Teaching Phonology

1. Teaching Phonology Names: Mariana Alarcon Claudio Cheuquen Santiago Duran Lilian Flores Carmen Saez Marcelo Valdes.

2. What is Phonology? It is the branch of Linguistics which studies the sound system of languages. Phoneme The smallest part in the sound system of a language.

3. Approaches to Teaching Pronunciation In the past Minimal pairs. Now Teaching features of pronunciation in context and for communicative purpose. Celce-Murcia (1936) recommend the following progression in a pronunciation lesson.

4. 1.- Description and Analysis / Listening Discrimination. The goal To raise learners’ awareness of segmental and suprasegmental features Listening discrimination Students demonstrate their abilities to perceive sounds. If students do not perceive the sound they will not producing them.

5. 2.- Controlled Practice As soon as learners take the patterns with them, your instruction turn to activities that provide opportunity to say the target sound repeatedly, but in a meaningful context. Some samples… Strip stories Picture stories Semiscripted skits/role-plays Chain activities Word search

6. 3.- Guided Practice / Communicative Practice. Students practicing pronunciation patterns. It will not be spontaneous. Some samples… Information-gap activities. Word association.

7. What does teaching pronunciation involve? The concept of pronunciation include: The sounds of the language or phonology. Stress and rhythm. Intonation.

8. Sounds. It is very useful to list and define the sounds, or phonemes of the language by writing them down using phonetic representations.

9. Phonetic Alphabet

10. Rhythm & Stress English speech is characterized by tone – units.

11. Intonation It is the rises and falls in tone that make the “tune” of an utterance, is an important aspect of the pronunciation of English, often making a difference to meaning or implication.

12. The rhythm of English is, then, mainly a function of its stress patterns, these may also affect such aspects as speed of delivery, volume and the use of pause.

13. Flow of speech It is also important to be aware of the way different sounds, stress and intonation may affect one another within the flow of speech.

14. Listening to accents It is important to listen to accents because this is the way to find out the specific pronunciation problems of learners.

15. Improving learner’s pronunciation. The objective : To get the learner to pronounce accurately enough, to be easily and comfortably comprehensive to other speakers.

16. Further topics for discussion. This unit looks at some controversial issues connected with the teaching of pronunciation.

17. Pronunciation and spelling. In most languages there is a fairly clear correspondence between sounds and symbols..

18. Pronunciation and spelling activities. Dictation: of random list of words, of words that have similar spelling problems. Reading aloud: of syllables , words, phrases, sentences, Discrimination: prepare a set of “minimal pairs” pairs of words which differ from each other in one sound – letter combination such as dip – deep.

19. Can pronunciation be taught? Two main arguments against the explicit teaching of pronunciation: The critical period hypothesis. Focused instruction is at best useless and at worst detrimental.

20. 1° argument: • On the other hand, Flege (1987) argued: “those studies are inconsistent with the expectations generated by the critical period hypothesis”. • Others researchers suggested: age-related differences might be the result of wider sociocultural and general maturational variables, or of differences in learning strategies.

21. 2° argument: • The acquisition variables can not be affected by focused practice and the teaching of formal rules (Krashen, 1982). • Factors which most affect the acquisition of L2 phonology seem to be those which teachers have the least influence on. • Pronunciation teaching methods should more fully address the issues of motivation and exposure.

22. Listen and Repeat: Phonology and Behaviourism. • The stock-in-trade of language teaching is the “listen and repeat” approach. • Exercises in elocution: imitation drills and reading aloud. • The idea is the focus on habit formation in acquiring L2 phonology, because involves cognitive and motor functions.

23. Benefits of imitation drills may depend on learner’s aptitude for oral mimicry. • Recent research has revealed that students may fail to transfer such gains to actual communicative language use, and that accuracy of pronunciation varies according to the type of tasks. • Imitation and discrimination drills have an important place in the teaching of pronunciation. They help the articulation become more automatic and routinised.

24. Interlanguage Phonology • It is a belief that interference from learners’ first language affects the acquisition of the L2. • Tarone (1978) suggests: there is a universal tendency in language acquisition to reduce complex forms and transfer only a part of it. • The influences of learners’ L1 is not really stronger, but it is more noticeable to the casual observer.

25. Learners approach a new sound system mapping it onto their L1 sound system. • There are several processes which are presented in L1 acquisition and also in L2 acquisition. • The influence of L1 should not be seen as something negative, but rather as a natural stage and valuable strategy in the acquisition of L2.

26. Phonology and the monitor ‘pronunciation improves through gradual monitoring of the acquired system based on conscious knowledge of the facts learned about the language’ (Crawford, 1987, p. 109).

27. Dickerson (1987) hypothesises that formal rules may help the acquisition device in the form of learners talking to themselves.

28. Acton (1984) suggests ‘post hoc monitoring’ and ‘kinaesthetic monitoring’

29. Advantages of an inductive thinking • It can make rules more memorable • It can increase awareness in pronunciation • It provides an opportunity to communicate

30. Communication and contextualisation • It is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages. • Designing tasks and activities. • Creating a strong link between pronunciation and communication

31. Psychological and sociological factors • Work on pronunciation needs to be tied in with work on the individual’s value set, attitudes and socio-cultural schemata’ (Penninngton, 1995, p. 104) s

32. ‘Pronunciation needs to be tied in with work on the individual’s value set, attitudes and socio-cultural schemata`(Pennington, 1995, p. 104)

33. What elements we should consider important to teach phonology? L’s need L’s personality L’s style and cultural background

34. Acquiring pronunciation Think of a English sound: How do you think it is made by the speaker?

35. Language communicates meanings from one person to another through spoken sounds, written letters, or the gestures of sign language. Languages differ not only in terms of which sound they choose from the reportoire available but also in the ways they structure sounds into syllables. Language also differ in how they use intonation.

36. Learning Syllables Structure Syllables are made up consonants (C) such as /t/, /s/, /p/,etc., and of vowels (V) such as /i/ or /ai/. Exception: /n/ as in /bʌtn̩/ (button), or /l/ as in /bɒtl̩/ (bottle)

37. The compulsory vowel in the English syllable may be preceded or followed by one or more consonants. So “lie” /lai/,which has a consonant/vowel (CV) structure, and “sly” /slai/, which starts with a two-consonant cluster /sl/ (CC), are both possible, as are “eel” /i:l/ with VC and “eels” /i:lz/ with VCC. Longer clusters of three or four consonants cal also occur: for example, at the end of “lengths” /leŋkθs/ or the beginning of “splinter” /splintə/.

38. The teaching of pronunciation

39. Standard techniques for teaching pronunciation. • Use of phonetic script At advanced levels students are sometimes helped by looking at phonetic transcript of spoken language or by using transcription themselves. • Imitation Repetition of words or phrases has been the mainstay of pronunciation teaching.

40. Discrimination of sounds Audiolingual teaching believed that if you can not hear a distinction, you can not make it. • Consciousness raising We can use exercises to make students more aware of pronunciation in general. • Communication In principle, pronunciation materials could use the actual problems of communication as a basis for teaching.

41. The learning and teaching of intonation Is the way that the pitch of the voice goes up and down during speech.

42. Factors affecting pronunciation(Kenworthy, 1987)

43. Age (Jacobs 1988, Fledge 1981) Motivation Expectations (Parrino 2001) Exposure to English (Celce-Murcia et al 1996) Attitude and identity Innate phonetic ability

44. What should we teach?

45. Segmental Suprasegmental Morley (1991) Production Performance Pronunciation

46. References. • Cook, V. (2001). Learning pronunciation, vocabulary and writing. Second language learning and language teaching. (pp. 46-57). New York: Oxford University press. • Richards, J C. & Renandya, W A. (Ed.). 2002. Methodology in Language teaching and anthology of Current Practice. (pp. 178-185). New York: Cambridge University press.