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[sheeba]

Has anyone any ideas how I can get my students used to weak forms in class . I find that they are great communicating with one another but when listening to foreigners they have a problem with weak forms . I don't like standing at the front preaching or doing too much listening in class . I llike to get them communicating but the exercises for weak forms are a bit boring generally and it is difficult to get them to use weak forms . I understand that they don't need to produce weak forms but they really do need to notice receptively when listening . I'm Just after some class exercises that might work .

[Plan B]

Don't worry about being pedantic about weak forms in class.

Work with very controlled structures, and concentrate on word stress and speed.

For example.....

What games did you use to play?

I used to play football

use phonetics to drill "use to" - /'ju:st@/

After the controlled practice, be strict on any errors. Remind and remind again.

[Shan-Shan]

I have to agree with Plan B. A year ago I had a CELTA certified co-worker who experienced the same "weak form" lesson anxiety. None of the exercises he created got the point across: the more creative he was (using diagrams, lego bits), the more confused and irritated students became.

Focus weak forms when doing pronunciation exercises, or perhaps at times explicitly focus your error corrections on strong/weak forms. Students will eventually catch on. Reminders and correction work wonders.

[ilaria]

Sheeba wrote:

[sheeba]

I don't quite agree that weak forms shouldn't be addressed with so much concern . It's fairly obvious that students have difficulty understanding native speakers for this reason . The fact that they can stress words in sentences does not really make much difference to communication and when a foreigner stresses a word it is fairly easy for the student to understand . If a foreigner uses a weak form however problems occur .

I like the dictation ilaria . I do something similar in class with weak forms of 'him' and 'her' and so on .I torture them a bit too . they have real problems . I normally list a number of possible suggestions for my utterance and write them on the board as 1,2,3 ... They guess which number. I guess you could also use weak forms and shout out commands which the students have to respond to . I might try that .

Don't you find a problem Ilaria in your production exercises ? When you get them to use the lines in the pub or wherever they convert back to the strong forms even if you tell them to use weak forms . The whole point of the exercise is kind of lost because there really is no practice LISTENING to weak forms in class .

I guess we can do more listening drills and exercises like you mention and that's good in the practice stage of a lesson but I don't always like following a rigid Presentation,Practice,Production format . I find that students gain a lot from my class when they simply talk in groups . They learn more from one another than me . It's all good but I imagine sticking a few foreigners into their conversations speaking at normal speed and they'd be lost !

[Sonnet]

I agree; dictations & the regular use of dictogloss can really help improve students' listening skills, particularly in terms of catching words despite the use of weak forms, elision, catenation and so on.

I've always found my adult students here have quite enjoyed the challenge of dictations/dictogloss, too; there's nothing wrong with being a bit old-fashioned now & again!

[bearcanada]

Sheeba, I don't think it's wise to offer legitimacy to what is essentially careless speech. That's a bit like 'road rage' being a 'disease'.

We slur many words in English because we have lazy tongues, not because the slurred words are correct as a 'weak form.' We often do say 'shll' instead of 'shall', but that doesn't make it correct or create the need to honor it with a catalogue name.

If you want your students to improve their listening skills, you might practice showing them many of the places where we slur words, run words together, etc.

I think the important thing is that students understand these are speech impediments rather than fine points of English grammar.


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[Sonnet]

Lazy tongues & speech impediments?

Weak forms are perfectly legitimate English; indeed, it's stressing every single word & enunciating them in isolation which is wrong.

English is a stress-timed language; doesn't this require weak forms by definition? This is especially important to focus on when training speakers of a syllable-timed L1, such as, say, Chinese.

And there's a big difference between "lazy speech" or slang, and valid examples of elision, intrusion, assimilation or catenation; these are essential points in English phonology.

[sheeba]

Perhaps Bear Canada might buy a book in phonetics to understand how he uses his own language . Try beginning with the English schwa .

Sonnet . I agree . Dictation is very useful in class .

Now .Any ideas for activities with weak forms outside the presentation,practice stage of a lesson.


sonnet . You might have a look at this article which talks about stress vs syllable timed language and therefore problems Mandarin speakers have with English . Very interesting.

[sheeba]

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~sbenus/Research/L2_Intonation/Chen_et_al_JASA.pdf

here's the link.

[Plan B]

[in_asia_bill]

DP

[Sonnet]

Sheeba: thanks for the link.

Posters in general: It's nice to have some practical, methodological (that's no oxymoron!) discussion on here sometimes, isn't it?

In terms of production, or authenticuse, or whatever you want to call it... I don't think that learners can accurately & appropriately weak forms unless they've spent significant amounts of time in a native-speaking environment.

As far as teaching EFL students in China (in my experience) goes, a successful receptive ability regarding weak forms is adequate, and achievable.

Or in layman's terms: Learners won't speak like natives unless they live abroad, but it's definitely worthwhile training them to understand the way native speakers speak English.

[sheeba]

Good one with the songs !!

Good points Sonnet .

I'm going to try today by introducing questions Chinese ask me that I find annoying -Why did you come to China? Why don't you go back to Europe? Can you use chopsticks? and so on and highlight the weak forms . I'll get them using these as a practice session . Then I'll get them to introduce questions that they think aren't so annoying .Ones that are perhaps a bit interesting . They can also identtify the weak forms and we can drill these . Then they can go around the class as foreigners and students and interact with these forms .

I apologise for not using correct terminology earlier . I meant BearChina needs to buy himself a book about phonology (suprasegmental phonolgy).

Thank you for that poster informing me of my mistake in a conservative manner !!

[bearcanada]

Having lost sight of our objective, we redoubled our efforts.

Sheeba, I really don't understand what you think about. Your students can't write more than two sentences without screwing up the articles, and they still say things like, "Tomorrow we will happy", and "Be careful you don't upside down.", and you want to introduce them to a whole new esoteric category of lingusitics and phonology to accomplish what, exactly?

I've met far too many Chinese who learned from teachers like you, teachers who taught them to drop the volume at the ends of words and all other nonsense of sophisiticated pronunciation and, as a credit to your teaching ability, they learned 'weak forms' so well that now nobody can understand what the hell they're saying.

Do them a favor and stick to the basics. Save the sarcasm for your Ph.D. students. They may appreciate it.

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