Teaching Consonant Clusters
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Futatsujima
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- Location: Winnipeg
Teaching Consonant Clusters
Hello everyone. I am trying to come up with a lesson plan to teach consonant clusters. Any ideas would be most appreciated. Thanks.
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fluffyhamster
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Hi Futatsujima, and welcome to the forums!
If you do a search in Graeme Kennedy's Structure and Meaning in English (previewable on Google Books) for 'clusters' you should be able to take a look around pages 32-35, where there are charts showing the more frequent initial and final consonant clusters, and the odd teaching tip or two ('For some clusters containing an initial consonant, teachers can help learners make the cluster by getting them to make the second consonant first, then a lengthened preceding one, gradually reducing the length; then the cluster, e.g. for spin: pin, s....., s...., s..., spin'. [This is essentially a "backchaining" drill - FH]).
Then, there are frequency statistics in Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, which although not previewable on Google Books, should be available in libraries or bookstores.
Anyway, I'll see if I can find any actual activities (in a few other books that I have), to help complement the somewhat bare empirical facts in Kennedy, though for now I can at least direct you to Hewings' Pronunciation Practice Activities, which is previewable on Google Books. (There are three activities in it for 'clusters', two of which - the 'Definitions quiz' on page 74, and the 'Consonant cluster towers' on page 77 - are previewable at the moment of typing and don't look too bad, though I'm not sure in the latter that 'tramples', with its so-called "syllabic l" in at least the transcription Hewings is providing*, is the best example of a word with 'no additional vowel sounds between the consonant clusters at the start and end of the resulting words': something like 'trampling' ["tram + pling" rather than "tram + pulls"] might be better for the purposes of this particular activity). You might also try searching for 'clusters' on these very forums, and/or browsing the Pronunciation forum generally, as there could be a good idea or two hidden away somewhere!
*Compare the IPA in the online OALD8 (which is the same as Hewings') with that in the MED2 (which allows for a bracketed schwa between the p and l):
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictio ... ry/trample
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... sh/trample
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... an/trample
If you do a search in Graeme Kennedy's Structure and Meaning in English (previewable on Google Books) for 'clusters' you should be able to take a look around pages 32-35, where there are charts showing the more frequent initial and final consonant clusters, and the odd teaching tip or two ('For some clusters containing an initial consonant, teachers can help learners make the cluster by getting them to make the second consonant first, then a lengthened preceding one, gradually reducing the length; then the cluster, e.g. for spin: pin, s....., s...., s..., spin'. [This is essentially a "backchaining" drill - FH]).
Then, there are frequency statistics in Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, which although not previewable on Google Books, should be available in libraries or bookstores.
Anyway, I'll see if I can find any actual activities (in a few other books that I have), to help complement the somewhat bare empirical facts in Kennedy, though for now I can at least direct you to Hewings' Pronunciation Practice Activities, which is previewable on Google Books. (There are three activities in it for 'clusters', two of which - the 'Definitions quiz' on page 74, and the 'Consonant cluster towers' on page 77 - are previewable at the moment of typing and don't look too bad, though I'm not sure in the latter that 'tramples', with its so-called "syllabic l" in at least the transcription Hewings is providing*, is the best example of a word with 'no additional vowel sounds between the consonant clusters at the start and end of the resulting words': something like 'trampling' ["tram + pling" rather than "tram + pulls"] might be better for the purposes of this particular activity). You might also try searching for 'clusters' on these very forums, and/or browsing the Pronunciation forum generally, as there could be a good idea or two hidden away somewhere!
*Compare the IPA in the online OALD8 (which is the same as Hewings') with that in the MED2 (which allows for a bracketed schwa between the p and l):
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictio ... ry/trample
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... sh/trample
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... an/trample
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Futatsujima
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- Joined: Sun Jul 04, 2010 4:59 pm
- Location: Winnipeg
The only problem with saying "pin" and putting an "s" in front for "spin" is that the normal initial "p" in English is aspirated, with a puff of air, and it isn't aspirated after an "s". If the student is saying "pin" properly, you don't want them to add a puff of air after the "p" in spin. The most trouble I've seen with "spin" is by native speakers of languages that need a vowel before (like Spanish) where the tendency is to say "espin". For those people, concentrating on the "ssssss" first helps.
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fluffyhamster
- Posts: 3031
- Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:57 pm
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Heh, you're welcome Futatsujima. 
Hi Lori, always nice to hear from you!
Sure, when p comes after s it becomes unaspirated*, but that doesn't make the sp- any less of an initial cluster (is I guess all that Kennedy "meant"); that is, although there's indeed a difference between the quality of the p in 'pin' versus 'spin', there's an appreciably greater difference between the general (natural) prounciation of 'spin' versus 'sin' say. Anyway, thanks for bringing this point up and thereby making Futatsujima aware of the finer points lurking in Kennedy's data and specifically his example drill; I probably should've picked up on it myself (I think I got a bit distracted by Hewings' activities!), but hey, at least my quoting it at face value ( 
) got somebody (you! ) commenting and helping add something potentially pretty pertinent!
*I've mentioned over on the Job Discussion forums how this fact can help learners of Chinese appreciate the difference between the b and p of the Pinyin versus English alphabet (i.e. the Pinyin b is like the English "p after s") - scroll down to the first footnote of the following post: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic ... 277#810277 .
Hi Lori, always nice to hear from you!
Sure, when p comes after s it becomes unaspirated*, but that doesn't make the sp- any less of an initial cluster (is I guess all that Kennedy "meant"); that is, although there's indeed a difference between the quality of the p in 'pin' versus 'spin', there's an appreciably greater difference between the general (natural) prounciation of 'spin' versus 'sin' say. Anyway, thanks for bringing this point up and thereby making Futatsujima aware of the finer points lurking in Kennedy's data and specifically his example drill; I probably should've picked up on it myself (I think I got a bit distracted by Hewings' activities!), but hey, at least my quoting it at face value ( ) got somebody (you! ) commenting and helping add something potentially pretty pertinent! *I've mentioned over on the Job Discussion forums how this fact can help learners of Chinese appreciate the difference between the b and p of the Pinyin versus English alphabet (i.e. the Pinyin b is like the English "p after s") - scroll down to the first footnote of the following post: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic ... 277#810277 .
While I found the "I come from Sssssssspain" thing useful there, with Japanese and Korean learners who add syllables to supringu (spring) etc I find the best approach is to ignore the sounds and just concentrate on number of syllables. Don't know why, just seems to work better (at least during controlled practice, haven't done any proper checking of long term progress)