Korean Job Discussion Forums

[xCustomx]

So I've got these 2 questions driving me crazy, and at the same time I'm thinking why the hell this would be important, since I seriously doubt I am ever going to teach this.

I have to come up with one example of each.
Sound changing: Green Park become Greem Park (I have no idea why they think the n changes to an m)
Extra lettering: Dancing with tears in my eyes becomes Dancing with tears in my yeyes

I have tried researching online and thinking of examples of my own but I'm stuck, so please help me out so I can finish this unit. thanks

[Woland]

Try looking in Celce-Murcia, M., Goodwin, J. M., & Brinton, D. C. Teaching Pronunciation. Cambridge University Press.

The first case you present is an example of how nasal sounds assimilate to the place of articulation of following obstruents (stops, affricates, fricatives).

The second case is an example of glide linking, in which a /y/ or /w/ (depending on the vowels involved) is inserted between a vowel and a following tense vowel or diphthong.

[xCustomx]

I'm not going to spend $38 for a book which teaches pronunciation, but thanks for the idea.

It would be more helpful if someone could provide other examples for the two sound joining methods

[RACETRAITOR]

The first one sounds like how Grandpa might become Grampa. I think that's a better example than "Greem Park," which I can't imagine anyone ever saying.

What are you teaching, graduate level linguistics? These are habits that we do unintentionally and I don't see why anyone would need to be taught about it.

[xCustomx]

This is for an online TESOL course. I don't see the point either, but then again I'm not the one who designed the course. I understand why it's important to be familiar with the ideas, but why would one actually teach this? My students would be fast asleep if I ever tried to bring something like this up in class

[RACETRAITOR]

[xCustomx]

[RACETRAITOR]

Glad I could help, and surprised I even came up with an answer.

I guess in Korean this concept is very important, as sounds are changed all the time. Best example being ㄹ->ㄴ, such as in how Jongro is pronounced Jongno and Roh Moo-Hyun's name sounds more like No Moo-Hyun.

[Woland]

The 'grandpa' ----> 'grampa' example is slightly more complex. The nasal assimilation can only happen after deletion of the 'd'. That happened because when three consonant clusters occur across syllable or word boundaries in English, the middle consonant is frequently deleted, especially if it is an alveolar stop (/t/ or /d/). In very informal speech, this can happen within syllable codas (but not onsets).

Here's why you should want to know these things:

A language teacher should know something about language and how it works in order to be able to help students in mastering the language. In other words, it's fundamental background to doing your job well. These phenomena are not "idiosyncrasies", but facts which effect comprehension in reception and comprehensibility in production.

When students listen to spoken English, it comes to them not as distinct sounds combined into distinct words, but as a stream of connected speech, in which regular alterations have been made to the underlying structure, some of them generic to human speech production, some of them properties of the specific language in question. Learners have to reconstruct the underlying form in order to understand what others are saying to them. It's not easy. How would you know that when someone says something like, 'jsee the news last night?' that the 'j' there is the equivalent of 'Did you' (and yes, 'did you' does reduce in informal speech to a single connsonant)? WE can help them in this process by presenting them with the base forms (which is what we do with beginners anyway) and gradually introducing them to the regular patterns that effect pronunciation and helping them to notice them happening. We can only do this if we know something of what the regular patterns are.

In the same way, to help students to produce the spoken language effectively requires some attention to their accuracy. For no matter how fluent they become, if they do not produce speech that matches listener expectations in terms of accuracy to a substantial degree, they will not be able to converse because they are incomprehensible.

You might say that you have just been hired as a conversation teacher, but all this stuff is fundamental to being able to hold a conversation. Without help in these areas, all the group work and games and free speaking activities will go to naught.

Maybe you don't see yourself as a professional and are doing a minimalist online cert just to get the pay raise that comes with some kind of certification. If that's the case, ignore me. But if you do actually care about being able to help your students, you might want to reconsider on buying Celce-Murcia et al. For $38, it's a complete reference book for teaching pronunciation, thorough, well-organized and clear in it's coverage of the phenomena of N. American English, and including lots of practical tips on teaching spoken language effectively, including conversation. It gives you specific activities that work for different problems and suggests a variety of approaches to them. It's the gold standard on this topic.

Apologies if my tone seems harsh here. One of the big problems in the EFL industry in Korea has been the Korean assumption that native speaker teachers are the solution to their learning problems, regardless of whether they are trained to teach or not. That assumption is a Korean problem, but taking advantage of it isn't. I recognize that Korea is an entry level job because of the error they've made, and that some of the people who come here to teach aren't interested in doing well at the job, but it ticks me off anyway. Ripping people off is a bad thing to do; being proud of it is worse. That said, I know nothing about you, so if I'm off target I apologize in advance.

[faster]

[The Bobster]

Woland did an excellent job of explaining a few things, some rather complex things at that, and he did so in a very understandable way. I thank him.

For myself, when teaching pronunciation, I tend to concentrate of r/l phonemes in this part of the world. The stuff mentioned in the OP is not likely to cause communication difficulties, and that is the primary concern, at least for me, but also for most of my students ... There are just SO very many words that can be confused by r/l mispronunciation in English, it's not even funny, and that remains the number one source of error for students that I've worked with here, and with other East Asian students I've worked with America.

(Think of the case of a couple of my current students, a pair of nurses applying for jobs in America. Now think of what a 30-second lapse of communication with co-workers might result in at a hospital with a medical emergency in front of them ...)

I agree that understanding these subsidiary error areas might be important for a teacher to understand, but I agree with the OP that it's not very likely to come up in most of our classrooms.

[jvalmer]

[dmbfan]

I am currently taking the same course.............


However, I will not recommend it to anyone.


dmbfan

[xCustomx]

[dmbfan]

I hear ya buddy.........

Although, somethings are informative and usefull. But, she (the "tutor") does not give US any ideas of explanations for her comments. She is rather useless.


If you need any information, let me know. But, it seems you are only a few units behind me anyway.


dmbfan