Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

We all know about the problem many native east Asian speakers have with R's and L's. I've encountered few young students in Korea that butcher those letters, however. They're doing something right early on in public school English. But there's a more insidious pronunciation problem I've been trying to stamp out. It's their inability to say "sh" as in "shhh be quiet!" They always fall back on the Korean "sh" and "ch" which end in a hard "ee" sound. Like cheetah or afrosheen.

So my kids don't say "fish" they say "fishee". Not "lunch" but "lunchee". I've tried howling at them, but that's produced mixed results. When I'm stumped for ideas I go back to my own foreign language learning and most of that is learning French in Quebec in the 1970s.

In the 1970s it was uncommon not to have a French teacher who wasn't a middle aged pure laine Quebecois woman who wore love beads, an African dashiki, big round pimp style sunglasses with purple shading, and some attempt at an afro. Naturally she tried to sit cross legged on her desk. Think of the art teacher from Ghost World and you've got a very close approximation.

Your ur-French teacher had taken at least one course in music and dance therapy after seeing The Who's Tommy (the movie, not the Broadway musical) at the Snowdon movie theatre in downtown Montreal. I think she felt if music and dance therapy could open up a world to autistic children, it could help over-privileged, middle-classed Anglophone suburban kids who never actually had to speak French in their over-privledged, middle-classed Anglophone Montreal suburbs roll their R's correctly.

So basically I ask myself, what would a French hippie from the '70s do?

Mime. That's the answer.

When tackling the "sh" sound, I wanted my kids not to think of themselves as children but as air valves. Their arms are not arms but a sort of drawbridge that gets raised and lowered by air pressure.

As they say "fish", they should raise their arms slowly and gracefully in time to a pleasant "shhhhhhhh" sound, as if a rush of air is raising their arms.

Most of the kids got it. Over-stressed Lilly, who spends most of the class obsessed with trying to pick off the stress-induced warts that plague her arms and hands, didn't want to do no mime shyte.

"Lilly, fishhhhhhhh," I said, demonstrating the gentle arm raising move.

Her chubby poxed hands darted to her Miffy the Bunny pencil case and grabbed firm hold, as if to anchor her arms to her desk. "Fisheee."

"No no. Try again. Fishhhhhhhh!" More arm raising.

"Fisheee."

"Lilly, watch and learn. Fishhhhhhhh."

"Fishee."

I took her hands and raised her chubby poxed arms as I "shhhhhhhhhhhhh'd".

Lilly giggled.

"Fishee."

Oh well, I got a giggle out of her. It'll do.

[PatrickSiheung]

roffle

[cacheSurfer]

i hate hearing "H-eeeeeee"
i always correct my students when they mutter that damn "H-eeeee" thing.

[Mashimaro]

Very interesting and potentially very useful post about teaching. totally out of place on this board Only kidding, great to hear someone thinking outside the box to try and help these kids

[ajuma]

Try teaching the pronunciation from back to front. Ex: sh sh sh...

ish...ish...ish.... fish...

[crazylemongirl]

One of the things I hate about my current gig is that the kids can't move around a lot. I think that this is a great idea for teaching pronouncation to younger learners.

One of my favorite activities for drilling Q and A responses is to give out cards to my students and they have to find their pair by asking the question

Also if you've got a bit of space you might want to do a variation on what's the time mr wolf. Maybe have a question like 'what animal are you?' for the kids to ask mr wolf. Then mr wolf answers a tiger the kids take one step forward by doing the tiger signal. Keep going until one of the kids touches mr wolf and then run back to the start line. If mr wolf catches someone, the person caught is the next mr wolf.

[edoras]

[Saxiif]

There's sh sounds in Korea that aren't followed by eeeeee, but you can't stick the s or sh letters at the end of a syllable without them turning into a t sound for some reason.

[ajuma]

edoras: Try rhyming. She can probably say "good" and "hood" correctly. Just change the first letter to "w".

[prosodic]

[mog]

Isn't the "w" sound a vowel in Korean? And since the "u" is required to be the first part of the diphthong, Koreans will have difficulty ending the supposed diphthong with that "u" sound. Same problem exists with the "o" sound.

Can't you just break it into two sounds? Make the "w" diphthong include "eo" (curse the lack of hangul and linguistic characters) and then make the next syllable the "o." Then work on reducing the "eo" to nothing and you're left with the "wo."

Comments?

[Saxiif]

If you think that's hard, try making Koreans say "yield." I've seen virtually fluent Koreans bomb that one hard.

[mindmetoo]

[prosodic]