CRITICAL REVIEW of TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

CRITICAL REVIEW

of

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

(Written by: Janet Goodwin)

By:

Teguh Raharjo

NIM : 100221509261

Email: teguhraharjo71@yahoo.com

Abstract

This paper reviews the chapter entitled “Teaching Pronunciation” by Janet Goodwin from the book “Teaching English as Second or Foreign Language” Celce-Murcia (ED) 3^rd edition. In this article, the author will also give the pro and contra side about the material discuss in the chapter. However, the author will not only criticize the chapter but also he will a solution or advice to the things being critic later on.

Keywords: Critical review, teaching pronunciation

A.    INTRODUCTION

     

                Teaching pronunciation is so crucial to our students because pronunciation is the language feature that most readily identifies speakers as non-native. I actually agree with Goodwin’s article that written in the book “Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.”  However, I would like to give some criticism. First I think he doesn’t explain/discuss about the factors within learners that affect pronunciation. Second, I think he doesn’t explain clearly about Suprasegmental Feature and Segmental Feature.

In the context of English language teaching (ELT), pronunciation is an integral aspect of communicative competence that can impact the desire to use the language as well as the quantity and quality of input received and output produced . Pronunciation tends to be neglected in the second language (L2) classroom, and L2 teachers are frightened by the idea of teaching pronunciation.

This paper reviews seven goals that are very important for teaching pronunciation. They are increased attention from researchers, focus on developing learners’ communicative competence, a focus on teacher education, focus on intelligibility/ comprehensibility, focus on methods and materials development, use of useful instructional software, and focus on the suprasegmentals.

B.     BODY/DISCUSSION

From Janet Goodwin’s discussion, I think he doesn’t explain/discuss about the factors within learners that affect pronunciation. Brown (2007:340-341) states that there are six factors within the learners that affect pronunciation (adapted from Kenworthy, 1987, pp.4-8).

1.      Native language. Clearly, native language is the most influential factor affecting a learner’s pronunciation. If you are familiar with the sound system of a learner’s native language, you will be better able to diagnose student difficulties.

2.       Age. Generally speaking, children under the age of puberty stand an excellent chance of “sounding like a native.” If they have continued exposure in authentic contexts.

3.      Exposure. It is difficult to define exposure. One can actually live in a foreign country for some time but not take advantage of being with the people.

4.      Innate phonetic ability. If pronunciation seems to be naturally difficult for some students, they should not despair; with some effort and concentration, they can improve their competence.

5.      Identity the language ego. Learners need to be reminded of the importance of positive attitude toward the people who speak the language.

6.      Motivation and concern for good pronunciation. Some learners are not particularly concerned about their pronunciation, while others are.

Second, I think he doesn’t explain clearly about Suprasegmental Feature and Segmental Feature.

Suprasegmental Feature

Suprasegmental features relate to sounds at the macro level. Advances in research have developed descriptions of the suprasegmental feature of speech extending across whole stretches of language (prosody).Unlike languages such as Vietnamese or Mandarin which are tonal, English is stress-timed and syllable-timed (for example, WHAT’s his address?). Jenkins (2002) emphasizes that effective communicative pronunciation competence can be achieved more though improving supra-segmental production in preference to segmental. Lingking, intonation and stress are important features for effective pronunciation at the suprasegmental level (Burns,2003)

Segmental Feature

            According to Seferoglu (2005), segmental aspects of the sound system include individual vowels and consonants. Because segmental phonology is relatively more easily explained and taught than supra-segmental features, some studies focus on studying segmental phonology in preference to suprasegmental features. Segmental features relate to sounds at the micro level. They include specific sounds within words (for example, l as in lamp, r  as in ramp, a as in  hat). The sounds system of consonant, vowels or their combinations are called phonemes. Phonemes are sounds that, when pronounced incorrectly, can change the meaning of the word (Burns, 2003).

There are seven goals that are very important for teaching pronunciation (Gilakjani, 2012).

1.      Increased Pronunciation Research

Many teachers do not pay enough attention to pronunciation instruction. L2 teachers are worried that they aren’t well prepared to teach pronunciation, or even to incorporate some pronunciation activities into their regular language classrooms. They feel as though they don’t know where to start. This is where research comes in. Practical research can help teachers to determine where to put the focus. They show that most of the phonological changes that immigrants make in acquiring their L2 occur during the first year in the L2 environment.

They have carried out a similar study with consonants and consonant clusters in word-initial and word-final position and found that many segments and combinations of segments did not require any intervention. These are just a few examples to show that research does have something to contribute to what teachers do in the classroom.

2.      Focus on Developing Learners’ Communicative Competence

Communicative competence is the aim of pronunciation teaching and learning. It stresses the need for meaningful communicative tasks in the language classroom, including those that focus on pronunciation. Pronunciation exercises that relate to daily use of English include, for example, role-plays of requests that learners have to make (e.g., to ask a boss for a day off or to ask a bank teller to cash a check). Learners can become careful listeners in their own conversations. It shows that learners need exposure to conversations so they can hear variation in pronunciation. By using audiotapes and videotapes, teachers can give learners meaningful exposure to variation in pronunciation and increase their communicative competence.

3.      Focus on Pronunciation in Teacher Education

There have been many improvements in pronunciation instruction, and others have published very useful resources for teachers. There are very few TESL programs that offer a full course in teaching pronunciation. There are TESL programs that have no requirement for even an introductory course in linguistics, which is surprising indeed. In addition to initial training for all ESL/EFL teachers, there is also a role for ongoing professional development. Some studies show that many ESL/EFL teachers don’t feel comfortable dealing with teaching pronunciation. An increased focus on pronunciation should extend to classroom teachers as well, even though they are not necessarily designated as language teachers.

While English is a stress-timed language, many other languages are syllable-timed languages. English tends to stress one or two syllables and pronounce the rest of the word or sentence. This means that English sounds are often unclear to some speakers of other languages. Therefore, pronouncing equally stressed words or sentences may increase students’ comprehension along with adjusted speech rate. Teachers should be modeling accurate pronunciation, not trying to imitate their L2 students by putting equal stress on every syllable. Students should be able to communicate with other people in the community. They need to hear which syllables have reduced vowels and which do not.

4.      Focus on Intelligibility and Comprehensibility

The other goal is a focus on intelligibility and comprehensibility, rather than accentedness. Accentedness is a judgment of how much one’s speech differs phonologically from the local variety. Intelligibility is the degree to which a listener understands a speaker. Comprehensibility is a judgment of how easy or difficult an individual’s pronunciation is to understand. In other words, accent is difference, comprehensibility is effort, and intelligibility is actual understanding.

The intelligibility principle is the basis of the other approach, which holds that L2 speakers should be comfortably understandable. It published an extensive study in Language Learning, in which they examined the nativeness of nearly 200 individuals who spoke Swedish as a second language. Spanish was the L1 of all the participants, who started learning Swedish between the ages of 1 and 47 years. These people were chosen because they self-identified as being native-like in Swedish and all were extremely high proficiency. When compared to native speakers in a battery of tests, none of the late learners (over the age of 11 when they started speaking Swedish) had equivalent scores. Thus, despite their exceptional language skills, these high proficiency L2 speakers were not comparable to native speakers.

5.      Focus on Methods and Materials Development

Gilakjani suggests that ESL teachers “need to be provided with courses and materials to help them improve their effectiveness in teaching pronunciation.” She adds that there is also a need for “high quality, effective materials, especially computer-based materials with audio demonstrations, for learners of ESL pronunciation, both for self-access and for use in classes where the teacher needs support of this kind.”  Teachers need a greater appreciation of the pronunciation difficulties faced by learners of ESL and the reasons for these difficulties, and a simple framework for understanding the situation of the second language learner.

Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) for pronunciation can be an effective tool as it “provides electronic visual feedback (EVF), which can help meet this essential need by showing the exact sound features that learners produce and thereby drawing attention to changes that they need to make.”

6.      Use of Useful Instructional Software

The next goal is to use more easy-to-use and useful instructional software. There are some very good researchers who have worked with technology, and there are some good programs, but nowhere near enough. Teachers have been encouraged to use technology resources. It is necessary that more teacher-friendly resources be developed. The key benefit of computer assisted pronunciation training is that it can be individualized to the student’s needs.

Automatic speech recognition would give learners the feedback they need, but unfortunately, it is unlikely to reach an accurate enough level for some time. There are current technologies that have great promise for opportunities to practice speaking comprehensibly with real listeners, but the extent to which the average ESL/EFL teacher uses these resources to improve pronunciation is a question in our mind.

7.      Focus on the Suprasegmentals

In the late 1970s, several teachers/theorists took a stand by suggesting that at a very basic level if communicative competence was the goal of language learning, then it would have as one of its essential components, intelligible pronunciation. For this reason, intelligibility rather than the native-like competence valued in traditional approaches became the goal of phonological instruction. Therefore, teaching speech from the perspective of suprasegmentals seems indispensable within the communicative approach to teaching EFL.

Curriculum and syllabus designers need to focus on the suprasegmental features of pronunciation. In making their case for emphasis in teaching rhythm to ESL learners in China for example, discovered that Chinese students were not aware of the difference between the rhythm of the syllable-timed Chinese language and the stress timed English language and therefore drawing their attention to this suprasegmental feature helped significantly in improving their communicative ability. Recent approaches to teaching pronunciation in computer-based contexts follow the communicative approach in teaching pronunciation.

The last, Goodwin doesn’t mention factors that affecting the learning of pronunciation.

The teaching and learning of pronunciation have focused on the follow­ing issues: the importance of accent, stress, intonation, and rhythm in the comprehensibility of the speech of nonnative speakers; the effects of motivation and expo­sure on the development of native-like pronunciation; and the intelligibility of speech among speakers of dif­ferent English varieties.

a.      Accent

An accent is “the cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation that identify where a person is from, regionally or socially”

b.      Stress, Intonation, and Rhythm

For this reason, pronunciation research and teaching focus both on the sounds of language (vowels and consonants) and on suprasegmental features-that is, vocal effects that extend over more than one sound-such as stress, sen­tence and word intonation, and speech rhythm

c.       Motivation and Exposure

Along with age at acquisition of a language, the learner’s motivation for learning the language and the cultural group that the learner identifies and spends time with help determine whether the learner will develop native-like pronunciation.

d.      Intelligibility and Varieties of English

Because English has become an international language, teachers need to keep in mind that their adult students will speak with both native and nonnative English speakers outside of the classroom (e.g., a fellow student or a boss at work may be a native speaker of Bengali, Spanish, or Vietnamese). Jenkins’ seminal work (2000) on the phonology of English as an international lan­guage. Jenkins (2002) calls these minimal features of pronunciation a lingua franca core. Teachers of adults learning English should be aware that the goal of improving pronunciation for many adult learners is mutual intelligibility, not perfection.

C.    CONCLUSION

Most teacher preparation programs can introduce some focus on L2 pronunciation issues and that pronunciation can be better incorporated into L2 curricula and better assessed. We are now at a point where most L2 teachers recognize that there is nothing wrong with having an accent, and that intelligibility and comprehensibility should be the goals of L2 speakers, not native-like status. Technology is advancing and there is a key role for virtual worlds and other sorts of practice opportunities informed by research. There are always at least two people involved in real communication and both sides should try to achieve communicative success, rather than putting all the responsibility on the shoulders of the L2 speaker. Teachers in the field of pronunciation teaching and research are the people best equipped to help L2 students. For those of us who teach at universities and colleges, we can start with our own students. A major change in teachers’ attitudes towards pronunciation instruction is indispensable and it is their job to speed up change. By incorporating current research and its implications into their teaching practice, teachers can help learners gain the skills they need for effective communication in English. It must be borne in mind that teachers are the models for their learners, so first of all they should have good pronunciation; otherwise, they can harm their students.

References

Brown, H. D. (2007). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. (3^rd ) Edition. White Plains, New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Burn, A. (2003). Clearly speaking: pronunciation in action for teachers. National Center for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquaire Universiydney NSW 2109.

Gilakjani, P, A, A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners’ English Pronunciation Learning and Strategies for Instruction. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Vol 2 No 3: February 2012.

Jenkins, J. (2002). A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics, 23,83-103.

Seferoglu, G. (2005). Improving students’ pronunciation through accent reduction software. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(3), 303-316.