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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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 Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 1:51 am Post subject: Stress, intonation, linking, reduction, etc.....???? |
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Hi folks,
I posted this on the general board, but I thought I'd put it here as well, since Japan is the country that I'm hoping to move to (provided I can save up some money, Korea if I can't), and since it especially applies to the students that I get from Korea and Japan. Less so from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, but my understanding is that Chinese does employ sentence-level stress distinctions.
| Quote: |
Hi folks,
Just thought I'd post a question for the board. It's this: how much stress, intonation, reduction, linking, etc., do you teach?
I teach ESL in Canada and I find that a lot of students (especially Asian students) have virtually no understanding of English as a stress language. Therefore they can't speak spoken English, they can only speak in a slow and deliberate kind of reading-out-loud way.
Not only that, but even after extensive study, they can't understand anything that native speakers say. I've found that the private schools I've worked for don't include much of this in the curriculum, and consequently student may stay here for 6 months or a year and still not be able to have a remotely natural conversation.
Therefore, they can't understand anything they hear on TV or in movies. Students tend to think that it's because they don't know enough slang and idioms, but I don't think it's really that. For example, if I give a script of a television show to a class and we read through it together, an intermediate level class will understand probably 75 percent or more of the script. I'll clarify some slang and idioms, as well as cultural and contextual stuff, and then we're off and running. But if I just show them a TV episode, as I've done as an experiment, they understand virtually nothing.
So, again, the question is: in your country (or if that's too general, in your school) how much are students taught about how English is actually spoken (i.e., strong and weak syllables, sentence-level stress, intonation, reduction, linking, etc.)?
There are of course concerns about the pronunciation of individual sounds and the strange relationship that English spelling has to English pronunciation (i.e., explaining to yet another student that "bird" is pronounced (at least in NA) "brrrrd" and not "beard" and that "i" doesn't make an "ee" sound in English as it does in their language), but I'm interested in how common it is to teach the other concerns that I mentioned above.
Cheers,
Mark |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:09 am Post subject: Re: Stress, intonation, linking, reduction, etc.....???? |
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| Mark wrote: |
So, again, the question is: in your country (or if that's too general, in your school) how much are students taught about how English is actually spoken (i.e., strong and weak syllables, sentence-level stress, intonation, reduction, linking, etc.)?
Mark |
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In Japan students will study English for 6 years at high school focussing on reading writing and grammar and preparing for the university entrance exam. The high school teacher will explain english grammar in Japanese and will more often than not, not actually be able to speak the langauge he is teaching.
Students at high school are not taught pronunciation and intonation as communciative skills are not tested in the entrance exam so they are not included in the curriculum. At university some courses cover pronunciation or it may be included in a conversation course but the average first year college freshman will get about 30-40 hours of English in a year with a native speaker.
| Mark wrote: |
There are of course concerns about the pronunciation of individual sounds and the strange relationship that English spelling has to English pronunciation (i.e., explaining to yet another student that "bird" is pronounced (at least in NA) "brrrrd" and not "beard" and that "i" doesn't make an "ee" sound in English as it does in their language), but I'm interested in how common it is to teach the other concerns that I mentioned above.
Cheers,
Mark |
[/quote]
Mark, I have taught phonetics classes in Japan and do teach pronunciation in my classes. One has to weigh up the time constraints, what you actually want them to know and be able to do in the time that you have them, and the tools that you have to work with. There are other external pressures working against you as well. For example:
1. the students first langauge. In Japanese there are are certain sounds that are not really present in English and vice versa; Japanese is a syllable-stressed langaueg while English is stress-timed, and the sound system of Japanese uses hiragana and katakana, where words end in a vowel and consonant. words ending in consonants can not be accurately put into Japanese without 'Japanising them to make them understood. for example, television becomes "terebi", McDonalds becomes Makkudonarudo". Students have trouble with English words as their are no equivalents in their own language.
2. attitude and motivation. Students first of all have convinced themselves after 6 years of studying grammar that English "too difficult" there are too many spelling variations and they can not pronounce English words. In Japan English is learnt passively and in ten years of English education they can go the whole time without having to speak the language,except chorus repetition or reading aloud in 'katakana'. As there are very few native english speakers in japan for them to speak with, there is very little need for them to speak English with Japanese classmates, nor to perfect their pronunciation. Most of my students concerns are not being able to speak like a native speaker, but simply gain enough credits to graduate
Furthermore, there are many returnee students who come back to Japan sepeaking American English etc and actually hide or 'dumb down' their speaking ability so as to not appear superior or different than their friends. the nail that sticks up in Japan gets hammered down.
3. The nationalityor background of the teacher. I am actually a New Zealander, teaching in japan, but i speak with a Kiwi accent while the tapes and textbooks come from the UK or the US. Students want to learn native english but it doesnt HAVE to be American English. What if they are going on homestay in Australia for one year? They dont have to learn birrrd or carrrd. I will point out the differences to students between Australian and American English, get them to work on their comprehension and listening skills, show them reductions etc but will emphasise that they dont have to speak like a native, but simply make themselves understood. Often as I say, the first language gets in the way, and most students are nowhere near ready for undersatnding idioms and Hollywood movies before they can walk. Once they know they basics they can go to the US listen to how native speakers in the US communicate and pick up the patterns. As i say, i only have my students for a couple of hours a week for 26 weeks of the year. Most will not even get the pronunciation down even after a solid lesson on it, or they have forgotten it by the next week. |
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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 5:58 am Post subject: Re: Stress, intonation, linking, reduction, etc.....???? |
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1. the students first langauge. In Japanese there are are certain sounds that are not really present in English and vice versa; Japanese is a syllable-stressed langaueg while English is stress-timed, and the sound system of Japanese uses hiragana and katakana, where words end in a vowel and consonant. words ending in consonants can not be accurately put into Japanese without 'Japanising them to make them understood. for example, television becomes "terebi", McDonalds becomes Makkudonarudo". Students have trouble with English words as their are no equivalents in their own language. |
Just for clarification, what do you mean by syllable-stressed? I dealt with Japanese a bit back in linguistics classes as an example of a bimoraic language, but I'm not sure of the term "syllable-stressed language".
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| 3. The nationalityor background of the teacher. I am actually a New Zealander, teaching in japan, but i speak with a Kiwi accent while the tapes and textbooks come from the UK or the US. Students want to learn native english but it doesnt HAVE to be American English. What if they are going on homestay in Australia for one year? They dont have to learn birrrd or carrrd. I will point out the differences to students between Australian and American English, get them to work on their comprehension and listening skills, show them reductions etc but will emphasise that they dont have to speak like a native, but simply make themselves understood. Often as I say, the first language gets in the way, and most students are nowhere near ready for undersatnding idioms and Hollywood movies before they can walk. Once they know they basics they can go to the US listen to how native speakers in the US communicate and pick up the patterns. As i say, i only have my students for a couple of hours a week for 26 weeks of the year. Most will not even get the pronunciation down even after a solid lesson on it, or they have forgotten it by the next week. |
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that students should all learn American English pronunciation. But since I'm teaching in NA, they generally want to learn American English. The most important point is that there is a difference in the pronunciation of similar sounds. If "beat" and "bit" sound the same, then there's a problem. But I was talking more about phonetic things that restrict understanding. This was a borrowed general post, so when I wrote it, I was thinking of my Mexican students who pronounce "bird" the same as they pronounce "beard", just because "i" makes an "ee" sound for them and no had ever pointed that out to them that it doesn't work that way in English. These sorts of things can really impede communication.
But that whole thing was just a side note. I just put it in to say that there were phonetic concerns in pronunciation, but I think everybody deals with minimal pairs distinction, so I wasn't focussing on it. Also, I was leaving it aside because phonetic systems are local, whereas rhythm is international.
You make a lot of interesting points about teaching pronunciation. I guess that it's hard for Japanese to learn to speak English with stress if most of their Japanese teachers never learned to do it. |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 6:26 am Post subject: |
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Mark,
Maybe I should have said "syllable timed ie. Japanese is made up of syllable units of a consonant-vowel e.g. KA, KI, KU, KE, KO.
While English places stress on individual syllables, not on words etc
maCHINery ElecTRICity, comPUTER. etc.
So words are pronounced like HI-RO-SHI-MA or SA-KU-RA. emphasis is flat and even whereas English tends to be stress timed, and up and down like music. When English speaking foreigners come
to Japan they say hi-ro-SHI-ma, ky-O-to and TO-ki-yo. I will get them doing exercises where they find the english rhythms by eleminating small words and stressing big ones etc.
MY name is BOB and I COME from SEATTLE. They think its lot of fun but it takes them a while to get used to it.
This is where the stress of diffrent langauge causes problems. Japanese will emphasise certain words, use fillers and onomaetopia to produce stress. but when speaking english will uses 'japanese' rhythms becuase that is all they know. that is why when Japanese speak English its like punching out keys on a typewriter, one phoneme at a time.
They also dont learn how to run words together (I scream, ice-cream) and many sounds get chopped off in English (wanna, gonna, couldja) that sound nothing like what they read.
Anything thing if you have studied Japanese is that Japanese use no gaps between the Kanji yet its perfectly legible. In English we put a space between words so we can understand them otherwise it looks like this
TheyalsodontlearnhowtorunwordstogetherIscreamicecreamandmany nothinglkewhattheyread.
So they put a space when they pronounce each word where we would elide or reduce it.
It doesnt become
I wanna gotoda boo(k) store (US)
butto I wanto- to-go- tooza- booku-stoa- |
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guest of Japan
Joined: 28 Feb 2003
Posts: 1601
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:17 am Post subject: |
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I work in a high school for low level students and usually the farthest thing from my mind is to work on pronunciation and intonation,etc. However the last few days have been quite rare for me. I'm preparing a couple students for a speech contest and I'm exclusively working on those aspects with those students. They are doing quite a good job at learning it and I get to utilize a rather high tech language lab to do so. It's a great change of pace, but it is simply impossible to do it with a class of 40 unmotivated students.
When I worked in a conversation school I would occasionaly spend part of a lesson working on the phonetics of English. My students usually appreciated it as well. Those types of lessons usually happened when working with less inhibited students who had a solid understanding of the subject matter. More commonly I worked on getting students past fear and apprehension. |
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