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