Job Discussion Forums

[Chancellor]

[Chancellor]

[arioch36]

Chancellor

[arioch36]

MO39

[Stephen Jones]

[fancynan]

I was recently with a student (in France, and yes, she is at a high level) and we were discussing "gonna" "notjet" etc. I likened it to "zh�pas" for "je ne sais pas" and she said, "But that's bad French." Exactly! But that is the way it is spoken here and if you want to know French, you need to recognize it.

Chinese students (et. al.) aside, the adults I teach are business people who travel to English speaking countries and converse with both native and non-native English speakers. In this situation it is beneficial for the sudents to learn the proper way to speak as well as what they will actually HEAR.

[spiral78]

Yes, I should have been clearer in my first post.

I taught reductions in Canada, but NOT as writting English and, furthermore, NOT so that students would 'learn' to speak that way themselves - in fact, we always pointed out that much of this casual English just doesn't come across as normal or natural when used by a speaker with a non-native accent.

The point was ALWAYS so that students could understand what they hear.

[arioch36]

[johnslat]

Dear Stephen,

"It is only some perverted view amongst American EFL teacher that thinks 'going to' and 'want to' are ever pronounced differently in normal discourse from 'gonna' and 'wanna' that causes the spelling to exist in the first place."

Hmm, I'm gonna say that I'd never known before that a perverted view could think.
But aside from the nit-picking, in my many years of association with American and British EFL teachers, I can't say I noticed that perverted view's being commonly held by any of my (mostly American) colleagues.
Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

[Justin Trullinger]

Just had a few minutes, and I wanna clarify what I wrote before. (Har, har.)

I'm not going into whether the written form "gonna" is always incorrect. It certainly is incorrect most times that I see it every day.

But where I agree with Arioch is this- your students' needs guide what you teach. WHen I've taugh IELTS or TOEFL, not much class time goes to informality, except sometimes in convincing students that some things they're learned don't belong in academic style writing. Though it's interesting that the pronounced forms (though not written, obviously) "wanna" "gonna" and "didja" all can be found in IELTS and TOEFL past exams. Check it out. So as Mr Jones mentioned, these are accepted pronunciations. Nonetheless, I would expect anyone who got out of my IELTS prep class to know that these are not to be written, except (shudder), if you insist, in text messages or perhaps emails.

"The corner store," if you'll pardon me, was probably a literary conceit. I liked the sound of it. But I know plenty of grad students who have spent time in bars. And in the library. And in student unions. Formal or informal?

[craw]

[Stephen Jones]

Some people seem incapable of even listening to their own pronunciation.

The 'g' at the end of 'going' in 'going to' is never pronounced. The only correct spelling of the phrase is 'going to' (other spellings are simply attempts to capture particular idiosyncrasies of pronuciation).

Why is that so difficult? There is only one correct spelling; that spelling never phonetically represents the way the word is said in any register of English.

There are certain aspects of English phonology that are pretty well common to all speakers in all situations, and others that depend on the individual speaker and register.

So "What do you want?" will always have schwa in the middle two syllables, unless the first of them is totally elided; the full version of the sounds 'do' and 'you' will only be pronounced if there is contrastive stress. On the other hand there will be considerable variation in how relaxed the articulation is, and it is quite common for the vowel of 'do' to be completely elided.

[Stephen Jones]

[arioch36]

Justin