Background

Communication can be a tricky business, especially when the listener and speaker are

from different linguistic backgrounds. There are pitfalls aplenty with poor word choice

and improper inflection, and there are numerous reasons a student has difficulty

reproducing the sounds of English correctly. Perhaps pronunciation had little focus in

previous classes, or maybe the student has never had any formal language instruction.

Even students with significant educational experience can have problems. Perhaps early

pronunciation was taught by nonnative speakers who themselves have oral production

problems. Maybe the student’s first language contains different phonemes and the student

simply cannot hear the sounds, let alone accurately replicate them. A consideration of

learner’s pronunciation errors and of how these can inhibit successful communication is a

useful basis on which to assess why it is important to deal with pronunciation in the

classroom.

There are two key problems with pronunciation teaching. Firstly it tends to be neglected.

And secondly when it is not neglected, it tends to be reactive to a particular problem that

has arisen in the classroom rather than being strategically planned.

A question we need to answer is how good our students’ pronunciation ought to be.

Should they sound like native speakers, so perfect that just by listening to them we would

assume that they were British or American or Australian? Or is this asking too much?

Perhaps we should be happy if they can at least make themselves understood.

Discussion

Difficulties in FL Pronunciation

Two particular problems occur in much pronunciation teaching and learning

What student can hear: some students have great difficulty hearing pronunciation

features which we want them to reproduce. There are 2 ways of dealing with this:

1. show them how sounds are made through demonstration, diagrams and

explanation.

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2. draw the sounds to their attention every time they appear on a tape or in our own

conversation

The intonation problem: Some of us and many of our students find it extremely

difficult to hear ‘tunes’ or to identify the different patterns of rising and falling

tones.

Material in pronunciation

There are various features of pronunciation.

A. Vowels

Vowels are articulated when a voiced airstream is shaped using the tongue and the lips

to modify the overall shape of the mouth. English speakers generally use twelve pure

vowels and eight diphtongs.

Sound should be dealt with in class as and when theneeed arises. This can be done

remedially as a reaction to a communicative difficulty which occurs in class, or because

the sounds are an important feature of the grammar or lexis being taught. Sounds can

also be practised in their own right, as a way of focusing on a particular area of

difficulty for examples:

1. Using Phonemic Chart.

2. Drilling, repetition and associating sounds with ideas

Some samples of practice lessons; bingo cards, noughts and crosses, snap, etc.

The eachers should involve their students in deciding on priorities for classroom

pronunciation work, through helping them to be aware of their pronunciation

difficulties.

B. Consonants

Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting, or diverting the airtflow in a variety

of ways. There are three ways of describing the consonant sounds:

1. the manner of articulation

2. the place of articulation

3. the force of articulation

Teachers focus on individual sounds usually as a response to communicative difficulty

which arises, or becaause they are an integral feature of the language being taught.

Teachers should always integrate pronunciation aspects into lesson planning and

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language analysis, in order to raise students’ general awareness. Onee of the best

methods of helping students to master pronuunciation in the classroom remains that

drilling, the repetition of the sound giving learners the opportunity to practise the correct

movements of theeir speech organs for themselves. This, combined with ‘learner-

friendly’ explanations of the movements, can be very effective in raising awareness of

how sounds are produced. Some samples of practice lessons; Hangman, I’m going to

the party, Phonemic Word Search,etc

C. Word and Sentence Stress

1. Word

a. Stress and unstress

In order for one syllable to be perceived as stressed, the syllables around it need to be

unstressed. For stressed syllables, three features were identified; loudness, pitch change

and a longer syllable. Unstresse may be described as the absence of these.

Ex: syllabus, banana, understand, etc

b. Levels of Stress

Many commentators settle on a three-level disstinction between primary stress,

secondary stress and unstress, as seen in the following examples.

2. Sentences

a. Stress timing and syllables timing

(e.g. they LIVE in an OLD HOUSE)

b. Sentence stress and tonic syllables

(e.g. he LIVES in the HOUSE on the CORner)

c. Sentence stress and weak form

(e.g. She’s from /frəm/ Scotland. Where are you /fr m/? )

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The first from is the weak form, and the second from is the full form

Teachers should try drilling words in a natural manner, first. Other techniques are

beating out the pattern of stress with your hand or finger, or tapping with a pen on the

table, speaking or singing the stress pattern (DA da da) and so on.

Word Stress and Sentence Stress

Normally when we say "I feel stressed" it means "I feel anxious". Stress is a kind of

worried feeling about life or work. But there is another kind of stress that actually helps

us understand. This other kind of stress is an accent that we make on certain syllables

and words when speaking English.

In some languages, for example Japanese, people say each syllable with equal force. But

in English, and some other languages, we put a big force (stress) on some syllables and

no force on other syllables or words. This can make it difficult for speakers of other

languages to understand English that is spoken quickly. Of course, for native speakers it

is not difficult - in fact, stress actually helps native speakers understand each other. So it

is very important.

WORD STRESS (stress on a syllable inside a word) and SENTENCE STRESS (stress

on words inside a sentence).

WORD STRESS

Word stress is like a golden key to speaking and understanding English.

If you do not already know about word stress, you can try to learn about it. This is one

of the best ways for you to understand spoken English - especially English spoken fast.

What is word stress?

Take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound the same

when spoken? No. Because ONE syllable in each word is STRESSED (stronger than the

others).

PHOtograph

phoTOgrapher

photoGRAPHic

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This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables: TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa,

aBOVE, converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND, etCETera, etCETera,

etCETera

The syllables that are not stressed are "weak" or "small" or "quiet". Native speakers of

English listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word

stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation

and your comprehension.

If you have an English teacher, you can ask her to help you understand word stress. Or

you can try to hear the stress in individual words each time you listen to English - on the

radio, or in films for example. Your first step is to HEAR and recognize it. After that,

you can USE it.

Two important rules about word stress:

1. One word, one stress

2. The stress is always on a vowel

SENTENCE STRESS

Sentence stress is another golden key for speaking and understanding English. With

sentence stress, some words in a sentence are STRESSED (loud) and other words are

weak (quiet). Look at the following sentence:

We want to go.

Do we say every word with the same stress or force? No. We make the important words

BIG and the unimportant words small. What are the important words in this sentence?

Yes, that's right: WANT and GO.

We WANT to GO.

We WANT to GO to WORK.

We DON'T WANT to GO to WORK.

We DON'T WANT to GO to WORK at NIGHT.

Now that you know that word stress exists, you can try to learn more about it.

You should KNOW that SENtence and WORD STRESS are VERy imPORtant !!!

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D. INTONATION

It is the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when we are speaking. To be of use to

students, work on intonation in the classroom needs to focus on practice rather than

theory. Intonation needs to be a feature ofclassroom language analysis and practice.

This will help students towards greater expressiveness and articulacy in English, and

also help them to better understanding of some of the subtleties of native-speaker

speech.

Utterance are made up of syllables and the syllables where the main pitch movement in

utterance occurs are caled tonic syllables. The syllables that establish a pitch that stays

constant up to the tonic syllablle are called onset syllables. The pitch hat is held from

the onset syllable to the tonic syllable is known as the key.

Ex: She LIVES in LONdon

She lives in London

Here are some lesson samples

1. Question Tags (Elementary)

Lesson type : Integrated

2. Asking Permission (Intermediate)

Lesson type : Remedial

3. Instruction and Questions (All levels)

Lesson type: Practice

E. OTHER ASPECTS OF CONNECTED SPEECH

1. Assimilation

It describes how sounds modify each other when they meet, ussualy across boundaries,

but within words too.

2. Ellision

It describes the disappearance of a sound. The reason is an economy of effort, and in

some instances he difficulty of putting certain consonant sounds ogether while

maintaining a regular speech rhythm and speed

3. Linking and Intrusion

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When two vowel sounds meet, speakers often link them invarious ways

Her English is excellent (/r/ is prononced)

4. Juncture

Although he phonemes involved in the underlined words are the same, subtle

differences help us tell the deed from the dessert.

Ex; I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream.

5. Contractions

It occurs where two words combine to the extent hat the two are prononced as one

word, or one syllable. These have (for the most part) become conventionalised in

written language. For examples; I’m, we’re, you aren’t, won’t, could’ve, wouldn’t

These features of connected speech shoulld be taught to students and encouraged in

their production, particularly in the case off young children, who tend to be excellent

mimics of new language, and better able to adopt unfamiliar pronunciation patterns.

PRONUNCIATIONS AND SPELLING

The English spelling system is rich in both regularities and irregularities which present

problems to non native learnres (and to English-speaking children learning to write their

language). But, through z mixture of direct instrucction and their own use of the

powerful tool of inference, learners can become efficient users of the system. It is the

teacher’s job to present rules that are usable and to make sure that learners are inferring

correctly. Their correc inferences should be reinforced, and praised; those which are

incorrect ( where the system or their own language experience has misled them) need to

be changed.

Sample Lessons:

1. Spelling of suffixes and the pronunnciation of

2. Different spelling of vowel sounds

3. Dictionary work: Spelling/sound relationships

Song, donkey, love, comfortable, nothing, done, hot,, monkey, Monday, gone, son,

across, annoy, brother, won.

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Learning Strategies in Pronunciation/autonomus learner

Holec (1981) defines learner autonomy as "the ability to take charge of one's own

learning", which he then specifies as "to have, and to hold, the responsibility for all the

decisions concerning all aspects of this learning."

According to Holec (1981) there are varying degrees of self-direction in learning

which may be connected to varying degrees of autonomy. He outlines the following

components as an entirely self-directed process of learning:

• fixing the objectives

• defining the content and progressions

• selecting the methods and techniques to be used

• monitoring the acquisition procedure

• evaluating what has been acquired.

The following ideas can be considered to prepare teachers in enhancing learner

autonomy in pronunciation learning:

1. It is not a straight forward process.

2. Teachers need stimulus and encouragement to attempt a pedagogy for

autonomy.

3. Teachers must realize by themselves that they can do what at first seemed

impossible.

4. Teachers should be able to work on a collaborative basis.

5. Teachers must be autonomous themselves to be able to develop their

learners autonomy.

So if teachers themselves are autonomous and motivated, how does the teacher

promote greater autonomy in his students ? Brajcich (2000) suggests twelve ways to

promote learner autonomy which I think can be of great value in vocabulary learning.

He says that teachers should :

Encourage students to be interdependent and to work collectively. The less

students depend on their teacher, the more autonomy is being developed.

Ask students to keep a diary of their learning experiences. Through practice,

students may become more aware of their learning preferences and start to

think of new ways of becoming more independent learners.

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Explain teacher/student roles from the outset. Asking students to give their

opinions on the issue of roles could be beneficial.

Progress gradually from interdependence to independence. Give the students

time to adjust to new learning strategies and do not expect too much too soon.

Give the students projects to do outside the classroom. Such projects may

increase motivation.

Give the students non-lesson classroom duties to perform (taking roll, writing

instructions, notices, etc. on the board for the teacher)

Have the students design lessons or materials to be used in class.

Instruct students on how to use the university's resource centers

Emphasize the importance of peer-editing, corrections, and follow-up

questioning in the classroom.

Encourage the students to use only English in class.

Stress fluency rather than accuracy.

However, do allow the students to use reference books, including dictionaries

in class.

Teacher’s role in pronunciation

Classroom procedures in Situational Language Teaching vary according to the level of

the class, but procedures at any level aim to move from controlled to freer practice of

structures and from oral use of sentence patterns to their automatic use in speech, reading,

and writing. Pittman gives an example of a typical lesson plan:

The first part of the lesson will be stress and intonation practice. The main body of the

lesson should then follow. This might consist of the teaching of a structured. If so, the

lesson would then consist of four parts:

a) pronunciation

b) revision (to prepare for new work if necessary)

c) presentation of new structure or vocabulary

d) oral practice (drilling)

e) reading of material on the new structure, or written exercises.

(Richards 1963: 173)

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Principles of teaching pronunciation

To teach Pronunciation we need:

a. A good knowledge of pronunciation, for example; the pronuciation of Past Tense.

b. Techniques in teaching pronunciation The important is the result,whether our teaching is effective. Students should get

something and they should learn seriously.

c. Access to good ideas in pronunciation teaching for example, we can stick the phonemic chart in our class

There are three main types of pronunciation’s sample lesson: Integrated lessons, in which pronunciation forms an essential part of the language

analysis and the planning process, and the language presentation and practice within the

lesson. It shows pronunciation taking a full role in all stage of a lesson, from planning

through to enacment, for example:

Remedial or reactive lessons, where a pronunciation difficulty which arises in class is

dealt with there and then, in order to facilitate the succesful achievement of classroom

tasks. It shows how pronunciation work can be slipped into a lesson, when appropriate.

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We can choose this approach for example when we are going to teach some items of food

and drink by eliciting the sentence I’ll bring x, where the x can be any item of foods and

drinks. Some of the students have had some difficulties in pronouncing new items and so

the major role for the teacher is in providing remedial correction. It described the

integration of pronunciation work into teaching reactively. We will use some flashcards

of food and drink.

Practice lessons, in which a particular feature of pronunciation is isolated and practised

for its own sake, forming the main focus of a lesson period. It describes how to base a

class period around a particular aspects of pronunciation. The teacher made a spesific

pronunciation issue the main focus of the class period.

example:

When we are going to teach some new words in the domain of vegetables, we can use this

‘vegetables grid’

Conclusion

The key to successful pronunciation teaching, is not to much getting students to produce

correct sounds or intonation tunes, but rather to have hem listen and notice how English is

spoken – either on audio or videotape or from the teacher themselves. The more aware they

are the greater the chance that their own intelligibility levels will rise.

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sweetcorn cauliflower sprout carrot potato pea tomato cabbage turnip bean

List of reference

Harmer, Jeremy.The Practice of English Language, 3rd Edition, Longman

Richards, J and Rogers, T 1986 Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press

Kelly, Gerard, How to Teach Pronunciation,2001, Pearson Education Limited

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