Handout -Teaching Sounds / pronunciation

1. To teach or not to teach pronunciation? It should be practised as far as the student is not mispronouncing words and thus is not comprehensible and cannot communicate successfully. So what is important ?

2. What is pronunciation?

3. Why is pronunciation important?

In the introduction to his book Rules of Pronunciation for the English Language Axel Wijk states the following:

“It is a generally recognized fact that the English language presents far greater difficulties with regard to its pronunciation than any other European language. This does not mean that foreigners find it particularly hard to acquire a correct pronunciation of the various speech sounds of which English is made up. From this point of view English is not any harder to learn than many other languages. Instead the difficulties referred to are concerned solely with the fact that the confused and irregular spelling of the language offers such poor guidance as to its pronunciation. There is hardly a letter or a combination of two or three letters in the English alphabet which cannot be pronounced in two or three different ways, and a good many of them actually have from half a dozen to a dozen different pronunciations” (1966:7).

4. What is the aim of teaching pronunciation ?

5. Tench observes that pronunciation is not based on spelling as each sound is represented by one or more than one written letter. This phenomenon (i.e. lack of consistency between spelling and pronunciation) is well represented by the letter sequence `ough' in the following examples:

`though' - rhymes with `s1ow'

`through'- rhymes with `true'

`thorough'- rhymes with `co1our'

`cough” - rhymes with `off”

`tough” - rhymes with `stuff”

`bough” — rhymes with `now”

Another example of such discrepancy, take `sh' spelt variously in: ship, ration, Asia, conscious, Confucian, issue, machine, luxury, fuchsia. Various examples of the sort are numerous and it is the teacher's task to make students aware of the situation and differences of this system as compared to learners' mother tongue.

6. How to be understood when you say something:

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7. Sources of students' pronunciation errors:

• Adding, changing or leaving out sounds in a word (eg. tree or free instead of three; adding `u' in - table - `tejbuł'; leaving out `d' - `mine' - mind );

• Changing the word syllable that is to be stressed, which may lead to the change of meaning (eg. to export - 1st syllable stressed instead of the 2nd);

• Changing the word that is to be stressed in a sentence

• Changing intonation pattern (eg. making a question out of a statement)

• Changing the rhythm

8. What to teach, as far as pronunciation is concerned ?

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9. RP stands for Received Pronunciation, which is the name of standard British English with 44 phonemes. They are grouped into 12 vowel sounds, 8 diphthongs and 24 consonants. They are best represented by Adrian Underhill's Sound Foundations chart, in which the position of phonemes corresponds to the place and manner of articulation (based on Bowen and Marks, 1992). See chart.

10. How to teach pronunciation ? The most important is that the student hears the difference between sounds. Or else s/he will not be able to produce them properly. So we have to teach: RECOGNIZING & DIFFERENTIATE SOUNDS

Words, as every learner knows, are composed of individual sounds, otherwise called phonemes. There is no need to teach English sounds in isolation because learners are capable of `picking up' the sound system by listening to various input (teacher, tapes, native speakers) and thanks to practicing words and structures. However, certain sounds do cause difficulty and then it could be advisable to practise such a sound or cluster /zlepek/ to avoid trouble later on (based on Doff, 1988).

11. What is the teaching sequence for pronunciation practice ?

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12. What is Phonemic hearing ? - The ability to …..

Teaching techniques

13. Techniques helping to distinguish sounds:

• Technique `the same-different'

• Number Technique

• Technique `repeating the word'

• Technique “counting repetition”

• Technique `odd one out'

• Technique `one word'

• Which word/sentence Technique:

• Matching Technique: match a word you hear to the picture

14. Teaching and practising correct pronunciation - techniques

• Imitation technique -

• Picture Technique

• Missing word technique

• Reading aloud technique

• Make sentences Technique

• Question and answer Technique

• Tongue twisters

• Translation Technique

15. Marking word stress and sentence stress:

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16. Marking Intonation pattern

Using arrows up and down indicating the intonation pattern; eg. Why don't you ask him ?

Using one wavy line indicating the intonation pattern; eg. Why don't you ask him ?

Using vertical marks next to all concurrent words; eg. Why don't you ask him ?

Using gesture movement;

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