Job Discussion Forums

[leeroy]

Ho-kely-do-kely then,

Time for another example of class events, followed by a hypothesis and appeal for external opinions/observations/experiences...

My 'Elementary Conversation' group is a class of 14 Chinese students (early 20s) - with a handful of miscellaneous nationalities thrown in for good measure. In any day there are 16 or 17 that show up, for a 50 minute lesson.

To my horror, I realised that most of the Chinese lot could not pronounce the area of where they live in London ("Northfields" was "nuthfel", "Ealing" was "reereng", etc...)

If these guys could say nothing else right, it was imperative that they could at least utter the area in which they lived correctly - a lesson with photocopied tube maps ensued...

Following that, a chapter out of "Tree or Three?" - An elementary pronunciation book & tape. The chapter we dealt with was vowels, specifically

hat
hut
heart
hot

The activities were/are very basic - simply listening, repetition, differentiation, then a bit of freer practice using words that use those phonemes.

As best I could at elementary level, I first explained that improving pronunciation was a slow, gradual thing - and that it was unlikely that they would walk out of the room with any instant improvement. Instead, I explained, it was like 'watering a flower' - with a bit of patience, it would bloom in the end.

They seemed convinced, but I wasn't actually so sure. As they listened and repeated "hot! cot! lot!" from the cassette (happier than pigs in s*it, I might add - they are Chinese), I was thinking to myself "God, is it worth it?"

Does focusing specifically on phonemes with no discernible context have any effect whatsoever? Perhaps I should give up trying to "repair" their pronunciation and just start all over again...

What is your 'strategy' with regard to phonology? Wait and see what mistakes they make, then pounce? Or do you cover each item of speech discretely - saying "Today we're gonna do word stress!"

[Capergirl]

Word stress and intonation are usually a part of our regular curriculum (one or two short listening/speaking lessons). However, when it comes to pronunciation problems, the students tend to have very different struggles depending on their mother tongue languages. What I do is take ten minutes every once in a while (not every class) and review their pronunciation problems as a group. We also do pronunciation exercises in the computer lab sometimes (if they have CALL classes).

I do think that pronunciation is extremely important for my students because they are living in an English-speaking place (as are yours, leeroy) and have to use English in their every day interactions with people. If they continually use poor pronunciation, they will not be understood. This is frustrating for the students and for the people with whom they are speaking. Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, one student lamented that he could never be understood when he tried to order orange juice in a restaurant. The other students nodded in agreement. I told them that the waitstaff were hearing what I am hearing - "oh-range" instead of "or-ange" and "shoes" instead of "juice". "But we are saying 'juice'!", one student protested. "Yes, you are saying 'juice' but I am hearing 'shoes'", I said. So we reviewed the correct pronunciation and the students told me this weekend that since that day, they have had no problems asking for orange juice and being understood. Yay!

[Wolf]

I have this problem in spades (and diamonds and hearts and . . . what's the clover one . . . .)

Anyway, often my students will mispronounce a word so badly that I have no idea what it was even supposed to be. I'm in a real pickle over this. First off, in my literature classes I don't have time to work on pronunciation at all. In my oral English classes there are 30 of them per class. I'm not sure that choral drills with me for a few minutes a week would be enough, and I'm at a severe loss as to what to do. Our municipal region has 4 000 000 people in it - and there's no way that more than 1000 are native speakers of English. So it's not like my students have a prayer of learning anything via osmosis. I tell them to listen to programs/VCDs and repeat what the character says. Review the same scene several times, and try to sound just like the actors. You see, that's what I did to learn Japanese. Due to my lack of AV equipment, I can't do this in class.

If I hear a butchered word, I do spend some time on it.

As a sidenote, my students all know that phonetic alphabet. And some of those Evil Dictionaries have a "vocal" component that says a word. Sound quality isn't very good, though.

In Japan, I didn't know where to begin. You see, the Japanese study English in high school for 6 years, and have done so for decades. BUT, most teachers in school teach them pronunciation using KATAKANA. For those of you not in the know, it's the Japanese writing script. However, English sounds cannot be properly written in Katakana - no consonant blends and not enough vowels. No one knows this. I have said "Katakana can't be used to pronounce Engish" and had that be news to people who had studied English for 10 years. Often they won't understand a word that they know (know to read/write) because I pronounced it all funny and foreign like. It's really hard to help students overcome decades of bad habbits. Also, Bad English is an intergal part of Japanese culture - and no one questions its validity.

I had a one to one lesson with a Japanese girl. Her pronunciation would have been perfect if I was trying to teach her the kana alphabet. I finally got her to say the "er" sound - as in "former." She said it exactly as I had done, and then broke out in giggles for 2 minutes. I'm guessing becaue she had said it the "foreign, funny" way rather than the "proper" way she was taught.

Magical cures to these problems are welcome.

[Glenski]

Few of us have real time to devote to pronunciation exercises, and even with listening tapes meant to help them, I think they are fairly useless because students get no real feedback from what they may do (even with CALL). Pronunciation improvement is indeed slow, but it requires a lot of close teacher/student work.

One tip I will offer. Don't mix different sounds when you teach a pronunciation point. Stick with L and R, for example, for the entire lesson.

[Dr.J]

Wolf, I have had (and am having) the exact same experience with my Japanese students.

Pronunciation shouldn't just by focussing on mistakes, as the students won't be able to visualise it as an integrated system.

Also, many teachers I know do not allow enough listening practice. This is essential if you are in a non-English-speaking country. They just say the word once or twice and expect the class to assimilate this new sound. You have to say it like, 50 or 100 times before a student begins to sense the nuance of the word. Learning pron is like learning an instrument; you have to train your ears and muscles for a long time until you get it.

[Roger]

To my utter amazement, any Chinese I hear talking about divorcing (currently my favourite topic for personal reasons!), pronounces that word as "divoice"/"Divoicing".
I am fairly tolerant of the slurred speech when they cannot produce a proper "S" or "SH" sound, causing words such as "soup" to sound as "Shop" or "shoop".
But why for God's sake do the insert a vowel "I" in place of a consonant "R"???
In primary school, they first learn how to write Chinese in a phonetical way, using Roman letters before they tackle Chinese characters. Obviously, this helps them a lot, but the same procedure does not seem to be followed when they study English. Have you ever seen a student look up the pronunciation in their dictionaries???

Contrast these discoveries with the observation that 100% of all English learners in China know how to pronounce the contracted forms of ""you+would" and similar phrases.

I hazard the guess they memorise everything, down to the pronunciation of every single word or phrase!

Remedy?
I often suggest they tape-record their own English when reading aloud. Maybe some of you have noticed they practise in their spare time reading aloud, which I consider extremely counterproductive (just listen to their halting and repeated attempts at pronouncing new words!).
They simply never hear one of their peers speak English. Thus they have no idea how foreign it sounds. They do not know the difference between Chinese-English and real English. Listening to their own voices would, I suppose, help a lot.

[arioch36]

I HATE THE PHONETIC DICTIONARY/ Alphabet, whatever you call it. Had to get that in.

I have now been in China long enough, that I am no longer Arioch36, but Arioch 40. But I still have a hard time correctly pronouncing "fish" in Chinese. Embarrassing at a restaurant . But we never use the "yu" sound in English. Some sounds just aren't used in Chinese, and I suspect the same is true for Japanese. So first, have some sympathy for them.

Many Chinese teachers have poor pronunciation themselves, especially at most high schools, where being a teacher is not a greatly desirable job. The blind leading the blind?

It is not a Chinese concept (in my experience) that every child deserves an equal education. Rather, the idea is that the "cream will rise to the top" and you should teach these few, so the average student is not of great concern.

Of course some vowels have British vs American differences, so this is occassionally a problem.

To me, pronunciation is not a key to communication, rather context. But I think pronunciation drills do work well if you know the sound you want to work on. And the students usually enjoy it because it is easy to work on, and can be fun. I think it may easier for me because most of my students have the same, easily identifiable problems. (such as "th").

It might be harder if you are in England or the US, because you may have a wider variety of students. For instance, Lee Roy's example makes them sound like Hong Kong people to me.

Maybe the first 3-4 weeks of class I will spend 15 minutes on pronunciaton of a specific target sound. But then, you have to correct the students for the next 14 weeks. I make sure that the person who has the poor pronunciation is called on. Most of the students make progress.

But "yu" (fish) is still hard for me to say, and some Chinese will always have problems with "smile" or "Walker works as a Ranger" But then how many native speakers have terrible pronunciation?

Good luck

[Wolf]

[dyak]

[JDYoung]

I've been in northern China for two months. I have an evening class of 7 ranging in age from 13 to 45. They meet for two hours, three times a week. They want pronunciation so that's what they get. I went through the book "Pronunciation Contrasts in English" and we chose 9 problem areas. We work on a new one each session and review the old ones. We do the "repeat after me" and a few simple drills for 5-10 minutes. Then I let them loose with various pronunciation games. Pronunciation Battleships keeps them busy with the target contrast for 20 minutes easily. Pronunciation Journey, Phone Me and Pronunciation Bingo go over well too. When they've had practice with these sounds we'll move on to stress.

They also take turns doing public speaking with a question and answer session each time we meet. No problems with getting this bunch to talk.

[Celeste]

I think that it is really important to focus on pronunciation for clarity's sake, but I don't get enough time for that with the classes that I currently teach. (Right now I am teaching 'magic' seminars for teachers; four sessions of three hours each- guaranteed to improve your English in under a week!) When I used to work at an ESL school in Vancouver, our students had a class called listening and pronunciation. In that 75 minute class, we focussed on (wait for it) LISTENING AND PRONUNCIATION. It really was useful. The students would actually practice pronunciation using books such as "Clear Speech" and "Pronunciation Pairs" (both of these are books that I would recommend highly) for about 30 to 45 minutes a day, and then spend the other half of the class doing listening comprehension work. Daily pronunciation lessons really do work.

A side note-
Because I am now training teachers in Japan, I am slowly drilling into their minds that KATAKANA has nothing to do with English. Many of them are surprised to learn that. (As they are also surprised to learn that not every Katakana word is an English derivative.) They do get it though. They just have a hard time unlearning the bad habits they picked up in junior high school.

[dreadnought]

I'm not sure that drilling or minimal pair (hut/hot) stuff is terribly useful because the students can't actually hear the difference between the sounds. You can drill words until you're blue in the face, and they may get it temporarily, but it's unlikely that it will stick for long.

I think it is important to raise their awareness about what is actually going on inside the mouth when these sounds are being made. I don't mean that we have to know the technical words for particular phonemes, or know what the fancy words are for the parts of the mouth. I just mean that when students are having problems with a particular vowel or consonant, if we can internally make the sound ourselves and then try to get across to them where the tongue is exactly, how open the mouth is, this may be more useful than getting them to repeat tongue twisters twenty times over.

I remember when I was learning Serbian, I had real trouble distinguishing the various 'ch' sounds in the language. My tutor would drill word after word containing the sounds and I would invariably get it wrong. In the end I asked her to explain to me where the tongue was when she was making these sounds. After that things got much better. I still couldn't hear the difference, but I could roughly produce it correctly.

Adrian Underhill's book 'Sound Foundations' has some pretty good awareness-raising activities along these lines.

[arioch36]

At least where I am, overall pronunciation is not the key problem. it is the one thing the high school and college students know how to practice, and one thing that the teachers, even with bad english, know how to drill.

What is the biggest problem, is that they can only say two words in English, have to stop, think, say (or read/write) two more words. This is an exxxxxaggeration. and I have many fine college students. But pronunciation is not as critical to communication when you can listen or speak 15 words (thinking in English) without translating everything from English to chinese back to English.

My Chinese pronunciation is terrible. Spoken languages is not my thing. But if I can speak in a complete sentence, they can guess my meaning. All comunication, even on the phoneme level, is based on context.

But I am speaking of college level students. For very beginning students, pronunciation will take more of class time. For high school, I did much more pronunciation, reinforcing it every class.

Grade 3 college juniors, I spend almost no time on pronunciation, unless it is a hard working student who has a problem.

Except smile....every class needs to work on its smile

Pronunciation drills seem to be fun.

[denise]

I've got two speaking classes right now, and in both of them pronuciation is a minor component. I don't want to spend loads of time on drills--I'm more concerned with just getting them to open their mouths and speak! (no problems there--they'll do it--but I want moremoremore!!)

I've just incorporated a language analysis-type activity into the classes: a couple of students will carry on a conversation while a couple more students will listen & take notes on pronunciation, grammar, vocab, etc. We did it for the first time today in my EAP class (the highest level in my program--one step below college credit-bearing classes). The students simply did not hear or recognize the errors that their classmates were making. I had several comments & things to point out, but ideally I'd like to get the students to notice the same things that I notice in their speech!

d

[Snoopy]

Sorry to add a frivolous note. A class of young Japanese ladies said that they "ruv Adam Lickit".