Job Discussion Forums

[MixtecaMike]

From George, H.V. (1972) Common errors in language learning, Newbury House, Rowley, Mass.
"A good pronunciation is worth trying for initially, and with persistence. Later, however, unless initiative comes from the learner, it is rarely useful to give much time to general remedial work in pronunciation."
George makes the point that impairment of communication by learner errors is often overstated by teachers. The example of live (Verb) and leave (Verb) is given. There are actually two homophones leave, one means to not take something the other means to bequeath, and this causes no confusion for native speakers. Therefore having another homophone live will not really cause problems, apart from in specially constructed sentences for English quizes.

As Melee (where's the piglet, by the way) says, native joe speakers rate non-native speakers on their pronunciation. However misunderstanding based on pronunciation is most common for "the inexperienced native speaker who expects not to be able to understand." You can't educate all your native countrymen to be more willing to listen, but you can teach your students to deal with this via pragmatic means.

On the subject of backchaining, I think the key to this is intonation. If you start from the beginning of a sentence you tend to add intonation for the utterance ending where you stop. If you start from the end, then your intonation is correct, i.e. you are at the end. Try it with your officemate and see.

[TheLongWayHome]

It seems to me that pronunciation depends on how well you hear. You can only reproduce what you hear. A student with rubbish pronunciation will inevitably have bad hearing. No amount of backchaining or ship/sheep type nonsense will make much difference to their pronunciation.

Compare the pronunciation of a student who plays an instrument or sings to one who doesn't. 9 times out of 10 the musician will have better pronunciation purely because their hearing is more refined.

[Guy Courchesne]

You're definitely right about that LongWay, but those people are few and far between. Same goes for their opposite...the student that simply never improves due to 'bad hearing'. I think most people do improve over time up to a certain point perhaps, if they are made aware of the errors and when the right highlights are featured in a class.

[Oreen Scott]

I completed completed a Vocabulary and Pronunciation course, just finishing up a TESL certification.

I have a lot of material in .pdf format I'd be willing to share, including an assessment form that includes supersegmentals and segmentals. (I've used the assessment form, with a brief interview and a short script that contains every English sound to assess 15 students so far - and had many teachable moments)

Here is my favorite pronunciation web site.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/

Hope this helps.

[MO39]

I've just spent the last hour going nuts trying to find a free on-line dictionary that provides audio pronunciation of words in American English. The only good one I found provided British pronunciation, which I enjoy listening to but which is not useful to my current private students, who are at advanced and upper-intermediate levels. Can anyone help me out?!?

�Mil gracias!

[notamiss]

Merriam-Webster? http://www.merriam-webster.com/

I don't have the plug-in to play the audio files to check it, but I think it's American.

[MO39]

Thanks, I'll check it out shortly.

[dixie]

[MO39]

Yes, it is American English. I just sent the link off to one of my students who speaks rather well but needs a little bit of help with pronunciation from time to time.

[Oreen Scott]

Here's a website you may find useful for pronunciation.

http://free-translator.imtranslator.net/speech.asp?url=F-TR&dir=en&text=fue#

Just type the word or sentence into the translator and the computer talks back.

I use it all the time for learning Spanish. It's a computer talking, not a person, but typing to speaking has come a long way. It's not half bad.

[MO39]