Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)

Unit 5 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?

A COURSE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

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.


1. What should be taught to the beginners, pronunciation or phonetic ?

• Pronunciation is more important than phonetic. Stress and intonation are as important as the sounds themselves and should be taught from the very beginning.

Whether pronunciation needs special attention or focus in language teaching depends on many factors especially

learner factors.

Beginning Chinese learners of English should focus on pronunciation and their ability to identify and produce

English sounds themselves, because phonetic transcripts are more abstract and less meaningful.


• 1) Learners whose native language has similar sounds to English are less likely to have problems with pronunciation.

• 2) Learners who have more exposure to English need less focus on pronunciation.

• 3) Adult learners need more focus on pronunciation because they are more likely to substitute English sounds with sounds from their native language.


2. When should we teach phonetic?

Phonetic rules regarding what sounds a letter or a cluster of letters should be pronounced are helpful for students to develop the ability to cope with English pronunciation and they should be introduced at a suitable stage. Beginners of English, especially young learners, should be avoided to teach phonetic.


• 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

*differences of individual ability.


1) The Critical Period Hypothesis:

2) Our realistic goals of teaching pronunciation

Consistency: The pronunciation should be smooth and natural.

Intelligibility: The pronunciation should be understandable to the listeners.

Communicative efficiency: The pronunciation should help to convey the meaning that is intended by the speaker.


The Critical Period Hypothesis: if human don’t learn a foreign language before a certain age, then due to changes such as maturation of the brain, it becomes impossible to learn the foreign language like a native speaker.

This is true for acquiring native-like pronunciation, but there is less evidence that it is true for acquiring the grammar or the vocabulary of a foreign language. Everyone agrees that all people who learn a foreign language after puberty will always have an accent.

It will be easy for the native-speaker to identify that the

person is not a native-speaker of that language.


《窈窕淑女》（ MY FAIR LADY ）

• 故事背景是 20 世纪的英国，两个语言学家打赌：

一个乡下女人经过 6 个月的语言训练是否可进入上

流会会。于是 , 希金斯教授（哈里森饰 ) 找到一个

满口土语的卖花姑娘丽莎 ( 奥德丽 .

赫本饰 ), 对她

进行语言训练 , 最后大获成功，并且两人相互吸引 ,

坠入爱河 .

• 当她换上华丽的服饰优雅地踱入宫廷，她那流利

高贵的英国皇室口音令当场所有的达官显贵纷纷

倾倒，大家争相猜测她一定出身显赫，如果不是

某个邻国的公主，至少也是皇室名媛。


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



• Which order?. e.g. You hear: “…” and you read: bit bet pet

You hear: “…” and you read: bear tear ear



• Same or different?

e.g. You hear: met, meet well, well well, will



• Odd man out.

e.g. You hear: bit, bit, bit, pit



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?


Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)

Related documents

Products

Support

Ways of perception practice: (pp. 95-96)

Related documents

Add this document to collection(s)

Add this document to saved

Suggest us how to improve StudyLib