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sharpe88
Joined: 21 Oct 2008
Posts: 226
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 Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 3:02 am Post subject: |
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| Don't forget that "Chinese" is a huge family of dialects and speakers from various regions have different strengths and weaknesses in English. There are in fact many southern dialects that have final consonant sounds, though they may or may not transfer habits from their second language of mandarin. |
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cormac
Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 768
Location: Xi'an (XTU)
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 9:45 am Post subject: |
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TBH the only reason I place any huge focus on fluency in classes is because I only get to see each class once a week. I'm the only foreign teacher in my university so I have to delegate some learning to the students themselves, otherwise I might fix one minor problem in their pronounciation but they'd be still unable to actually talk to people.
Honestly, I spend most of my time teaching confidence rather than english. Just getting them confident enough to speak to each other in English, never mind about other people is hard enough, but very doable. The main problem though is that in my university I only have them for one semester and then I have new classes. So with extremely limited time (on the rare occassion that I have a class that hasn't missed sessions during the semester to useless meetings, holidays, etc) I have to choose whats most important to teach them.
IF I had them for longer I know I would spend more time fixing the more "subtle" errors that they can't seem to fix themselves, but alas, I don't have them for longer. I just attack the most obvious mistakes, and seek to correct them.
The pronounciation problem I asked about earlier is just one of those things that irritates me. On the scale of problems worth fixing (considering time constraints) it ranks middle to low. Confidence & fluency ranks easily at the top. |
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El Chupacabra
Joined: 22 Jul 2009
Posts: 378
Location: Kwangchow
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:44 am Post subject: Re: Pronounciation teaching Advice |
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| cormac wrote: |
There is something that is really starting to bug me, and I'm at a bit of a loss how to fix it on the class level (rather than individually). Its the way that some students are mispronouncing the end of words. Like they're saying cat-a, dog-a, clothes-a, etc. Its really weird, since I've found classmates that have been together for 7 years through high school into university, and one mispronounces, whilst the other doesn't.
Generally speaking, my university students have decent english (for their level), but the combination of this problem, and mixing up his/her/he/she really guts their speaking ability... especially for my english majors.
I'd do an internet search but I dont know what topic this falls under.
Thanks for any info. (and yes, if I was a fully qualified teacher, I'd probably already know how to fix it... but I'm not, and I don't know how to fix it.) |
This is common. They are aspirating consonants that should only be aspirated at the onset of syllables. I wrote a case study last year with a reading student that I was tutoring, and together we determined that the cause is improper modeling from her Chinese English teachers.
This is not just an encoding issue, as it directly affects reading decoding. and indirectly affects comprehension. Students who do this this tend to misspell the same words during dictation exercises. Accurate modelling is helpful. Try having students speak with tissues in front of their mouths. When they aspirate, the paper will move. |
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nickpellatt
Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 1522
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:19 am Post subject: |
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| cormac wrote: |
TBH the only reason I place any huge focus on fluency in classes is because I only get to see each class once a week. I'm the only foreign teacher in my university so I have to delegate some learning to the students themselves, otherwise I might fix one minor problem in their pronounciation but they'd be still unable to actually talk to people.
Honestly, I spend most of my time teaching confidence rather than english. Just getting them confident enough to speak to each other in English, never mind about other people is hard enough, but very doable. The main problem though is that in my university I only have them for one semester and then I have new classes. So with extremely limited time (on the rare occassion that I have a class that hasn't missed sessions during the semester to useless meetings, holidays, etc) I have to choose whats most important to teach them.
IF I had them for longer I know I would spend more time fixing the more "subtle" errors that they can't seem to fix themselves, but alas, I don't have them for longer. I just attack the most obvious mistakes, and seek to correct them.
The pronounciation problem I asked about earlier is just one of those things that irritates me. On the scale of problems worth fixing (considering time constraints) it ranks middle to low. Confidence & fluency ranks easily at the top. |
Im kinda thinking aloud really, but it could be suggested that having only limited time means its more important to concentrate on the pronunciation drills rather than target confidence and fluency? The embedded faults that they have in their English probably need a teacher to guide them away from these mistakes. You'll have them for a term or two and focus on other areas of language (as have previous teachers) and 3 or 4 years down the line at graduation time the problems still remain as they havent really been targetted.
Im not sure fluency and confidence should be the top priority really. Not sure it should share anything more than equal billing with accuracy. Fluency IS something they can work on themselves, accuracy needs a careful guide and a lot of help. Students normally room with other English students, they have English corners and other activities and all of these are opportunities for them to practice fluency and build confidence. They dont have so much opportunity to practise structures, do pronunciation drills and 'be accurate'.
Its likely that many students have similar issues with pronunciation, problems with using articles correctly, issues on other target language and it could be that that needs your input as they simply cant help themselves. Fluency is easier to teach, more fun and requires less work for us ... but Im not sure its the most productive way to teach or for students to learn.
Dont get me wrong ... I tend to do exactly the same, but Im not so sure its the right thing to do really. Would students be more confident if they knew how to use comparative terms correctly, if they didnt make mistakes in articles, if they didnt pronounce words incorrectly? I would say 'Yeah, they would be more confident'. |
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sistercream
Joined: 18 Dec 2010
Posts: 497
Location: Pearl River Delta
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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A lot depends on what we are hired to teach, the syllabus we are given to work with (if any), and the age and stage of the students.
I personally have a bee in my bonnet about establishing good foundations, and given my druthers will happily spend a full semester of oral English classes on pronunciation drills (heavily disguised, of course, and including phonics/ IPA as appropriate) on the grounds that once they can pronounce the phonemes, diphthongs, blends, finals, blah blah blah, correctly students will not only be more comprehensible and comprehending in conversation, they will be able to build on that foundation in all their future language studies.
But I rarely get my druthers, and just do what I can with the materials, circumstances and students I'm given ... |
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cormac
Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 768
Location: Xi'an (XTU)
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| Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| nickpellatt wrote: |
Im kinda thinking aloud really, but it could be suggested that having only limited time means its more important to concentrate on the pronunciation drills rather than target confidence and fluency? The embedded faults that they have in their English probably need a teacher to guide them away from these mistakes. You'll have them for a term or two and focus on other areas of language (as have previous teachers) and 3 or 4 years down the line at graduation time the problems still remain as they havent really been targetted.
Im not sure fluency and confidence should be the top priority really. Not sure it should share anything more than equal billing with accuracy. Fluency IS something they can work on themselves, accuracy needs a careful guide and a lot of help. Students normally room with other English students, they have English corners and other activities and all of these are opportunities for them to practice fluency and build confidence. They dont have so much opportunity to practise structures, do pronunciation drills and 'be accurate'. |
The problem is that I've spoken to the Seniors (English Majors) in the university, and they have almost no confidence in their speaking. They haven't had any real exposure to an environment where its ok to talk without receiving major criticism, so they hardly talk at all. The Chinese teachers rarely, if ever, speak oral english with them, and when they do its more like reading from a technical manual than actual conversation. I often cringe when speaking to the Chinese teachers... they spent most of their time speaking chinese to each other, and when they do speak english they have a disturbing mix of baby english and highly formal technical jargon. Perhaps its just my university that has this issue, but it does affect the students themselves.
My issue with the students is that it doesn't matter if they have perfect english when its impossible for them to work up enough courage to speak. And when they do speak, they stutter or pause in awkward areas due to their nervousness.
There is no real incentive for them to talk amongst themselves since they believe that they'll just pick up other students errors, and make them their own. There are no english corners, and while there are a few english clubs, I get the feeling that attendance is rather low. The University has all the language students living/studying in a new campus far to the north, and I live on the opposite side of the city so giving them extra time is rather difficult (especially since there are no school transport after 5pm).
All in all, I rather pity them. There's no real encouragement to practice beyond what I have told them.
Here's a good example. When they started university they were told by their chinese teachers to speak english all the time. To speak in school, when eating and when in their dorms. That speaking Chinese was terrible for them to do. Alas they tried to do just that, and after 2 weeks they were back to speaking Chinese full time with the added feeling that their english was terrible. They just didn't have the voabulary, grammar, etc to maintain such a venture, and ended up losing most of their confidence they brought with them from high school. (I have them speaking english to each other 10 mins a day for 2 weeks, then up to 15 mins 2 weeks later, then up to 20 mins etc. Easier, and gives them more confidence).
| Quote: |
| Its likely that many students have similar issues with pronunciation, problems with using articles correctly, issues on other target language and it could be that that needs your input as they simply cant help themselves. Fluency is easier to teach, more fun and requires less work for us ... but Im not sure its the most productive way to teach or for students to learn. |
TBH I don't really know. I'm still working this all out for myself. 
| Quote: |
| Dont get me wrong ... I tend to do exactly the same, but Im not so sure its the right thing to do really. Would students be more confident if they knew how to use comparative terms correctly, if they didnt make mistakes in articles, if they didnt pronounce words incorrectly? I would say 'Yeah, they would be more confident'. |
The problem I see is that its hard to remove one from the other. They go together... but with limited time, its hard to give both together.. I tried at the start but quickly ran out of time and often felt that nothing was really achieved from the lesson except for a few of the brighter students. |
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