Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Privateer]

Koreans can't count syllables in English!

Ok so probably a lot of you know this already and I've noticed it before myself, but it came up in class again yesterday and I feel like (ranting) writing about it.

I was trying to nail down the student pronunciation of 'studying'. It usually comes out 'stud-ing' or 'stud-eeng'. Shamelessly British (for once), I decide to get them to pronounce it 'stud-ee-ying', throwing a 'y' in there (how do Americans pronounce this word exactly? I don't know if other people consider 'stud-ing' acceptable pronunciation or not but to me it isn't because then I'm not sure if they're saying 'I am study' instead of 'I am studying').

Step 1, I drill the words 'study' and 'studying'. Mixed success.

Step 2: I write on the board:

study

studying

Step 3: I ask 'How many syllables?'. (We establish that 'syllables' means '����' ('um jeol') in Korean, and even that hangeul is a syllabic writing system. We establish that they can count syllables in hangeul words perfectly.)

Then I point to 'study' and repeat 'How many syllables?'. '3', '2', '5' ( ), '4?'. It's like I said 'generate random number'!

Eventually it emerged that the common consensus was that 'study' has 3 syllables. It makes perfect sense when your Korean English teacher has taught you '���͵�' for 6 years. I explained to them using phonetic symbols I have no idea whether or not they understand that 'study' has 2 syllables and 'studying' has 3. But I'm still worried that that's not enough.

I'm worried cos it appears they're not really seeing the English words but the hangeul transliterations. That's why they consistently ignore the 's' on the end of words: it isn't there in hangeul. They are systematically taught to read English wrong.

The solution must be to systematically teach them to read English right but (a) my students see me 1 or 2 hours a week but they had 'English' lessons in school for 6 years, (b), and more importantly, I don't know how to go about it. We assume they know how to read before they get into our classes.

So basically what we need is an extra reading/pronunciation class. I've had these when taking Korean: they explain certain rules that may be confusing for non-Koreans. However, what I want to do is get them to see the syllables in English writing, and of course hearing the corresponding phonemes, and I'm afraid it may be much more complex. Does anyone have any ideas or information on this subject?

[Ya-ta Boy]

Insert a 5 minute activity in your next few lessons. Before lesson time, make a list of vocabulary words and place names that they have studied recently.

Say a word, model it a couple of times; they hold up 1, 2, 3, 4 fingers.
You can even make a simple team activity: Left side of the room vs the Right side of the room.

Keep it light and jolly. It's a simple, worthwhile activity that helps sharpen their listening skill as well as their reading.

[robot]

dudes --

here's the syllable secret:

get them to count vowels. that's where syllables are stressed.

if two vowels work to make one sound (-tion) then they count as one. this includes silent letters like the "e" in "bake" which simply makes the "a" hard.

there may be some exceptions, but this generally works like a charm.

study = 2 vowels, therefore 2 syllables. korean students need lots of help with consonant clusters, but they'll eventually realize that ���͵� is wrong when they get the hang of syllablification.

ROBT.

[Privateer]

That's a great tip, thanks. Have them count the vowels, and just hope they naturally get the English vowels, and forget about those konglish vowels, eh?

Thanks, Ya-ta Boy too, think I might just do that.

[peppermint]

What I've always done( especially with longer words) is to write the word with slash marks for each real syllable

eg. con/grat/u/lat/ions!


Having the kids pronounce on syllable at a time makes it more manageable for them. With that particular word, I usually end up telling them that "congrats!" is acceptable too though.

[jajdude]

Don't dictionaries show the number of syllables?

("friend" not "puh len duh" )

[ontheway]

Just explain to them about putting a horse out to stud. Then ask them it they are really "studing". They'll get studying right away after that and some new vocabulary, too.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Another thought.

I remember in 5th Grade we had dictionary races. It was practice in both spelling and syllable counting. It seems to me we also had to answer how many meanings X word had (we all had the same edition of a dictionary) and what language a word came from. It was useful for learning the rules for where to divide words.