Pronunciation Examples

My first two notes on pronunciation were primarily for a general audience. This note is primarily for those with a little experience in teaching pronunciation; though the general reader may find it of interest.

I wouldn’t say the musical metaphor was correct while the building metaphor was incorrect. Both metaphors have their uses. I tend to think that the music metaphor is useful in getting one to think and feel how a native speaker of a language reacts to speech. For example, suppose a native speaker of English hears “I am going on bacation.” The confusion between /v/ and /b/ will not cause the native speaker much trouble. However, consider this exchange: Native speaker: “I am going on vacation.”  The Second Language Learner says, “Where will you go?” with rising intonation (when speaking, people usually raise or lower the pitch of their voice). Her intention is to find out the location of your vacation (which a native speaker would ask by rising then falling intonation). A rising intonation would express surprise to a native speaker and so a serious misunderstanding could occur.

In effect, I am suggesting a change of emphasis. I certainly should not be read in my previous blogs as completely doing away with phonemic work if such work is helpful to particular learners. In other words, I simply think of myself, in a sense, of reversing the order of importance in pronunciation practice.

Incorrect stressing of polysyllabic words does impact comprehension. Hebrew speakers usually stress the last syllable of a word. So they may say “please be siLENT.” A Punjabi speaker tends to stress the first part of a word, “This is BElow that.” Could a native speaker find such stress overly offensive? In working on the stress – and I don’t wish to give the impression that activities to work on these are necessarily easy – but some phonemic problems tend to take care of themselves when the rhythm of the language is corrected. Some sounds will probably still require work. The English /r/ sound is considered to be a retroflex because the tongue is curled back slightly. In Punjabi /d/ and /t/ are also retroflexed consonants and it is no picnic trying to change the articulation of a retroflexed consonant!

I will only suggest one activity here with which I have had some success when working on the rhythm of speech.

1. John used Mike’s car.              (four stressed syllables – how many unstressed syllables?)

2. Johnny uses Timothy’s car.      (four stressed syllables – how many unstressed syllables?)

Have the students read these sentences and then have them create their own. To ensure that students perceive the characteristic rhythm of English, use sentences such as the above and have them tap out stress syllables at regular intervals. Probably most any language sample can be used for this activity and, getting back to the music metaphor, the use of a metronome is a lot of fun. This is actually a common enough teaching example but you may find and create many other examples to focus on particular discourse issues.

There are many activities for pitch and volume that we find in natural discourse which can supply us with some very interesting ways to approach the fascinating subject of teaching pronunciation. First, learn a little about the student’s native language but keep in mind that not all problems come from first language interference. Make a diagnosis of issues and write your curriculum to deal with specifics where you think you can help and where the research suggests you will make an impact.

– Dr. Paul Schneider, Director of Teacher Education Programs, WAL

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