Unit 15 Pronunciation 1 [PDF]

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Unit 15: Pronunciation 1 Introduction Along with grammar and lexis, pronunciation is a key area of language which teachers need to focus on in the classroom. Not only is pronunciation work useful to help learners with how they sound in English, but it will also help learners understand proficient speakers better. Therefore, it is important for teachers to help learners with this area of language to improve both their speaking and their listening skills.

Learning Objectives By the end of this unit, you will have: 

examined students’ views on pronunciation

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identified different features of pronunciation and explored problems learners have with these

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explored ways of responding to difficulties learners have with pronunciation

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analysed ways of helping students improve their pronunciation and examined published material focusing on pronunciation.

Task 2: Difficult Sounds It is clear from the previous task that students with different L1s will struggle with different sounds. This is because certain sounds may not exist in other languages, such as, the /z/ sound in Spanish, which is why Spanish speakers often use /s/, thus pronouncing fleas and fleece the same. Similarly, the ‘th’ /θ/ is not used in Brazilian Portuguese which is why Samia finds this sound hard to pronounce. In most languages, there are sounds which are equivalent to those in English. However, in some languages there are also sometimes sounds that fall somewhere in the middle between two sounds that are clearly distinct in English. This happens in Arabic with the English sounds /p/ and /b/, which explains why Nahed appears to say examble instead of example. Other examples of sounds which are not differentiated include: /b/ and /v/ for Spanish speakers or /l/ and /r/ for speakers of Japanese.

Word Stress 1 Nahed says she finds long words difficult to pronounce; for example, she identified environment as challenging. This is because it has a number of syllables. Some words have only one syllable, such as dog or door, whereas others may have two (ea-sy, wa-ter), three (com-pu-ter, te-le-phone) or more (tech-no-lo-gy, cos-mo-po-li-tan). In words with more than one syllable there is one strong stress and students often have trouble knowing where to put

the stress. For example, in environment, the strong stress is on ‘vi’ as in en-vi-ron-ment. This area of pronunciation is called word stress. Other learners of English can make similar mistakes. For example, Spanish speakers might say message with the stress on the ‘sage’ rather than on the ‘me’. This is because in Spanish the word is mensaje and the stress falls on the ‘sa’. Another area that can be problematic for students is when word stress changes depending on whether the word is a noun or a verb. For example in Can you record that programme? the stress on the verb ‘record’ is on ‘cord’. But if we use the noun as in I need to make a record of your progress the stress falls on the first syllable ‘re’. Word stress is a very important area for students to focus on since it has a great impact on whether or not they will be understood by proficient speakers. Often learners can make a change to a sound e.g. pronunshiation instead of pronunciation but the listener can still understand the message. In contrast, wrong word stress e.g. pro-nun-ci-a-tion rather than pronun-ci-a-tion can cause difficulty for the listener and, as they may fail to recognize the word, lead to a breakdown in communication.

Student Problems with Sentence Stress A third area of pronunciation which can be challenging for students is sentence stress: which words are stressed and unstressed in a sentence or clause. It can be very difficult for learners to know which words or syllables should carry the stress to make their speech intelligible for the listener. Putting stress on all words or placing the stress incorrectly in a sentence or utterance can affect the listener. For example, Nahed tends to stress almost every word equally, which affects the rhythm of her speech. This can cause strain for the listener and sometimes results in the message being lost.

Task 7: Stressed Words 1. Conversation A contains words including auxiliary verbs, pronouns, prepositions and articles. These can be referred to as the grammatical words. 2. Conversation B contains words including nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. These are called the content or meaning words. 3. Conversation B carries the stressed words or syllables. 4. Therefore, it can be seen that the content words normally take the prominence in the sentence. In summary, it can be seen that in speech the words which will normally carry the stress are the meaning or content words. In this way, it helps guide the listener to what the key information in the message is. This is often referred to as neutral sentence stress.

Task 9: Contrastive Sentence Stress

There is also another type of sentence stress: contrastive sentence stress. This is where the speaker adds extra stress or volume to a word (these could be content words or grammar words) and the speaker will choose to do this for several reasons. Therefore it can be seen that contrastive sentence is used to correct information, emphasise and contrast particular information to the listener.

Stress-timed and Syllable-timed Languages English tends to be a stress-timed language which means that the stress tends to fall at more or less equal intervals of time regardless of the number of syllables in between. For example, compare ‘Like a drink?’ with, ‘Would you like a little drink?’ Both utterances take up a similar amount of time. The more syllables there are, the quicker they have to be said in order to fit them into the rhythm. Therefore, the time taken to say or deliver an utterance depends on the number of stresses and not on the number of syllables. The utterance can be illustrated like this, the sections in bold represent what is stressed. ‘Like a drink?’ ‘Would you like a little drink?’ As well as English, other predominantly stress-timed languages include Dutch and German. This is in contrast to languages such as Korean which is a predominantly syllable-timed language. This is where the time it takes to say an utterance depends on how many syllables it contains. Other predominantly syllable-timed languages include French, Japanese and Spanish.

Task 10: What Did They Hear? Since English is a stress-timed language and the stress tends to fall on the content or meaning words, this has a serious impact on what happens to the other words, such as grammatical words in an utterance. In order to maintain the rhythm over an utterance, the non-content words get compressed or squashed together. This is an important phenomenon to explore with students as it will affect their understanding as listeners. Sinoff dada sinoff – the speaker was saying dada – the speaker was saying ‘John’d had a really busy day

‘that’s

enough’

Although the student knew these words, they were unable to recognise them in connected speech. This suggests it is important for learners to be aware of the features of connected speech and how sounds and words link together as they are spoken.

Task 11: Weak Forms The compression of words between stresses leads to three key changes to pronunciation. The proficient speaker compresses all these grammatical words and they all contain the sound ( ‘er’ )which will be examined in more detail on the next screen.

Strong and Weak Forms Since content words carry the main meaning, these words will carry sentence stress. In contrast, grammatical words which do not carry the main meaning will often take a weak form in an utterance. Therefore some vowel sounds become weak while others remain strong. This means that some grammatical words have two forms, a strong form when the word carries key meaning in a sentence and a weak form when it does not. Below is a selection of these grammatical words and their strong and weak forms. Listen to the recordings to hear the different forms. N.B. the weak forms here can be heard in isolation but they are normally heard within an utterance. In each of the weak forms, the phoneme is used. This is a special phoneme as it is the only one with a name. It is called the schwa (this comes from the Hebrew shva meaning ‘weak’). It is an unstressed sound, and the most common sound in English in continuous speech.

Task 13: Assimilation and Elision As well as weak forms, there are also other phenomena which take place to make speech smoother, quicker and easier to say. b. The /n/ sounds like /m/. In the phrase in Paris the words connect together and change to sound like imParis . This is called assimilation, where a sound at the end (or near the end of a word) changes in preparation for the first sound of the next word. This can happen, for example, when the sound near or at the end of the word is a /n/, /t/ or a /d/and often happens when the next word begins with a /p/, /b/ or /m/ sound. a. Sometimes a sound will disappear, such as the /d/ in Zealand which becomes Zealan This is called elision.

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Connected Speech The previous tasks all explored what happens to unstressed syllables in utterances and what changes may occur to them in order to maintain natural rhythm in English. All of these changes are examples of a phenomenon called connected speech.

Connected speech is a phenomenon in natural, spoken language when language is a continuous sequence as opposed to individual sounds or words in isolation. In addition to weak forms, assimilation and elision, there are also two other features of connected speech.

Task 15: Linking

Sounds Linkage The sentences highlight what is called sounds linkage, where the sound at the end of one word runs into the next. This happens when one word ends in a consonant sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound. This can be seen in many of the sentences, such as not as, can I and piece of. Remember that although the spelling the word piece ends with a vowel, ‘e’, the final sound is a consonant /s/ so it links to vowel sound following it in /ə/ in of. As was discussed earlier, it can be very frustrating for learners to discover that, although they may know the words or phrase in isolation, they are often unable to recognise it in speech because of the way sounds link together. For example, in the first sentence in the previous task, students will hear She’s no tas ta llas I am and can be confused as to what ‘tas’ and ‘las’ mean.

Task 16: Intrusion Finally, there is one more phenomenon which occurs in connected speech. This is when an extra sound can appear when certain sounds connect. This phenomenon of an extra sound appearing is referred to as intrusion. In sentence 1, an extra /j/ sound appears between I am so it sounds like I yam . In sentence 4, an extra /w/ sound can appear between to and a so it sounds like to wa . In sentence 6, an extra /w/ sound appears between two and and. Therefore it can sound like two wand

There can also be an intrusive /r/ sound, such as in the utterance law and order which can sound like law rund order . The fact that these sounds can appear in speech often causes confusion and difficulty for learners. They may well know the words written down or in isolation, but are unable to recognise them when they are listening which can be very frustrating for learners. There is a useful pattern to help remember when intrusive sounds occur between two words: /j/ occurs after a final where the next word begins with a vowel sound, /w/ occurs after a final where the next word begins with a vowel sound, /r/ occurs after a final where the next word begins with a vowel sound.

Task 17: Intonation Functions

You will probably have noticed that your voice rises and falls depending on the information which is being given. In A, the speaker is asking a wh-question so the intonation drops at the end of the question. In the second question, which is a yes/no question, the intonation follows a similar pattern but the change in pitch is much wider. The fact that intonation changes depending on the grammar of the sentence illustrates intonation as a grammatical function. In B, the intonation varies according to the mood or attitude of the speaker. In this case, intonation as an attitudinal function can be seen. Not only does the intonation rise and fall but the changes in pitch are also note-worthy.

In C, the intonation will rise and fall depending on which information the speaker wishes to highlight. As was discussed earlier with sentence stress, the new information is stressed for the listener. To make this clearer, intonation is added to guide the listener. When new information is being signaled, the intonation pattern is usually falling, i.e. In contrast, when the speaker is referring to given information, the intonation pattern is a fall-rise, i.e. The anecdote therefore highlights intonation as discoursal function. This will be explored further in Discourse.

Solutions In summary it can be seen that there are five key aspects to English pronunciation.

Remember that although learners need to develop their pronunciation in order to achieve clear and intelligible English, it is unnecessary and often impossible for learners to achieve ‘perfect’ pronunciation. What is important, however, is for teachers to provide ways of practising and developing learners’ pronunciation in the classroom. You will have already seen teachers in your observations and in your Teaching Practice group responding to difficulties learners may have with pronunciation. There are a number of solutions for helping learners with pronunciation and these can be broadly divided as follows: 

Drilling

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Boardwork

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Coursebook activities

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The Phonemic Chart.

Drilling Nahed had difficulty in pronouncing the sound /p/ in example. In order to help her with this, the teacher could model the sound and the word and ask Nahed and other class members to repeat. This technique, drilling, allows the teacher to drill sounds, words and phrases to help students with all aspects of pronunciation, including sounds, stress and intonation. Modelling the language for the students and drilling helps students achieve better pronunciation of language items, builds their confidence and helps them to remember new items. By repeating words and more usefully, phrases, drilling encourages greater spoken fluency. If you would like to watch clips of experienced teachers drilling and remind yourself of drilling techniques, look back at the unit Using the Coursebook 2 where drilling was examined in more detail.

Boardwork 1 As well as modeling and drilling the language, it is a good idea to write the sounds students have problems with in phonemic script just above the word or syllable. Remember that the Phonemic Chart will be looked at in detail in Pronunciation 2: The Phonemic Chart. For example, the words that students struggle with can be highlighted on the board as below.

By writing the pronunciation on the board, the teacher can provide a written record for the students which they can refer to after the lesson.

Boardwork 2 Similarly, the board can be used to highlight and record word stress and sentence stress by putting stress boxes or circles above the stressed syllable.

It is also useful to show students how stress is recorded in dictionaries so that students can identify word stress outside class. Most learner dictionaries will use a ' symbol before the stressed syllable. The word example will therefore appear as on the second syllable.

as the stress falls

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English The Living Dictionary New Edition (2003)

Task 18: Stress Circles By highlighting the stressed syllables, the learners have a visual image of where the stress falls to reinforce drilling. Not only can the teacher highlight the stressed syllables but the learners can also be asked to predict stress patterns and listen and check. Or the teacher can model the utterances and the students identify where the stress falls. This encourages the students to notice how stress falls on content words and makes the activity more studentcentred. While listening to the sentences, you may have noticed additional, secondary stresses in the sentences. These have not been marked on the model answer for the sake of clarity. Remember stress circles can also be used for word stress and teachers can encourage students to use these when recording new grammar and lexis so that they have a written record of the pronunciation.

Intonation Arrows As with sentence stress, teachers can highlight intonation on the whiteboard for learners. For intonation, it is useful to first mark where the stress falls and then draw arrows from the stressed words. By drawing arrows to show when intonation rises and falls and how much it rises and falls helps provide learners with a visual image of the pronunciation, as in the last task.

Task 20: Teachers’ Ideas Marking intonation arrows on the whiteboard Recording students speaking Encouraging students to write problem sounds in phonemic script in their notebooks Drilling Marking stress circles/boxes on the whiteboard Use of the phonemic chart Use of coloured card Encouraging learners to compare problem sounds to their own language Although Annie and Dave did not mention all the techniques in the box above, all these methods are beneficial for students. For example, training students to write the sounds in phonemic script in their notebooks will encourage them to remember how to pronounce difficult sounds and words. For example, the word enough is often difficult for students because the spelling looks very different from how it is pronounced. Learners often try to write the sounds using normal letters e.g. inuff which is unhelpful and often causes confusion. By encouraging students to compare problem sounds to their own language, students will start to notice differences between their L1 and English.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 1

Area of pronunciation

A feature of connected speech: sounds linkage.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 2

How it helps students Gives clear information about when sounds link words connect. Students have a chance to listen first, then practise.

Area of pronunciation Sentence stress.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 3

How it helps students Students identify sentence stress and have an opportunity to practise.

Area of pronunciation

Word stress.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 4

How it helps students Lets students listen and discover the shift in word stress. Gives students a chance to recognise stress. However, there is no productive practice.

Area of pronunciation

Intonation.

How it helps students Visuals help show students intonation patterns, clear examples contrast friendly/unfriendly

End Notes Pronunciation is a key part of language and it is a part that students need and enjoy developing. When you focus on pronunciation in class, remember the following points: 

remember to make time for this in the classroom; not only will you be helping students’ pronunciation but you will also be improving their listening skills

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give students the opportunity to listen to proficient speakers using the language and focus on how they sound and how their speech connects

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give students plenty of practice by drilling both chorally and individually so that learners become more confident with their pronunciation

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encourage students to notice differences between how language is written and how it is said and use your board to give learners a visual image of sounds, stress and intonation and make pronunciation more memorable

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remember that each student is different and will have different areas to work on so ensure there is a variety of activities in the classroom to cover all aspects of pronunciation and cater for different learning preferences

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students value pronunciation work and often find it very enjoyable to do in the classroom.

Expert Views: Adrian Underhill on Pronunciation Download Adrian’s Sounds app at: http://www.macmillaneducationapps.com/soundspron/ If you are interested in how Adrian teaches the chart to his students, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5RekixAMoM&noredirect=1 Have a look at Adrian’s blog at http://adrianpronchart.wordpress.com/.

Reading List If you would like to read more about pronunciation, we recommend looking at one or two of the following: http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/p-is-for-pronunciation Underhill, A (1994) Sound Foundations, Oxford: Heinemann. Hancock, M (1995) Pronunciation Games, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This book has lots of practical ideas for activities to use with students of all levels. Bowler, B et al New Headway Pronunciation Course Oxford: Oxford University. This series from Elementary to Upper Intermediate includes a variety of activities and exercises for the classroom and self-study.