling students to understand a wide range of varieties.

PRONUNCIATION TEACHING BY CRISTIANO DALTON AND BARBARA Anybody able to speak the language would be qualified to teach it. The issue is not how but what to teach. Approaches: Bottom up: beginning with the articulation of individual vowels and consonants and then to intonation (structuralism) To-down approach: beginning with patterns of intonation to sounds (it focuses on how speakers achieve meaning in discourse) List of priorities:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Consonants Vowel quality: long.short Syllabic structure Syllabic values: strong, weak Rhythm Prominence and tonicity Tones Articulation: lax Vowel quality: Pitch levels: high mid low Voice quality

Ceci Castellucci

29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof. DANIELA FARR

How to choose an approach: Consistency with a general approach Purpose of the course Students mother tongue Students characteristics

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TEACHING VS LEARNIBILITY There can never be a one-to-one relationship between what is taught and what is learnt because of learners attitude to the target language. y y y y y Fortis and lenis are teachable The attitudinal use of intonation is sth that is best acquired through talking with and listening to English speakers. Tones should be taught Sound segments are easy to teach Stress is in the middle

INTONATION It is important but difficult. It is often referred to as vocal gestures. Playing with gestures is a good idea to learn intonation. Images convey certain messages. First they should chunk the utterances into tone units since they reflect the speakers organization of the message. The most teachable function of intonation is the signaling of prominence, with the help of pitch, loudness, vowel lengthened. Exercise: putting the tone according to the attitude suggested.

FOCUS ON STRESS The author suggests that work on stressed syllables should be more explicit than what we tend to do with graphics ex. Oo. He suggests Kinaesthetic experiences to achieve this. It consists of the simultaneous activation of different sensations such as hearing and movement. For the purpose of teaching the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables we have two alternatives: we can concentrate on the stressed syllables or on the unstressed ones.

Activity: replace the unstressed syllables by the schwa. Or you can dictate a set of words and the have to classify them according to weak or strong syllables.

Ceci Castellucci

29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof. DANIELA FARR

Students need to perceive differences before they can be expected to produce them. They can start listening for schwa without the written version of the words, in order to avoid interference from spelling. They can memorize sounds, meaning, and spelling from the dictionary.

i What are the advantages and disadvantages of learning word-stress by this approach?  Advantages: learners have access to dictionaries and use them frequently. They can develop an intuitive feeling about word-stress. Disadvantages: not everyone can remember large amounts of data.

The obvious alternative is to present rules. But the problem is that we present general rules and this does not cover all the cases. They are hard to remember and hard to apply them. We have to encourage children to discover them so they will remember them. We should focus on stressed syllables. We need to teach stress on dialogues not in isolation.

STRESS TIME The use of a metronome is perhaps the most striking way of establishing this regular tick-tock. (Sth with a rhythm beat) Encourage students to increase their speed in reading when doing this. But try to transport the importance of isochrony in some other way. Activities: tap on desks, clap their hands, and make conducting movements. Use rhymes, poems and limericks. Include humorous rhythmical material. The focus has changed from the isochrony principle towards differentiation between stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm is seen as a by-product of the alternation of weak and strong syllables, rather than sth that exists independently and in its own right. Exercise: listen to a conversation and underline the content words.

TEACHING WEAK FORMS Unstressed syllables need explicit attention in the classroom. A good grasp of the weak forms of English is essential to a good pronunciation and listening comprehension. Function words, articles, prepositions, pronouns, are usually unstressed. They serve to express grammatical relationship. In concentrating on them, we are actually trying hard not to pay attention to them. We need activities which make learners think about the relative importance of parts of the message. Activity: the telegram.

Ceci Castellucci

29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof. DANIELA FARR

FOCUS ON CONNECTED SPEECH With enough language exposure and experience, students will be able to cope with processes of simplification. With this, they wont sound formal, it will contribute to fluency and to the ability of comprehension. It helps to keep rhythm. It is better to let our students to produce them when they feel to do so. But it is useful for listening. Assimilation They have make students aware of this process: wanna, gotcha . Gotcha: palatalization; before /j/ sound /t/ turns into /t / and /d/ turns into /d / it occurs often when a verb , auxiliary word is followed by you or yet. Eg: not yt, cant you. Game: questions and answers. Elision This helps to highlight the most important words. Linking Students think that each word should be pronounced they way they looked on the printed page. So their speech is replete with pauses. Catenation activities cause the restructuring of syllables so that final clusters become initial: ex. Watch out/ wa + chout. This process is best learnt in action. Provide students with a dialogue and mark certain words so they can apply the assimilatory processes. Sounds: Activities: yes/no game: provide them with cards and dictate words with difficult sounds so ask them that if they listen to a x sound, they should raise the yes card if not the no card.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM: communicating vs noticing It is said that language teaching should be communicative; based on meaningful interaction rather than on the practice of isolated forms. So in order to learn language items, they need to be noticed first. And in order to be noticed, they need to be highlighted. Learners need to be exposed. Avoid meaningless drills but make sure your students notice the sounds and focus on communication. The most common types of excersies for focusing on sound production are listen, repeat, minimal pairs , minimal pairs sentences and tongue twisters. Ex. Uestions and answers: he wants to buy my boat: will you sell it? He wants to buy my vote: thats against the law! They can create their own tongue twisters: initial sounds in common.

Ceci Castellucci

29- PT Del Carmen Teacher Training College PHONETICS IV Prof. DANIELA FARR

INNOCENCE VS SOPHISTICATION Stevens puts forwards two principles of learning pronunciation: 1. Most students learn by imitation alone, but this ability decreases with age. 2. Older learners need and want specialized, intellectualized teaching methods. The more sophisticated the learner, the more sophisticated the instruction that can be used.

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We should take account of individual students and their learning ability in relation to age. Activities: phonetic scripts, pronunciation rules: the ability to find pronunciation and stresses, the ability to record their own handwriting.

We should concentrate on individual sounds and to practice them in isolation or in minimal pairs. Another view is that many learners acquire new sounds more easily in context. It is not recommended to start teaching pronunciation through the teaching of sounds but older and more analytically minded students prefer this approach because sounds are the most tangible aspect of pronunciation.

CRITERIA TO FOLLOW WHEN TEACHING SOUNDS y y Hierarchy of difficulty (based on the differences between Spanish and English) Frequency of sounds: it can be used for pronunciation teaching by counting how often phonemes occur in running texts. In English the most frequent consonant is / / and the most frequent vowel is / /. Teachers may decide to give priority to frequent sounds while not devoting much time to infrequent ones. y Functional load: this principle refers to the number of words in which a phoneme contrast occurs in the whole lexicon of a language-in other words, how many minimal pairs are formed by a particular phoneme contrast. Eg. /i:/ and /i/

Ceci Castellucci