Teaching Pronunciation
Teaching Pronunciation
Aims of the unit
1. What role does pronunciation play in language
learning?
2. What is the goal of teaching pronunciation?
3. What aspects of pronunciation do we need to
teach?
4. How can teachers help the students to practice
pronunciation?
6.1 The role of pronunciation
Two points of views on teaching pronunciation:
• Students do not need to learn pronunciation,
because pronunciation will take care of itself as
the students develop overall language ability.
• Failure in pronunciation is a great hindrance in
language learning. Therefore the teacher should
spend some time in teaching pronunciation.
Whether pronunciation needs special
attention of focus depends on many
factors, especially learner factors.
• for example:
• Learners whose native language has
similar sounds to English vs. those
whose native language has very different
sounds from English;
• Learners who have more exposure to
English vs. those who only learn
English in the class;
• Adult learners vs. young ones.
• We should pay attention to the distinction
between pronunciation and phonetics.
• The teaching of pronunciation should focus on
the students’ ability to identify and produce
English sounds themselves. Students should
NOT be led to focus on reading and writing
phonetic transcripts of words, especially young
students, because phonetic transcripts are more
abstract and less meaningful.
• Introduction to phonetic rules should be
avoided at the beginning stage.
• Stress and intonation should be taught from
the very beginning.
• e.g.
A: Would you please turn down the radio a little
bit?
B: Sorry.↘ (with a sharp falling: No, I don’t want
to.)
Or:
B: Sorry.↗(with a rising: What did you say?)
6.2 The goal of teaching pronunciation
• Should we require the students to acquire
native-like pronunciation? Or rather:
• Can the students achieve that goal?
To answer the second question, we must
take into consideration three things:
*learner age,
*amount of exposure, and
*differences of individual ability.
1. Learner age
The Critical Period Hypothesis: (pp. 92-93)
The hypothesis claims that if humans do not
learn a foreign language before a certain age
(perhaps around puberty青春期), then it
becomes impossible to learn the foreign
language like a native speaker because of
changes such as maturation of the brain.
• The hypothesis is still
controversial/debated, because both
positive and negative answers have been
given by researchers.
• Most people agree, however, that those
who learn a foreign language after
puberty will have an accent.
2. Amount of exposure
• At the present time, most Chinese
learners of English do not have enough
exposure to English to acquire native-like
pronunciation.
3. Differences of individual ability
• Students have different phonetic abilities
due to biological and physiological
differences. Some are more sensitive to
sounds and are better at imitating sounds
than others.
The realistic goals (p. 93)
• Consistency: Be smooth and natural.
fluency）
• Intelligibility: Be understandable.
• Communicative efficiency: Convey the
meaning that is intended.
6.3 Aspects of pronunciation
• Pronunciation covers more than just
phonetic symbols and rules. It also includes
stress, intonation, and rhythm, and all these
are not isolated from each other.
• Stress and intonation are often neglected by
many learners.
• Sometimes stress and intonation matter
more than the individual sounds do.
• As far as pronunciation is concerned,
students benefit from both
mechanical practice and meaningful
practice.
6.4 Practising sounds
• Pronunciation is difficult to teach without
drills on sounds. However, drilling an
individual sound for more than a few
minutes a time may be boring and
demotivating.
• It is important to combine drilling
pronunciation exercise with more
meaningful exercises. (e.g. A polliwog looks
for his mom.)
• Sometimes we need to focus on some
individual sounds,
e.g th [W] in theme, th [T] in them
Perception practice and Production
practice
• Ways of perception practice:
(pp. 95-96)
• Aim: to develop the ability to identify and
distinguish between different sounds.
Ways of perception practice: (p. 54)
Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)
• Using minimal pairs.
e.g. “Which word is read?”
will, well
till, tell
fill, fell
Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)
• Which order?.
e.g. You hear: “…”
and you read: bit bet pet
You hear: “…”
and you read: bear tear ear
Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)
• Same or different?
e.g. You hear:
met, meet
well, well
well, will
Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)
• Odd man out.
e.g. You hear:
bit, bit, bit, pit
Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)
Completion.
e.g. You hear: gate, late, fate, date, hate, rate,
Kate
and you write: ate, ate, ate, ate,
ate, …
Perception practice and Production
practice
Production practice (pp. 97 – 98)
Aim: to develop the ability to produce
sounds
Ways of production practice:
Ways of production practice (pp.97-98)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Listen and repeat.
Fill in the blanks.
Make up sentences. (last, fast, calm,dark…
Use meaningful context.
Use pictures.
Use tongue twisters.
A tongue twister
A big black bug bit the back of a big black bear.
The big black bear bit the back of a big black
pig.
When the big black bug bit the back of the big
black bear,
The big black pig bit back the big black bear.
6.5 Practising stress and intonation
Practising stress:
• Use gestures. (by clapping hands or using arm
movements.)
• Use the voice. (by raising the voice)
• Use the blackboard. (by underlining or
colouring)
Practising intonation :
• Use hand or arm movement.
• Use arrows (↘ for falling, ↗for rising)
• Draw lines under/above the words:
Did you get some | tic|kets for the |con|cert ↗?
Summary: some essentials of teaching
pronunciation
• Create a pleasant, relaxed, and dynamic
classroom.
• Use gestures.
• Build-up Students’ confidence.
• Bring variety to the classroom, e.g. Br. &
Am.
• Use demo rather than explanation.
• Use visual aids.
Homework
•
•
•
What is the goal of teaching pronunciation?
What aspects of pronunciation do we need
to teach?
What are the two practice activities
suggested for teaching pronunciation?