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nogreasyhippies · Joined: 10 Jul 2007 Posts: 25

...and he asked the great oracle of esl knowledge...

"Oh! Wonderful, insightful, One and Only Dave's. Can you imparteth to me the knowledge of how to stop my kindergarten classes sounding an -uh syllable at the end-uh of certain words-uh. Half of my class-uh insist we have ears-uh, hans-uh and a head-duh. Can the great Oracle also, with all its combined experience in this vast country, think of a reason for this curious occurrence?" Here endeth the question.

...and the great and powerful cafe spake thusly...

Lobster · Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:20 am Post subject:

It's the dreaded schwa, and it's a result of their phonics training when first learning the language. It's usually noticable after consonant stops. Thank you Chinese English teachers!

They've been told that the the pronunciation of "d' is "duh", "b" is "buh" and so on. Actually, trying to pronounce "d" in isloation is almost impossible, but they're never told that when we speak we don't make these sounds the same way as we do when we say them alone.

The cure is pretty bitter medicine, because it's probably become a speech habit by now. Tons of focussed pronunciation drills, an explanation of what I've just told you (if they're old enough to understand).

Create a list of 20 or so phrases that will trigger the schwa and go through them; five every day. Same with some word pairs. Get them to say the words individually at first, stopping after each word, then slowly, and finally increase gradually to normal speed.
Example: Last Tuesday was the first time I saw the big black cat.

After a few months, you may start to see some improvement. You can also use a recorder to let them listen to their own voices and point out the problems.

RED

Anda · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 2199 Location: Jiangsu Province

Lollies and other presents for your tiny students that can drop the uh sound off certain words.

Listen when they repeat after you and say thinks like: You come and get a present for your pronunciation of "head" stressing your pronunciation of the word. It�s called bribery.

SocratesSon2 · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 134

Actually I have found phonics training quite useful. The main problem with Chinese teachers is they don't teach the students how to combine the sounds into words, or recognize the sounds and associate them with the specific letters in which they belong to. It's not the phonics thats the problem, it's how the Chinese teachers teach it. You have to remember though, these are the same folks who teach English in Chinese. Is it any wonder half of the teachers can't even speak passable English Rolling Eyes

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

We have a funny game where we kick these sounds out of the window (we catch the sound in our hands if we hear it - and boot it out the classroom) - its a good way of getting kids to pay attention to this otherwise boring detail - but also one for the local teachers, where we try and nicely emphasise that these sounds are not part of normal English speech.

SocratesSon2 · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 134

Actually when you use most letters they sound nothing like the actual letter itself, as you well know. You'd be amazed how many students can not match a sound with a particular letter. It's quite sad really. Sad

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

chinaamber · Joined: 06 Jun 2006 Posts: 73 Location: Guiyang

One reason this occurs is because Chinese does not have some of the final consonant word endings that English has e.g. good. This makes the sound difficult for learners. We generally swallow this sound too whereas when we try to teach it we over emphasise or ask students to follow the individual sounds it therefore compounding the problem.

One way I found useful is back pronunciation. Instead of drilling the word as a whole or as separate sounds drill the last part. So drill ood, ood instead of good, good. Another successful one was to clap or stamp as we say the word. You can only clap or stamp once so the word must fit into this clap.

dmanuk · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 33

just to go back to the cause of this (and i don't know where you are - but I'm guessing S. China/Guanzhou) my family in HK who all speak Cantonese do this at the end of Chinese words too - like we would use "erm" etc. i always saw it as a conversational habit that occurs at the end of almost all sentences.
it was particularly noticeable when expressing emotions such as surprise, exasperation or anger. if you listen to the locals talking outside of class can you hear the sound at the end of sentences in their dialect too???

beautification · Joined: 09 Jan 2007 Posts: 111

You will notice over time most of your children will stop doing this after being exposed to proper spoken English from yourself. My students would constantly add "uh" or "eee". My year is up and most of the children don't do this anymore.

william wallace · Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 2869 Location: in between

Lorean · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 476 Location: Beijing

First, you need to teach the class about voicing. Have the students place their finger over their adam's apple, while pronouncing any vowel sound. They will feel a buzzing sensation. This is called voicing.

Now have them pronounce a realling long 's' sound, e.g. 'sssssssssssssssssnake'. This should not be hard for Chinese to do properly. There is no buzzing sensation. This is because 's' is voiceless.

Now take three letter words that end in 't', 'k' or 'p'. e.g. pat, pack, tap, pass. These are all voiceless consonants. The students should not feel any buzzing sensation at the end of the word.

Words that end in 'd', 'g' or 'g' are harder to teach, because they are voiced. However, once students have mastered the above, they should be able to generalize to voiced consonants.

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

Once again - as much as I respect Lorean's posts - I have to emphasise that the original post concerns kindergarten kids.
Beautification was quite correct when she told us that after these kids come into contact with native English - or indeed any English that doesn't include these extra soundings - then after the kids follow the correct pronunciation via their teacher the problem seems to disappear after a fairly short time (we have this problems with the smallest children but by the age of 5 the problem is much reduced and only crops up with words the kids are learning rather than those they've learnt). This seems to back up the supposed major advantage of starting to teach kids an L2 at an early age - better proficiency in nearer native pronunciation when those students eventually gain a fluency of the L2.

Zero · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 1402

The real problem is that Mandarin doesn't have many final consonants. It only has "n" and "ng" (which is sort of a consonant) and sometimes "r". So it feels weird for them to use a final "d."

Brian Caulfield · Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 1247 Location: China

I have a cure. I divide the class in 2 have one side say the Chinese version of the word GOODAH and then have the other half say the proper English word GOOD. It always gets a laugh. Make a list of words and take turns with which half says the Chunglish version and the proper English pronunciation.