Teaching Pronunciation, Chapter 1 notes and comments--finally!
Robert Wachman
Dear Patient ToP GG members:
A bit more than two months have gone by since my original message inviting your participation in discussing this excellent text. Here, finally, are some notes I wrote, almost an outline of Chapter One. For me, it's a really valuable opportunity to review and expand my knowledge and skills in pronunciation teaching. Rereading and writing up the first chapter was a good exercise. Your response, comments, and/or questions are welcome and, as with class discussions, will enrich the process. So, whenever you have time or inclination, I look forward to whatever discussion this might generate. I'll move on to Chapter 2 sometime this week; it's a bit longer, so it might take more than a week to finish my review. I'll try to be more concise and copy less, limiting myself more to comments and questions. Suggestions? What would be useful to you?
I hope most of you will be getting together at the annual conference in San Diego, about 10 days from now. I'll be with you in spirit...and maybe via Skype.
Best wishes to all,
Robert
Teaching Pronunciation: a course book and reference guide, 2nd Ed., by Marianne Celce-Murcia, Donna M. Brinton, Janet M. Goodwin, with Barry Griner (2010, Cambridge Univ. Press)
Chapter 1: The History and Scope of Pronunciation Teaching
Interesting that Kelly's study of language teaching indicates that teaching of pronunciation began much later than that of grammar and vocabulary. Even in 1978-79, when I did my MAT study at SIT, pronunciation instruction was not even offered, as I recall, only a course in phonology, introducing the sounds of English, but not how to teach them or suprasegmentals.
Two general approaches to teaching pronunciation: 1) Intuitive-Imatative and 2) Analytic-Linguistic. An Intuitive-Imatative approach "depends on the learner's ability to listen and imitate the rhythms and sounds of the target language without the intervention of any explicit information." (p. 2) Presupposes availability of good models to listen to--these have ranged from phonograph records to CDs, DVDs, and audio files on the Internet.
An Analytic-Linguistic approach "utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic alphabet, articulatory descriptors, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information, and other aids…" It explicitly informs the learner of and focuses attention on the sounds and rhythms of the target language." This approach was meant to complement rather than replace the Intuitive-Imatative approach.
Noting that some language teaching approaches, such as Grammar Translation, don't focus on oral language at all, the authors state that the rest of this overview will "focus on those methods and approaches for which the teaching and learning of pronunciation are a genuine concern." (p. 3)
Direct Method, dating back to late 1800s and early 1900s, taught pronunciation by intuition and imitation. Based on observation of children learning L1 and children and adults learning L2 in "noninstructional settings. Successors to this approach are the many so-called naturalistic methods," which include Asher's (1977) Total Physical Response (TPR) and Krashen & Terrell's (1983) Natural Approach, two of my favorites and both of which I've given workshops on. In these "initial focus on listening without pressure to speak gives the learners the opportunity to internalize the target sound system. When learners do speak later on, their pronunciation is supposedly quite good despite their never having received explicit pronunciation instruction." (p. 3)
The Reform Movement
First linguistic or analytic contribution to the teaching of pronunciation came in the 1890s. A group of phoneticians formed the International Phonetic Association in 1886 and developed the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). "This alphabet resulted from the establishment of phonetics as a science dedicated to describing and analyzing the sound systems of languages." These folks did a lot to "influence modern language teaching by specifically advocating the following:
• The spoken form of a language is primary and should be taught first.
• The findings of phonetics should be applied to language teaching.
• Teachers must have solid training in phonetics.
• Learners should be given phonetic training to establish good speech habits.
1940s and 1950s
In the Audiolingual and British "Oral Approach," "pronunciation is important and is taught explicitly from the start." Teachers often use a technique derived from the notion of contrast in structural linguistics--the minimal pair drill. "Guided listening discrimination practice is followed by guided oral production practice.
1960s
Cognitive Approach, "influenced by transformational-generative grammar (Chomsky) and cognitive psychology (Neisser) viewed language as rule-governed behavior rather than habit formation and deemphasized pronunciation."
1970s
Silent Way
"Like Audiolingualism, the Silent Way (Gattegno) can be characterized by the attention paid to accuracy of production of both the sounds and structures of the target language from the initial stage of instruction." Learners focus on, in addition to the sounds, how words combine in phrases and how "blending, stress, and intonation all shape the production of an utterance."
p. 6: Teachers speak as little as possible, "indicating through gestures what students should do. This includes an elaborate system in which teachers tap out rhythmic patterns with a pointer, hold up their fingers to indicate the number of syllables in a word or to indicate stressed elements, or model proper positioning of the articulators by pointing to their own lips, teeth, or jaw. Instead of using a phonetic alphabet, the Silent Way uses colors and combinations of colors to indicate sounds. Charts consisting of colored rectangles and color-coded words, show the individual sounds and the various spellings that produce particular sounds. "Sounds that are pronounced alike are colored alike." Colored rods, called Cuisenaire rods, are used for a variety of teaching objectives, including pronunciation.
"The Silent Way is better understood if experienced rather than read about, since any description fails to capture actual learner engagement." This is certainly my experience. In my early years following my master's program, I used to give introductory workshops at conferences titled "A Taste of the Silent Way," since it was my favorite methodology at the time.
Community Language Learning (CLL)
In CLL, a tape recorder is used to record the learner's mimicking of the teacher's model of language (phrases or sentence) the student has said s/he wants to say in the target language. Pronunciation work is optional. If the student says s/he wants it, "a technique known as human computer" is used. The teacher, called a counselor, pretends to be a computer that can be turned on or off by the student. The student uses "the computer" to give the correct pronunciation of a phrase or part of a phrase. The student mimics and the "computer" repeats until the student is satisfied with the pronunciation. (p. 8) This is especially interesting to me since it is maximum learner-centered instruction.
Pronunciation Teaching Today
"Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), also called the Communicative Approach, became widely used in the 1980s and is currently the dominant method in language teaching." "Focus on language as communication brings renewed urgency to the teaching of pronunciation. Both empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a threshold level of pronunciation for nonnative speakers of English; if they fall below this threshold level, they will have oral communication problems no matter how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar and vocabulary might be." (p. 8)
Six categories of English-language learner are described "whose oral communication needs mandate a high level of intelligibility and…therefore require special assistance with pronunciation." "The goal of teaching pronunciation to such learners is not to make them sound like native speakers" but to enable them to surpass the threshold level so that pronunciation will not detract from their ability to communicate." (p. 9)
"Most proponents of this approach have not dealt adequately with the role of pronunciation in language teaching, nor have they developed an agreed-upon set of strategies for teaching pronunciation communicatively."
The authors next list "the kinds of techniques and practice materials that have traditionally been used--and are still being used--to teach pronunciation."
- Listen and imitate: enhanced by use of audio or video recordings, computer labs, etc.
- Phonetic training: use of articulatory descriptions and diagrams and a phonetic alphabet
- Minimal-pair drills: typically begin with word-level drills and move on to sentence-level drills
- Contextualized minimal pairs: "Bowen's attempt to make minimal-pair drills" more meaningful. Examples: Sentence stem: The blacksmith (a. hits / b. heats) the horseshoe. Cued student response: a. with a hammer / b. in the fire
- Visual aids: sound-color charts, rods, pictures, mirrors (Marsha Chan uses), props and realia.
A recent development I have used is the Color Vowel Chart--colorvowelchart.org--developed by Karen Taylor and Shirley Thompson. I took a took a pre-convention institute with them at TESOL 2012 in Philadelphia.
- Tongue twisters: e.g. "She sells seashells by the seashore."
- Developmental approximation drills: "second-language speakers are taught to retrace the steps that many English-speaking children follow as they acquire certain sounds in their first language. "Adults who have difficulty producing /l/ or /r/ can be encouraged to begin by pronouncing words with initial /w/ or /y/, and then shift to /r/ or /l/, respectively." (p. 10)
- Practice of vowel shifts and stress shifts related by affixation: used with intermediate or advanced students. Examples: vowel shift--mime vs. mimic; stress shift--PHOtograph vs. phoTOGraphy
- Reading aloud / recitation: passages or scripts for learners to practice and then read aloud, focusing on stress, timing, and intonation. Works best with language intended to be spoken, such as speeches, poems, plays, and dialogues.
- Recordings of learners' production: audio and video recordings of rehearsed and spontaneous speech. "Subsequent playback offers opportunities for feedback from teachers and peers as well as for teacher-, peer-, and self-evaluation."
RE. #10: The ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab, https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/) website offers online tools for audio and video recording. Students can record and listen to one another's recordings. Recordings can also be submitted to the teacher (as quiz items) for correction or feedback. In Burlington English (BurlingtonEnglish.com), online software provides immediate feedback to student recordings of sounds; however, these recordings are not accessible to users or teachers.
p. 11: "When Communicative Approach to language teaching began to take over in the mid to late 1970s, most of the aforementioned techniques and materials for teaching pronunciation at the segmental level were flatly rejected on theoretical and practical grounds as being incompatible with teaching language as communication. Materials developers and teachers decided that emphasis on suprasegmental features of language (i.e., rhythm, stress, and intonation) in a discourse context was the optimal way to organize a short-term pronunciation course for nonnative speakers."
According to McNerney and Mendelsohn, "'giving priority to the suprasegmental aspects of English [both] improves learners' comprehensibility [and] is less frustrating because greater change can be effected in a short time.'"
Today pronunciation instruction is moving toward "a more balanced" approach, blending instruction of segmental and suprasegmental aspects. A modern pronunciation curriculum "seeks to identify the most important aspects of both the suprasegmentals and segmentals and integrate them appropriately in courses that meet the needs of any given group of learners." (p. 11)
There is also the issue of voice quality setting; that is, each language has certain stereotypical features such as pitch level, vowel space, neutral tongue position, and degree of muscular activity that contribute to the overall sound quality or "accent" associated with the language."
Barbara Knox
Barbara Knox
On Monday, October 14, 2013 12:17:44 AM UTC-7, Robert Wachman wrote: