SUMMARY OF TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

SUMMARY OF

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

(Written by: Janet Goodwin)

By:

Teguh Raharjo

NIM : 100221509261

Email: teguhraharjo71@yahoo.com

Abstract

In “Teaching Pronunciation” the goal of instruction is threefold: firstly is to enable our learners to understand and be understood, secondly is to build their confidence in entering communicative situations, and third is to enable them to monitor their speech based on input from the environment. To accomplish these goals, Goodwin describes the tools we need to teach pronunciation in a systematic and principled way.

A.    INTRODUCTION

Teaching pronunciation is so crucial to our students because pronunciation is the language feature that most readily identifies speakers as non-native. In the past, pronunciation usually focused on the articulation of consonants and vowels and the discrimination of minimal pairs. In recent years, the focus has shifted to include a broader emphasis on suprasegmental features, such as stress and intonation.

B.     THE SEGMENTAL/SUPRASEGMENTAL DEBATE

            Pronunciation instruction historically has emphasized mastery of individual sounds. ESL teachers have acknowledged that an emphasis on meaning and communicative intent alone will not suffice to achieve grammatical accuracy, pronunciation has emerged from the segmental/suprasegmental debate to a more balance view, which recognizes that a lack of intelligibility can be attributed to both micro and macro features.

C.    SETTING REALISTIC GOALS

There are four important goals for pronunciation instruction (Morley:1999).

1.      Functional intelligibility : spoken English in which an accent, if present, is not distracting to the learners.

2.      Functional communicability: the learner’s ability to function successfully within the specific communicative situations he or she faces.

3.      Increased self-confidence: we can design our materials around the situations learners will actually face

4.      Speech monitoring abilities: good learners attend to certain aspects of the speech they hear  and then try to imitate it.

Dalton and Seidlhofer list six communicative abilities related to pronunciation:

1.      Prominence: how to make salient the important points we make

2.      Topic management: how to signal and recognize where one topic ends and another begins

3.      Information status: how to mark what we assume to be shared knowledge as opposed to something new.

4.      Turn-taking: when to speak, and when to be silent, how to yield the floor to somebody else

5.      Social meanings and roles: how to position ourselves

6.      Degree of involvement: how to convey our attitudes, emotions, etc.

D.    A DESCRIPTION OF THE SOUND SYSTEM OF ENGLISH

Traditionally, the sound system has been described and taught in a building block fashion:

Sounds à syllables à phrases àThought groups à extended discourse

There are two approaches in mastering sound:

a.       Bottom-up approach

b.      Top-down approach

There are nine aspects in description of the sound system of English:

1.      Thought Groups

We use pauses to divide our speech into manageable chunks.

Thought groups usually represent a meaningful grammatical unit.

Example:

I was speaking to him / on the phone yesterday  à true

I was speaking to / him on the / phone yesterday  à false

      Compare with:

Alfred said / the boos is stupid

Alfred / said the boos / is stupid

It is an ambiguous phrases

2.      Prominence

I was SPEAKing to him / on the PHONE yesterday  

The prominent element depends on context but generally represents information that is either .

a.      New:

(I got a postcard from Sue.)

She’s in Mexico.

b.      In contrast to some other previously mentioned information:

(Are you leaving at five thirty?)

No, SIX thirty.

c.       Simply the most meaningful or important item in the phrase:

He’s studying ecoNOMics

3.      Intonation

Speech is divided up into thought group marked by pauses, and each thought group one prominent element is stressed. Each thought group has another distinctive feature, is called intonation.

Example:

Going out

Ted           : are you READy yet?

Lee           : No, I need to call DAVE first.

Ted           : why’s THAT?

Lee           : Because HE’S the one who’s giving us a LIFT!

4.      Rhythm

English speech rhythm is usually referred to as stress-timed. The following sentence is an example with stresses or beats occurring at regular intervals.

She would’ve liked to have gone to the movie.

(11 syllables but only 3 beats)

5.      Reduced Speech

Many function words are unstressed, they have both a citation form (full, strong, or stressed) and a reduced form (unstressed or weak).

Here are two examples:

Citation Form                                                Reduced Form

HAS    à He has? /hæz/                                 What has he done now? /oz/

   TO    à Do you want to? /tuw/                   a ticket to Tucson Tucson (tə)

The reduced form of has exhibits two types of reduction:

a.       Loss of full vowel quality the vowel  /æ / has been reduced to a schwa /   /

b.      Loss of sound, the initial h. in the second example, to, only the vowel /uw/ has been reduced.

6.      Linking

Linking is a general term for the adjustments speakers make between words in connected speech.

The examples below provide the listener with the distinction between present and past:

Present                        =  They live in Miami

                                 (The v should be linked clearly between live and in)

Past                 =  They live-din Miami

                                 (The d should be linked to the next syllable in)

7.      Consonants

Consonant sounds are characterized by:

a.       Place of articulation à where the sound is made

b.      Manner of articulation à how the sound is made

c.       Voicing à whether the vocal cords are vibrating or not

There are some considerations to teach consonants:

1)      We need to decide whether phonetics symbol are necessary.

2)      The articulation of consonant varies depend on its environment

3)      Clustering is the feature of English consonants that presents a challenge to our students

8.      Vowels

Vowel sounds are the syllable core, the sound within the syllable that resonates and can be lengthened and shortened.

What are the challenges in teaching vowels?

a.       English has more vowels than many other languages (Japanese has 5 vowels; English has 14 vowels)

b.      Most vowels can be spelled in many different ways

c.       Vowel sounds are usually reduced in unstressed syllable

The vowel chart can be seen in appendix 4, p. 135

9.      Word stress

English word stress patterns are somewhat complex and can depend on several factors:

a.       The historical origin of a word

b.      The part of speech

c.       Affixation

In very general terms:

1.    Stress falls more often on the root or base of a word and less often on aprefix:

beLIEVE, preDICT, comPLAINT

2.    Compound nouns tend to take primary stress on the first element and secondary stress on the second:

AIRPLANE, BUS STOP, comPUter DISK

3.    Suffixes can either

a.       Have no effect on stress

BEAUty                   à        BEAUtiful

deLIVER                  à        deliverance

perFORM                 à        perFORMer

b.      Take the primary stress themselves (many of these are from French):

picturesque, trustee, engineer, balloon

c.       Cause the stress pattern in the stem to shift to a different syllable:

PERiod                     à        periODic

SEquence                  à        seQUENtial

ORganize                  à        organiZAtion

E.    A COMMUNICATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

There are five teaching stages in teaching pronunciation instruction (Goodwin: 1996):

1.      Description and Analysis

2.      Listening Discrimination

3.      Controlled Practice

4.      Guided Practice

5.      Communicative Practice

F.     SOME TEACHING TECHNIQUES

There are six teaching techniques in pronunciation:

1.      Contextualized minimal pair practice

Bowen (1975) was one of the first to stress the importance of teaching pronunciation in meaningful contexts. Contextualized minimal pair drills include more than individual sound contrast as shown below.

Word stress

Is it elementary?                        No, it’s advanced.

Is it a lemon tree?                      No, an orange tree.

2.      Cartons and drawings

Cartoon and drawings can be used to cue production of particular sentences or an entire story as well as for showing language in context.

3.      Gadgets and props

Cuisenaire rods can illustrate rhythm by using longer rods for stressed syllables and shorter rods for unstressed syllables.

4.      Rhymes, poetry, and jokes

Vaughan-Rees (1991) has devised poem to illustrate and reinforce some of the basic spelling rules in English. Jokes can also be used in pronunciation classroom.

5.      Drama

Drama is a particularly effective tool for pronunciation teaching because various components of communicative competence can be practiced in an integrated way.

6.      Kinesthetic activities

We speak with our vocal organs, but we converse with our whole bodies.

G.      AN INTEGRATED WHOLE-BODY APPROACH TO TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

1.      Audio

Audio recording is the most basic way to capture sound-either a model or the student’s own speech-for the learner to review.

2.      Video

Commercial films and off-air television recording can be used to teach pronunciation but are subject to copyright law.

3.      Computer software

A number of CD-ROM programs now exist that target pronunciation.

4.      Internet

The internet offers a wide array of resources for both teachers and students of pronunciation.

H.    ASSESSMENT

There are three types of pronunciation assessment:

1.      Diagnostic evaluation

The learners read a passage designed to contain a variety of features and sounds. Then they are prompted by a topic, a series of questions or illustration

2.      Ongoing feedback

There are three main ways of providing ongoing feedback:

a.      Self-Monitoring

-          gestures

-          pronunciation correction signs

-          charts

b.      Peer Feedback

c.       Teacher Feedback

-          Errors which cause a breakdown in communication

-          Errors which occur as a pattern, not as isolated mistakes

-          Errors which relate to the pronunciation points we are teaching

d.      Classroom Achievement Tests

Classroom achievement tests evaluate learners’ progress according to what has been taught and are consequently more focused than diagnostic assessment.