In many cases, incorrect word stress will lead to more problems than the use of an incorrect phoneme sound in a word. This is not only because word stress can sometimes alter the complete meaning of the word, changing it from a noun to a verb, for example, pre sent n.
So, if we use Italian as an example again, most diphthongs in English will be problematic as Italian students will tend to give equal stress to the two parts of a diphthong rather than stressing the first element as we do in English.
The unpredictability of word stress is often a cause of problems. In many languages speakers know exactly which syllable is stressed as it is the same in every word, e. Awareness-raising activities are a good way to start. Why do some students have problems with sentence stress in English? Students whose language is syllable-timed - e. Italian, French, Hungarian — may have problems with English, which is a stress-timed language.
In particular, aspects such as weak forms in connected speech can be difficult. This is because students are used to giving equal stress to each syllable in their own language. Of course, stress in English sentences is extremely important as it is often used to indicate the meaning and importance of certain information. When the stress is incorrect then there can be a breakdown in communication. These problems can be both in terms of speaking productive and listening receptive skills.
Activities that make students aware of the importance of sentence stress, as well as activities that focus on hearing and producing various aspects of sentence stress, are extremely useful.
Intonation plays a key role in pronunciation. This can be seen on a word level: when one syllable is stressed for emphasis, the pitch falls from high to low.
If we look at intonation at sentence level, we will notice that a particular sentence can have a number of meanings simply by varying the intonation.
Coupling these shifts in intonation with lengthening certain sounds, i. Quite clearly intonation is an important aspect of pronunciation. Connected speech includes sentence stress and intonation, but here I want to focus on a different aspect of connected speech — what happens to sounds in connected speech.
This is an important aspect of pronunciation not just in terms of producing the correct sounds, but in understanding when you are listening. In fact, many learners find it difficult to understand native speakers of English for this very reason. They have learnt words and sounds in isolation and struggle when a word is pronounced differently because it is in connected speech. Students need to be made aware of areas such as assimilation where a sound is affected by the other sounds around it, often by sounds that follow it but sometimes by those preceding it , elision where a sound disappears completely because of the sound that follows it and liaison where a sound is added that is not normally part of the word or words.
This type of focus needs to be included right from the start of learning English and not left until students are at intermediate level or higher. Examples of assimilation, elision and liaison are common with even the most basic phrases and word combinations in English. For example, How do you do? Not only are the words not articulated separately, but some sounds disappear, i.
Thus, regular work on connected speech is essential if students are going to be able to deal with English as it is really used. Quite clearly, pronunciation is both incredibly complex and an important area for teaching and learning.
In this article we have barely scratched the surface and yet have managed to show why it is important to include pronunciation in our lessons. Pronunciation is not just about producing the right sounds or stressing the right syllables, it is also about helping students understand what they hear. Cut up the cards and give one to each student in the class, making sure that each word has a corresponding stress pattern card. Then ask students to walk around; those with the words should read them out and the students with the stress pattern cards should decide if they have the matching card.
Which word? Choose words that have two stress patterns depending on whether they are a verb, noun, adjective, etc. For example, convict, refuse, desert. Write out a sentence and give students the two choices, they then need to decide which one fits. Next put students in pairs and ask them to write a sentence containing the other word stress pattern. Students should choose the first option for this sentence and then write a new sentence containing re fuse.
Prominence is usually given to the meaning carrying words. Contrastive stress: Grammar words also known as function words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, etc are usually unstressed. However, any word can be stressed where the meaning requires it, i.
Not to the airport. He did it. Not she. Syllable-timed: A syllable-timed language is one where each syllable is given equal stress or weighting. Below is a summary of the method I use with Spanish speakers. Pumarosa is a free, bilingual and interactive — with voice — ESL website. Usually a phonetic spelling based upon how a Spanish speaker would write the pronunciation follows the vocabulary words. The silent E rule and words beginning with S followed by a consonant because Spanish speakers have a tendency to add an E at the beginning.
I then introduce the sound or rule using humor and exaggeration. If my students can laugh at me sticking my tongue out while I show them how to pronounce Th, then they will copy me without fear! Tongue twisters are often popular. It just so happens that all of the above can be practiced by studying the alphabet, the numbers and greetings. So the first lesson for the students to practice out loud is the alphabet, and spelling their names, the names of their mothers and fathers, etc.
The second lesson is the numbers up to one million, followed by Greetings, also with a copy of the text in front of them. Each lesson is followed by an exercise or dialogue, which the students read out loud, as well as they can.
At first, I explain that it is not necessary to pronounce perfectly, manly because it takes many repetitions over a period of time to improve pronunciation. Ricardo is a story written using the basic vocabulary and is divided into 20 Lessons. First of all, thanks a lot for another great post and sorry for being slow to respond! I totally agree with everything you wrote here. How exactly can we enable the students to discover the set of ideas from the posting above, esp.
For me that is the key question at the moment. Yes thanks for this Michael, as you say …Pronunciation is not an isolated area of the language… to which I would add that maybe what makes it a bit different is precisely its physicality, in contrast to the cognitivity?
And it is our failure to work properly with that physicality which I think contributes to the problems around pron teaching and learning, and this isolates it. You make a nice comparison with spelling, saying how every one cares about spelling. Yes exactly, and perhaps in a way this bears out my point: spelling is nicely cognitive and neatly wrong or right, so it conforms to our preferences about teaching and learning styles. It would be good to hear, and I will post something about my own experience on this in the next few days.
Thanks Adrian and Michael for your posts. I really think that the fact that pronunciation is physical is the reason why it is so attractive for my students. The games included in Sound Foundation are brilliant. My students love playing hangman a great way to revise all the sounds and also trying to work out in groups the phonemic transcript of some words. For exam reasons, they deliver every month an oral presentation. Part of my feedback consists of giving them a list of words for which they have to find the transcript.
I like students to feel the sounds of each word and for that I encourage them to shout, whisper and exagerate as much as possible. I feel that by doing that they grasp better the sounds and at the same time is more fun. Fun is vital. I think that all real learning is emotional, not so much cognitive.
0コメント