Phonetics for English Teachers

1. ENG-6003 Vår 2011 Phonetics for English Teachers By Dragana Šurkalović dragana.surkalovic@uit.no

2. Why do we learn phonetics? • teacher as a model of language • linguistic competence as speakers • accuracy and consistency of input • learning by imitating • teacher as a learning facilitator • pedagogic competence as teachers • understanding the source of mispronunciations and misperceptions • explaining the goal articulation • building awareness of the relevance of correct pronunciation • teacher as a language authority • familiarity with the language system in all its varieties • proficiency earns respect, ‘street cred’

3. Teaching pronunciation • Why? • ease of communication • How? • aim at perfection vs. comfortable intelligibility • idealized speech vs. normal connected speech • is learner age a factor? • imitation – importance of teacher as language model • vs. explanation – importance of teacher as learning facilitator • ‘fake’ vs. ‘native’ identity - language, cultural, social • RP or GA or ….. – norms as value judgments? • explicit gradual instruction vs. subtle guidance • correcting mistakes in spontaneous speech? • beginner vs. advanced level students

4. Consonants (pulmonic)

5. English vs. Norwegian Consonants

6. Thai

7. Arabic (Palestine) short long iعـِد‎ /ʕidd/ promise عيد‎ /ʕiːd/ feast uعـُد‎ /ʕudd/come back! عود‎ /ʕuːd/lute a عـَد‎ /ʕadd/counted عاد‎ /ʕaːd/ came back ajعين‎ /ʕajn/ eye aw عود‎ /ʕawd/return

8. Finnish

9. Vowels

10. English vs. Norwegian Vowels • Norwegian • RP

11. English vs. Norwegian Diphthongs • RP • Norwegian

12. Suprasegmental/Prosodic features • span several speech sounds - syllables, or the whole utterance • lexical and rhythmic STRESS • lexical TONE • INTONATION • tone - variation in pitch – rate of vibration of vocal folds • stress – variation in pitch, duration and loudness

13. Stress • spans syllables, not segments – determined at word level • making a syllable more prominent than the surrounding ones • relational – relative to its environment – unlike voice, place, manner – we can know what place or manner an isolated segment has, but we cannot know whether an isolated syllable is stressed until we hear it in context • can be distinctive: • written.A [’ɹɪtən] vs. return.V/N [ɹɪ’tɜ:n] • object.N [’ɒbdʒɪkt] vs. object.V [əb’dʒɛkt] • rebel.N [’ɹɛbɫ̩] vs. rebel.N [ɹɨ’bɛɫ] • convict.N [’kɒnvɪkt] vs. convict.V [kən’vɪkt] • import.N [’ɪmpɔ:t] vs. import.V [ɪm’pɔ:t] • insult.N [’ɪnsʌlt] vs. insult.V [ɪn’sʌlt]

14. Stress cont. • affects the vowel quality – some vowels cannot occur in stressed syllables – reduced perceptual salience of segments in the unstressed syllable • schwa in English – vowel weakening when unstressed • Norwegian does not reduce in unstressed positions • ‘postman’ vs ‘postmann’, machine’ vs. ‘maskin’ • primary and secondary stress - [,kɒn.sən.’tɹeɪ.ʃn] – also sometimes tertiary • initial, peninitial – antepenultimate, penultimate, ultimate (‘pen’ = almost, from Latin) • greater prominence due to greater amount of energy – which is why we need vowels and sonorants as syllable nucleus – ‘rotten’, ‘metal’, ‘fasten’, ‘better’ (GA)

15. Stress cont. • often the type of syllable influences the location of stress • heavy syllable – long vowel (V:), diphthong, or VCC – often attract stress • light syllable – V(C) • often sensitive to the lexical class of words or addition of certain suffixes • e.g. the English N/V distinction

18. Rhythm • the pattern of succession of stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables in a language • ‘afternoon’ vs. ‘afternoon tea’ • ‘page fifteen’ vs. ‘fifteen pages’ • a foot – a combination of a weak and a strong syllable • iamb – ( ws ) • iambic pentameter: “To be or not to be, that is the question”, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” • trochee – ( sw ) • “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” • English is a stress-timed language • ‘Steve played golf every Sunday.’ vs. • ‘Mr Barnes was watching television for seven days’

19. Rhythm cont. • syllable/speech rate adjusts to maintain equal foot duration and equal rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables • as a result, grammatical/function words shorten/reduce – auxiliaries, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions etc. – content words usually bear the rhythmic stress

20. Intonation • most elusive aspect of speech • all languages use tonal contours at utterance level to distinguish different meanings • e.g.. statement vs question • vs. eastern and central Norwegian – rising intonation in statements • also compare • focus distinction • question tags • disambiguation vs.

21. Techniques and activities • using IPA transcription • new vocabulary • transcription exercises • nursery rhymes, tongue twisters, limericks, poetry • underlining stressed syllables, clapping the rhythm • minimal pair word lists – ‘head-said-sad-bad-bang…’ • listening exercises – different varieties of English • role-play, dialogues • intonation practice • accent imitation • …..

22. References: • Ashby, M. and Maidment, J. (2005). Introducing Phonetic Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. • Ladefoged, P. (2005). A course in phonetics(5th ed.). Wadsworth Publishing. • Nilsen, T.S and Rugesæter, K. (2008). Basic English Phonetics for Teachers. 2nd edition. Fagbokforlaget • Drew, I. and Sørheim B. (2009). English Teaching Strategies: Methods for English Teachers of 10 to 16-year-olds. (2nd ed.) Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. • Dalton C. and Seidlhofer B. (1994). Pronunciation. Oxford: OUP

23. Thank you 