Pronunciation

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05

ASSIGNMENT Subject: Teaching Methodology Teacher: Đoàn Minh Nguyệt Topic: About Teaching Pronunciation Length: 2000 words Teacher’s comment:

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1, Introduction 

The role of pronunciation in the different schools of language teaching has varied widely from having virtually no role in the grammar-translation method to being the main focus in the audiolingual method where emphasis is on the traditional notions of pronunciation, minimal pairs, drills and short conversations. The pronunciation class was one that gave primary attention to phonemes

and

their

meaningful

contrasts,

environmental

allophonic variations, and combinatory phonotactic rules, along with ...attention to stress, rhythm, and intonation. In many language programmes the teaching of pronunciation was pushed aside, as many studies concluded that little relationship exists between teaching pronunciation in the classroom and attained proficiency in pronunciation; the strongest factors found to affect seem to have little to do with classroom activities.

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 

English pronunciation has various components such as sounds, stress, and variation in pitch, and the learner needs to understand the function of these as well as their form. Once learners are aware that English words have a stress pattern, that words can be pronounced in slightly different ways, that the pitch of the voice can be used to convey meaning, then they will know what to pay attention to and can build upon this basic awareness.

2, What’s Pronunciation? •

Pronunciation : the way in which we pronounce a word (or we make the sound of word)

•

Pronunciation refers to: - The way a word or a language is usually spoken; - The manner in which someone utters a word.

•

The concept of ‘ pronunciation ‘ may be said to include: - The sounds of the langguage, or phonology - Stress and rhythm - Intonation

3, The objective of learning Pronunciation: Why you should study English pronunciation? First impressions Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English. Let us tell you a personal anecdote about this:

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 Notice that we just said three words, and the teacher could already tell if our English was good or bad. Why did the teacher think our English was good? Because of the difficult words we used? No. Because we used advanced grammar structures? No. It was our pronunciation. When you meet a person, and you just say a sentence or two, do you think they will notice your poor vocabulary or bad grammar? Probably not. But they will notice if your pronunciation is good or bad. If your pronunciation is poor, they will immediately think about you as "the guy/girl who speaks bad English". Your pronunciation creates the first impression you make.

Communication Good pronunciation should be one of the first things that you learn in English. You can live without advanced vocabulary — you can use simple words to say what you want to say. You can live without advanced grammar — you can use simple grammar structures instead. But there is no such thing as "simple pronunciation". If you don't have good pronunciation, you have... bad pronunciation. And the results of bad pronunciation are tragic. Even if you use great vocabulary and grammar, people may simply not understand what you want to say.

 How to learn English pronunciation 1. Learn the sounds of English English uses different sounds than other languages. For

example, the first sound in the word thin and the first sound in the word away are never heard in many languages.

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 Therefore, you have to:

1. know all the English sounds 2. listen to how they sound in real words and sentences

3. practice your pronunciation — listen to English words and sentences, and try to repeat them as well as you can

4, How to avoid making mistakes in English Learners make mistakes and reinforce them because they produce sentences 1) too carelessly or 2) too early. You will avoid mistakes if you follow a couple of rules:

Rules of error-free speaking and writing 1. Use simple language. Some beginners try to build very complicated sentences with things like the present perfect tense or conditionals. They make horrible mistakes. Don't do this! If you've just started to speak or write in English, you should say what you can say (simple sentences that you have seen many times) — not what you want to say (complicated sentences). You may feel you're talking like a child or that you are not expressing your thoughts, but don't worry about it. Right now, your task is not to express your thoughts freely; your task is to learn the language.

2. Be slow and careful. In the beginning, you should write very slowly. If you need 2 hours to write an e-mail message with 10 correct sentences, that's okay. That's how long it should take if you're just starting to write. Why should it take so long? Because you should read your sentences many times, looking for mistakes. You should correct your own sentences frequently. You should check if your sentences are correct

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 by using a dictionary and the Web. And you should look for example sentences to imitate.

3. If you're not sure how to say something, don't say it. If you can't say something correctly, it's almost always better not to say it. You don't want to teach yourself the wrong way to say it. You can try to look for the correct sentence in a dictionary or on the Web (see next point), but when speaking, usually you don't have time for that. So it's a good idea to say something else — something that you know is correct. It can even be something on a different subject.

4. When writing, always look things up. Whenever you're not sure how to use a word, look it up in a good dictionary to find example sentences with it. When you've written something, and you are not sure if it's correct, search for it on the Web with Google. If many pages contain your phrase, then it is probably correct. Dictionaries and Google should be your everyday tools, and you should use them even many times in one sentence (especially if you've just begun writing in English).

5. Know where you can screw up. Sometimes learners don't even realize how different English is from their native language. When speaking, they translate word for word from their native language, and they think their sentences are okay. When reading or listening in English, pay close attention to things like word order, articles, prepositions, and tenses. Compare sentences in English with equivalent sentences in your native language. Notice the differences in words and in word order. This will make you more careful when speaking in the foreign language, because you will realize which parts of your sentences can be wrong and should be double-checked.

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05

5, Integrating pronunciation into classroom activities Pronunciation work has traditionally taken a secondary role in language teaching to work on grammar and more recently lexis. This is not surprising, however; like all other areas of language teaching, pronunciation needs constant attention for it to have a lasting affect on students, which means integrating it into daily classroom procedures. •

Using student talk to teach pronunciation

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Word stress

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Vowel sounds

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Diphthongs

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Weak forms

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Sentence stress

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Conclusion

Top of page

6, Some techniques for teaching Pronunciation: Exercise should be simple, accessible , fun and combine reception and

production.

Some

students

(usually

adults)

do

feel

embarassed to pull ridiculuous faces when practising vowel sounds (this may be personal or cultural or both) but I have generally

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 found that this soon passes and students enjoy the pronunciation work. Where possible, exercises should be communicative in that they

should

(and

do

generate

differences

of

opinion

and

disagreement about what was said/heard. Below are two

examples.

Exercise A : After having taught or exposed the students to long and short vowels through listening and oral work, the teacher can check recognition, retention and ability to discriminate in the following way. This could also be used simply for teaching.

Stage 1 : The teacher writes a variety of words containing the target sounds (long and short vowels) on the board. The following is just one possible set. PORT 0

PIT 1

2

PAT 3

PERT 4

PET 5

POT 6

PUTT 7

8

PUT

PART

PEAT

9

Here, the only difference in sound is that of the vowel - familiar to anyone who has done minimal pair work. As in these examples, the word should begin and end with the same consonant. 0, 3, 8, and 9, are long vowels and the rest are short.

Stage 2 : The teacher then models each word and individal repetition follows. The vowel sound can be isolated and the procedure repeated until the teacher is reasonably sure that there are no major problems. He or she then tells the students that they are going to hear one of the words and must write the number which corresponds to the word they hear. What the students have written is then checked and compared.

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 This automatically leads into a discussion of what they heard and what sounds they are confusing. If student X heard1 when the teacher said 9, they are confusing the short vowel / I / with the long vowel / i: / . The teacher gives feedback and the sounds may then be modelled again and practised.

Stage 3: Two or three words are then presented together and the procedure repeated. The teacher then tells the class they are going to hear six words and that the numbers correspond to an important telephone number. The teacher delivers the words and asks , "What's my number?". Again there will be differences in what was heard. This allows a focus on which sounds are not being discriminated effectively by which students and where their problems lie. Later discussion may revolve aroud what strategies students may employ to improve their discrimination skills - songs, minimal pair games with friends, movies, radio, etc.

Stage 4: Learners are then invited to model the telephone number. This stage usually generates much discussion and disagreement along the lines of - "You said ...... ", "No I did'nt ", "Say it again" and so on and is usually very lively. The teacher is, of course, the final arbiter of what was really said. The important thing is that the learners are thinking actively about their pronunciation and how to repair it if necessary. They also begin to hear themselves (often for the first time) and this is of immeasurable importance in the retention of sounds.

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 Some Conclusions 1. The exercise allows clear practice in production and reception and gives concise feedback to individual learners as to where their problems lie in these areas and how to repair them. Often these are very simple physical questions such as not roundig the lips as in / u: / in fool , which the teacher can help them focus on. 2. This,

in

turn,

allows

discussion

on

learning

strategies

for

pronunciation which can be drawn up it the classroom. 3. It is a communicative exercise as it involves disagreement, repair and ( hopefully !) agreement among other things. 4. Many language learners feel self concious and negative about their pronunciation . To effectively deal with this question in the class and enable learners to see an improvement, is invariably a great psychological boost. 5. I have used these activities with learners from many different cultural and language backgrounds and they have invariably been seen as both very useful and fun. 6. As teachers, we are often not the best judges of the accuracy of our students' pronunciation . We are accustomed to it and usually very tolerant when in general, native speakers are not. Such exercises help us to be more aware of real problems learners have in their oral production and to help to correct them. 7. Such activities should be an integral part of any language teaching programme as they make pronunciation an active element of the learning process and focus learners on the language they are producing.

*** Below are tips for pronunciation activities you can do with your students, including links to printable resources and games and links to related web sites. Enjoy!

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 •

Poetry

•

Drama

•

Bingo

•

Contrastive stress

•

Pronunciation Partners

•

Humming

•

Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts Example utterances Student A

Student B

I like pizza, pickles, and chips. (list intonation)

Not all together, I hope.

Would you prefer coffee or tea? (choice intonation)

Tea, please.

Would you like some ice cream and cake? (double-rising intonation)

No, thank you. I'm not hungry.

Next week we are flying to Rome. (falling intonation)

Really? How long will you be there?

Is he going to the dentist? (rising intonation)

Yes. He has a toothache

Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts. These are so fun and successful that they deserve a section of their own. Segmentals

•

Ask students to find as many objects as they can with a specific vowel or consonant sound. If the weather is nice, send them outside. Bring in books or magazines with lots of pictures to stimulate their minds. Example: Find things in the classroom that have

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05

an /r/ sound. • • •

room clock blackboard

•

eraser

•

Have students compete to build syllable pyramids. The teacher gives a topic (clothing, objects in the classroom, animals, food, etc.) and students race to build a pyramid. (One syllable word at the top, the a 2-syllable word, 3-syllable word, etc.) Download the worksheet.

Syllables

Note: This idea is adapted from a presentation Holly saw at TESOL. If anyone knows the origin of this activity, we'd love to give credit. •

Put students in groups and send them outside for a specified period of time. Tell them to find as many things in nature with 1,2,3,4 or more syllables or with certain word stress patterns as they can. (Example: tree, squirrel, waterfall, etc.)

•

Have students find examples of items that can be combined to form a new compound noun. (i.e. snow + ball = snowball)

Word Stress

7, Testing Pronunciation What to test - Sound recognition - Sound production - Usage in context - Stress/intonation/rhythm - Pausing/phrasing It's a good idea to rotate the starting team with each round because otherwise, students will start changing their guesses

Student: Phạm Khánh Linh Class: CT1- 05 to match the pronunciation of winning team. I usually do just ten words and then award candy to the team with the most points. Students really start to be careful about their pronunciation when points are involved!

8, Conclusion Improve your American English pronunciation quickly, easily, and effectively with the simplest and most practical program available. No matter what your level of English is - or if you're trying to lessen a strong regional accent - this program will help you sound more natural and communicate with greater ease and confidence.

Better pronunciation means cleaner communication - at school,

on

the

job,

or

in

any

social

setting.

Easy

Pronunciation is practical, convenient, and simple to use. The explanations are clear enough for anyone to understand, and there's plenty of practice to get every sound just right. All you have to do is listen and repeat.