<b>Forum for teachers teaching adult education </b>
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Deborah B
- Posts: 9
- Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:08 pm
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by Deborah B » Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:29 pm
Hello there!
I would like to know how other teachers are managing to effectively communicate and demonstrate how they say specific sounds, to their students? I teach one-on-one, and my student is quite adamant about her understanding of much of grammar, vocab, ultimately wanting to reduce her accent. This really requires that I find a way to logically and clearly explain what is happening in my mouth and explain it to her.
Any ideas on the explaining? Any ideas on how you yourself as teachers learned this information? Wikipdedia and the web in general has been good for giving me some basics, but I do not feel like my knowledge is deep. I wonder if there is a way to teach this as I learn it? THis seems the only really viable option. ANy thoughts?
Thank you! Thank you!
Deborah
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fluffyhamster
- Posts: 3031
- Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:57 pm
- Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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by fluffyhamster » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:33 am
Have you looked at the 'Pronunciation' forum (part of these Teacher Discussion Forums) yet?
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Macavity
- Posts: 151
- Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2005 10:41 pm
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by Macavity » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:50 am
Hi,
Daniel Jones's An Outline of English Phonetics might help; I find it very user friendly (if a bit dated).
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EH
- Posts: 174
- Joined: Fri Jan 17, 2003 2:36 am
- Location: USA and/or Korea
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by EH » Sun Oct 22, 2006 7:01 pm
I didn't really know how I was pronouncing words, much less how to explain the process to students, until I took courses in articulation/phonological development and disorders as part of becoming a speech-language pathologist. You might want to look for books and online courses for SLPs to help you sort things out.
Some sites:
www.asha.org is the website of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, the (US) national credentialling body for SLPs. It has a lot of info about speech and language development.
www.superduperinc.com (I think this is the right link...) sells lots of materials for SLPs.
www.linguisystems.com also sells lots of materials for SLPs.
Also, LDS Associates has a lot of accent modification materials for sale, and the Compton P-ESL program is another well-known program for accent modification (although Compton may not sell to you if you're not an SLP in training at least). Amazon.com also sometimes sells used SLP textbooks relatively cheaply.
If you need help describing the articulation of any specific sounds, feel free to PM me. Or post on the pronunciation thread.
Good luck,
-EH
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Deborah B
- Posts: 9
- Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:08 pm
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by Deborah B » Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:10 am
Thank you for your thoughts and ideas. EH (funny phonetic sound) I think you may be right, that speech is indeed one proper path...although I wonder if their is an ESL version of speech-making, since the learning of new english sounds happens in the context of the native language- in other words having expertees on building a bridge between the speaker's native and the english lanuage. I feel this workable presence of the first language is something that speech pathology would not respect. I will look things up. This is a step.
Thanks again!
Deborah
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EH
- Posts: 174
- Joined: Fri Jan 17, 2003 2:36 am
- Location: USA and/or Korea
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by EH » Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:17 pm
You said, "I feel this workable presence of the first language is something that speech pathology would not respect."
Unfortunately, there are indeed SLPs out there like that. But they are not following best practices. And I don't think they represent the majority.
Accent Modification, also frequently called Accent Reduction (although I personally favor the former term), is the sub-field of speech-language pathology that deals with elective services of changing sound production and perception after a locally-appropriate sound system has already been established. So Accent Modification is what you'd want to look at.
But really, it's not such a stretch to go from changing an incorrect sound (like a lisp) to changing a correct-but-foreign one. Even SLPs who do not specialize in Accent Modification should be able to do it, because it's not very different from what they already do every day. I actually never took an Accent Modification course in grad school (wasn't offered while I was there... yeesh...); instead I took Phonological Development and Disorders, and if you're an ESL teacher already then that kind of course is enough to clue you in on how to teach speech sounds to non-native speakers.
Anyway, good luck.
-EH