LECTURE 15
TEACHING PRONUNCIATION
1. Teaching pronunciation:
· Does pronunciation need to be deliberately taught?,
· Should be taught in the shape of specific pronunciation exercises?,
· Should it be taught in the course of other oral activities?,
· Won't it just be "picked" up?.
2. The most relevant features of pronunciation:
o INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS - the smallest unit of speech (phoneme),
o combination of phonemes (consonant clusters),
o words stress,
o connected speech -> sentence stress, intonation,
o LINKING - a phenomenon in which two sounds are connected between adjacent words and pronounced in a continuous flow from one word to another:
Ø consonants and vowels: come on,
Ø consonants and consonants: root beer,
Ø identical consonants: red deer,
o ASSIMILATION - two adjacent consonants are pronounced and the articulation of the first consonant is altered under the influence of the second consonant, e.g.: at this - from alveolar to interdental.
3. Look at this red doll.:
· a liaison linking between book and at,
· an assimilation between at and the,
· an open juncture linking between red and doll.
4. A pronunciation should be an integral part of an English teaching programme from the early stages, just as the teaching of structures and vocabulary. Very often it is as vital to the meaning as the form: intonation (question tags), vowel length.
5. Pronunciation instruction:
o model/imitation (let them hear, ask them to repeat),
o practice (make the students practice a lot),
o explanation,
o comparison and contrast (for example minimal pairs).
6. Contextualizing pronunciation practice: (teaching pronunciation through context):
Productive contextualization suggests:
· pronunciation features and contrasts should carry meaning,
· situations should be meaningfully related to students' interests and experience,
· the repetition of specific drills and situations should be minimised,
· at least some exercises should be designed to give practice when the students attention is on the context rather than the form of the message.
7. How to affect motivation and concern for good pronunciation:
o try to persuade learners of the importance of good pronunciation for ease of communication,
o continually emphasise that a native-like account will not be imposed as a goal; intelligibility and communicative effectiveness are the only realistic goals,
o demonstrate concern for learners' pronunciation and their progress in it.
8. Factors that affect pronunciation learning:
· the native language (mother tongue interference),
· the age factor:
Ø flexibility of speech organs (for children it is not a problem),
Ø mother tongue habits,
Ø affective filter (children have no affective filter),
· amount of exposure, quality of exposure,
· phonetic ability,
· motivation and concern for good pronunciation.
9. Sound and spelling:
o EXAMPLE I:
Ø at low levels students can be made aware that:
v letter r is silent when preceding a consonant, e.g.: card, park,
v or when it appears at the end of a word, e.g.: rather, weather,
o EXAMPLE II:
Ø the silent k in words beginning with kn such as: knife, knee,
Ø or silent b at the end of words preceded by m, e.g.: dumb, bomb.
10. How to create order out of apparent chaos?:
· CUT, COME, COUNTRY, BLOOD, DOES (we can use colour coding to indicate a sound that is represented by different spelling),
· ABOUT, POCKET, PUPIL, CONTAIN, CIRCUS (introducing "schwa").
11. Colour coding: some examples:
o there are three possible pronunciations of the regular -ed ending: /t/, /d/, /Id/:
Ø jumped,
Ø saved,
Ø waited.
12. Teaching individuals sounds:
· perception based activities:
Ø recognizing sounds: same, different (how many times did you hear that, etc.),
· production (when there is no need to stay at perception level).
13. If problems appear:
o planned remedial (over some period of time you decide what pronunciation problems students have and you prepare remedial lesson to solve the problem),
o instant remedial (reacting on the spot of conversation).
14. Word stress:
· there are different stress patterns: Ooo Oo oO: receipts, handkerchief, wallet, lighter, eyeliner, aspirin,
· position of the primary stress - important factor in being intelligible, e.g. Police.
15. There are stress patterns which are sufficiently generative for the teacher to present as rules:
o words with the following endings usually have the primary stress on the syllable preceding them:
Ø -ic, -ical, e.g.: enthusiastic, geographical,
Ø -ian, e.g.: Indian, Italian.
16. Sentence stress:
· the relative importance of parts of a message:
Ø - Is Colin happy in his job? - No, he is going to move.,
Ø - Did you say Colin had moved? - No, he is going to move.
17. INTONATION - the music of the language, the way voice goes up and down as we speak. Pitch movement which signals the speaker's meaning.
18. Intonation patterns are quite complex and it is better to acquire them naturally rather than to learn then consciously.
19. The basic intonation patterns:
o rising (yes/no questions) - to express surprise, belief,
o falling - normal statements, commands.
20. How to show intonation patterns?:
· by drawing or using gestures:
21. The easiest way to practice pronunciation is by repetition:
Ø back chaining (from the end to the beginning of the sentence).
22. English is an intonational language. The pitch movement does not affect the lexical meaning of the words, but does affect the message we convey.
23. RHYTHM - a strong regular repeated pattern of sounds or movements.
24. Pronunciation tests:
o they are rare,
o included when testing listenin...
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