Teaching Pronunciation: A handbook for teachers and trainers Three Frameworks for an Integrated Approach Teaching Pronunciation: A handbook for teachers and trainers © Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) 2 Acknowledgments Project Manager Ursula Nowicki, Program Manager, English Language and Literacy TAFE NSW - Access Division Project Officer and Dr Helen Fraser, Senior Lecturer, School of Languages, Cultures Handbook Author and Linguistics, University of New England Steering Committee Catherine Gyngell, Director, Adult Literacy Policy and Programmes Section, VET Reform Branch, DETYA Lynette Bowyer, Senior Research Assistant, Cultural and Language Studies, Queensland University of Technology Stella Cantatore, Teacher, Adult Migrant English Programme, Southbank Institute of TAFE, Queensland Maggie Gundert, Cultural Diversity Consultant, AMES Consulting, Victoria Penny Lee, Lecturer, Graduate School of Education, University of Western Australia Ruth Nicholls, Lecturer, TESOL and TLOTE, School of Education, University of New England John Rice, Lecturer/Educational Manager, Adelaide Institute of TAFE English Language Services Halina Zawadski, Teacher, Distance Learning, NSW AMES Teaching Pronunciation: A handbook for teachers and trainers © Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) 3 Participating Teachers Rae Ball, TAFE NSW - South Western Sydney Institute Belinda Bourke, TAFE NSW - South Western Sydney Institute Roslyn Cartwright, TAFE NSW - South Western Sydney Institute Sharen Fifer, TAFE NSW - Southern Sydney Institute Ameetha Venkarataman, TAFE NSW - South Western Sydney Institute Eileen Zhang, TAFE NSW - South Western Sydney Institute Additional Readers Marion Lucchinelli, TAFE NSW - Northern Sydney Institute Moh Har Yip, Workcom, AMES NSW Clerical Support Laraine Wiles © Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) All rights reserved. This work has been produced with the assistance of funding provided by the Commonwealth Government through DETYA. This work is copyright, but permission is given to trainers and teachers to make copies by photocopying or other duplicating process for use within their own organization or in a workplace where the training is being conducted. This permission does not extend to making of copies for use outside the immediate training environment for which they are made, nor the making of copies for hire or resale to third parties. For permission outside these guidelines, apply in writing to DETYA. First printed in 2001. This handbook is available for download from the Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs website. Teaching Pronunciation: A handbook for teachers and trainers © Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) 4 Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 5 1.1. About the project .5 1.2. About the three Frameworks, and this Handbook .10 2. BACKGROUND TO THE FRAMEWORKS 16 2.1. Introduction 16 2.2. Fundamentals 17 2.3. Principles . 32 2.4. Practicalities 39 2.5. Questions and answers . 47 3. FRAMEWORK 1: TEACHING BEGINNERS 50 3.1. Introduction 50 3.2. Bckground to Framework 1 .51 3.3. Teachers’ experiences TEACHING PRONUNCIATION: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Designed & Presented by: Vu Thi Hoang Mai, MA Faculty of English International Standard Program What is pronunciation? Why teaching pronunciation? Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Pronunciation The way a word/language is spoken The manner in which someone utters a word Segmentals vs suprasegmentals: individual sounds vs stress & intonation Intelligibility: The recognition of a word or another sentence-level element of an utterance Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Teaching English Pronunciation Goals: to enable learners to understand and be understood, to build their confidence in entering communicative situations, to enable them to monitor their speech based on input from the environment (Goodwin, 2001) Approach: a balance between segmentals and suprasegmentals, enhancement of intelligibility, applicability in real communicative situations Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU What to include? Consonants Vowels Stress Strong forms & Weak forms Rhythm Linking Intonation Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU English Consonants Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU English Vowels Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU English Diphthongs Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU English Triphthongs Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Stress Word stress Sentence stress Primary stress: Secondary stress: Placement of stress: whether the word is morphologically simple or complex the grammatical category to which the word belongs the number of syllables in the word the phonological structure of the word Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Two-syllable Words Nouns 1st syllable stressed Verbs & Adjectives, Prepositions, adverbs 2nd syllable stressed Except verbs ending with /əʊ/: (e.g., borrow, furrow) or a short vowel (e.g., punish, furnish) Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Three-syllable Verbs Last syllable: short vowel + consonant 2nd syllable stressed Last syllable: long vowel /diphthong/ ending with 2+ consonants last syllable stressed Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Three-syllable Nouns & Adjectives Last syllable: short vowel or /əʊ/ unstressed 2nd syllable: long vowel/ diphthong / ending with 2+ consonants stressed 2nd and last syllables: short vowel + consonant 1st syllable stressed Last syllable: long vowel/ diphthong / ending with 2+ consonants 1st syllable stressed Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Complex Words Stress in derived words Primary stress on the affix Primary stress on the stem Primary stress on a different syllable of the stem Stress in compound words 1st word/part is adjectival primary stress on the 2nd 1st word/part is a noun stress on the 1st Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Some Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation David F. Dalton Background When I did my initial training as an E.F.L. teacher, one of the course tutors always described pronunciation as "the Cinderella of language teaching", i.e. she never got to go to the ball. By this he was referring to the often low level of emphasis placed on this very important language skill. We are comfortable teaching reading, writing , listening and to a degree, general oral skills, but when it comes to pronunciation we often lack the basic knowledge of articulatory phonetics (not difficult to aquire) to offer our students anything more than rudimentary (and often unhelpful) advice such as, "it sounds like this ; uuuh". There is also a tendency for us to focus on production as the main problem affecting our learners. Most research however, shows clearly that the problem is more likely to be reception - what you don't hear, you can't say. Moreover, if the "English" sound is not clearly received, the brain of the learner converts it into the closest sound in their own language . Thus the dental English fricative / th / (sorry, phonetic symbols can't easily be displayed) in "those" ,becomes converted by Spanish speakers into the denatlised Spanish /d/ , producing "dose" as this is what the speaker hears. Given this reality , it would seem logical to place a heavy emphasis on listening (reception) as a way into releasing appropriate pronunciation (production). Apart from using knowledge of our students and our ears in order to be aware of their pronunciation problems, it is also useful to have some prior knowledge of what elements of English phonetics and phonology are likely to cause problems. This is one area of language learning where few people would question the use of contrastive analysis. For instance, to give some simple examples, we can predict that Arabic speakers will have difficulty distinguishing between / p / and / b / , Japanese speakers will not perceive the difference between / l / and / r / and Spanish speakers will hava a problem realising consonant clusters like [ sts ]. Having informed him or herself of some of the main areas of contrast between native language and target language and what difficulties students have, it then remains for the teacher to build this information into some meaningful classroom exercises. Techniques : Exercise should be simple, accessible , fun and combine reception and production. Some students (usually adults) do feel embarassed to pull ridiculuous faces when practising vowel sounds (this may be personal or cultural or both) but I have generally found that this soon passes and students enjoy the pronunciation work. Where possible, exercises should be communicative in that they should (and do generate differences of opinion and disagreement about what was said/heard. Below are two examples. Exercise A : After having taught or exposed the students to long and short vowels through listening and oral work, the teacher can check recognition, retention and ability to discriminate in the following way. This could also be used simply for teaching. Stage 1 : The teacher writes a variety of words containing the target sounds (long and short vowels) on the board. The following is just one possible set. PORT PIT PAT PERT PET POT PUTT PUT PART PEAT 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Here, the only difference in sound is that of the vowel - familiar to anyone who has done minimal pair work. As in these examples, the word should begin and end with the same consonant. 0, 3, 8, and 9, are long vowels and the rest are short. Stage 2 : The teacher then models each word and individal repetition follows. The vowel sound can be isolated and the procedure repeated until the teacher is reasonably sure that there are no major problems. He PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale In the past few years, as the Vietnamese have come into contact with people from other countries, especially since Vietnam entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) and became one of twenty destinations of the world, there is a growing awareness of the importance of and need for communicative English. The emphasis in language teaching has changed to give spoken English the same status as written English, and the communicative language teaching is considered as a predominant approach in which teachers pay more attention to speaking and listening skills and need to perceive that these skills require not only vocabulary and ideas but also a reasonable pronunciation. Unfortunately, the outcome of communicative learning is not very satisfactory. Though they have learnt English at school and university, many students, especially non-English majors, often complain that it is really hard to communicate in English since they do not catch what the speakers are saying, and they are not confident to speak English. One of the reasons is their unintelligible pronunciation. Pronunciation plays an important role in second language teaching and learning. Without it, learners have many difficulties in getting their speech understood and understanding others’. Misunderstanding, communication breakdown or failure may occur due to mispronunciation. As a teacher of English at the University of Transport and Communications (UTC) for two years, the researcher has witnessed the great efforts made by her colleagues as well as students to improve the quality of teaching and learning English. As the teaching goals, all four language skills are equally focused in the teaching program which lasts three terms. Students are required to have good English for their next coming major studies, and for their further future. Whereas, it is undeniable that, among four skills, students get worse score at listening and speaking. In such the context, pronunciation teaching should be taken in appropriate consideration so that the teaching goals can be met. However, up to now there has not been any research on teaching English pronunciation at UTC yet. Thus, the case study of teaching pronunciation to first-year students at UTC is of 1 special importance. It describes pronunciation teaching in the context, specifying the shortcomings and then making suggestions to improve the teaching of pronunciation. 2. Aims of the study The aim of the study was to investigate how the teachers at UTC teach pronunciation to first-year students, with the goal of making suggestions for the teachers to improve the teaching of pronunciation. 3. Research questions Focusing on a case with a target on non-English-major students at UTC, this research examined the teaching of pronunciation. To achieve this, three research questions were proposed: (1) What are the teachers’ beliefs in teaching pronunciation? (2) What elements of pronunciations are taught? (3) How do the teachers deal with teaching pronunciation? 4. Scope of the Study This Teaching Pronunciation Using the Prosody Pyramid Judy B. Gilbert c a m b r i d g e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 2008 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2008 Printed in the United States of America i s b n -13 978-0-521-98927-5 paperback Book layout services: Page Designs International Table of Contents Introduction 1 1 The Functions of Prosody 2 2 The Prosody Pyramid 10 3 The Prosody Pyramid and Individual Sounds 21 4 Ideas for Implementing the Prosody Pyramid 31 Appendix 1: Pronunciation FAQ 42 Appendix 2: Focus Rules and Thought Group Rules 45 Appendix 3: How Often Do the Vowel Rules Work? 47 Appendix 4: Table of Figures 48 References 49 Introduction 1 Introduction Teaching pronunciation involves a variety of challenges. To begin with, teachers often find that they do not have enough time in class to give proper attention to this aspect of English instruction. When they do find the time to address pro- nunciation, the instruction often amounts to the presentation and practice of a series of tedious and seemingly unrelated topics. Drilling sounds over and over again (e.g., minimal pair work) often leads to discouraging results, and discour- aged students and teachers end up wanting to avoid pronunciation altogether. There are also psychological factors that affect the learning of pronun- ciation in ways that are not so true of studying grammar or vocabulary. For one thing, the most basic elements of speaking are deeply personal. Our sense of self and community are bound up in the speech-rhythms of our first language (L1). These rhythms were learned in the first year of life and are deeply rooted in the minds of students. Therefore, it is common for students to feel uneasy when they hear themselves speak with the rhythm of a second language (L2). They find that they “sound foreign” to themselves, and this is troubling for them. Although the uneasiness is usually unconscious, it can be a major barrier to improved intelligibility in the L2. A teacher can help overcome this psychological barrier and other challenges by thinking of the goal of pronunciation instruction not as helping students to sound like native speakers but as helping them to learn the core elements of spoken English so that they can be easily understood by others. In other words, teachers and students can overcome the frustrations, difficulties, and boredom often associated with pronunciation by focusing their attention on the development of pronunciation that is “listener friendly.” After all, English pronunciation does not amount to mastery of a list of sounds or isolated words. Instead, it amounts to learning and practicing the specifically English way of making a speaker’s thoughts easy to follow. This booklet presents an approach to pronunciation that highlights the interrelatedness of various aspects of English speech. The approach addresses the individual elements of pronunciation but always within the framework of a larger system that uses all these individual elements to make speakers’ ideas clear and understandable to their listeners. 2 Teaching Pronunciation 1 The Functions of Prosody Communication in spoken English is organized by “musical signals.” There are two aspects to these signals – rhythm and melody – and the combination of these two aspects may be called prosody. Often, the term prosody is used to mean rhythm alone, while the term intonation is used to refer specifically to melody (or pitch patterns). TEACHING LANGUAGE TO YOUNG LEARNERS Language: Pronunciation Vocabulary Grammar General Principle sounds words structures TEACHING PRONUNCIATION The scope of pronunciation • Individual sounds • Sounds in connected speech • Stress and rhythm • Intonation Individual sounds Sounds in connected speech Coffee, coffee Milk and sugar, milk and sugar Strawberries and cream, strawberries and cream Chocolate cake and chocolate biscuits Fish and chips Fish and chips Soup S-O-O-O-U-P Stress and Rhythm COffee, COffee MILK and SUGAR, MILK and SUGAR STRAWberries and CREAM, STRAWberries and CREAM CHOcolate CAKE and CHOcolate BIScuits FISH and CHIPS FISH and CHIPS SOUP S-O-O-O-U-P More Practice One two three four One and two and three and four One and a two and a three and a four One and then a two and then a three and then a four More Practice One two three four One and two and three and four One and a two and a three and a four One and then a two and then a three and then a four Intonation • My name’s Peter. • Where’s my bag? • Can I open the window? • Stick it on here • What a beautiful shirt! • Would you like a lift? • Which shirt do you like, the red one or the blue one? • What there is left we’ll put it in the pot. ...What is pronunciation? Why teaching pronunciation? Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Pronunciation The way a word/language is spoken The manner... of a word or another sentence-level element of an utterance Vu Thi Hoang Mai, ULIS - VNU Teaching English Pronunciation Goals: to enable learners to understand and be understood, to build