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Practice Activities – FP005 T&P

SUBJECT PRACTICE ACTIVITIES: TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Students’ names: Natalia Antia Hortua Ingrid Galindo Ramirez Moisés Arévalo Jiménez Juan Esteban López Rodríguez

Group: 2019-06

Date: June 30th , 2020

FUNDACIÓN UNIVERSITARIA IBEROAMERICANA

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Practice Activities – FP005 T&P

INDEX Practice activities instructions ………………………………………………………………….. 3 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 Question 1 ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Question 2 ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 Question 3 ………………………………………………………………………………………. 6 Question 4 …………………………………………………………………………………….…. 7 Question 5 …………………………………………………………………………………….…. 7 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………………………... 7 References …………………………………………………………………………………….… 8

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Practice Activities – FP005 T&P

Practice Activities

You can find attached excerpts of two books to teach pronunciation.

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Excerpt 1: Underhill, A. (2005). Learning and Teaching Pronunciation. Oxford: MacMillan. (pp. 14-24).

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Excerpt 2: Hancock, M & Donna, S. (2014) English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University. (pp. 10-19).

Review the two books and answer the following questions.

1. What seems to be the general approach of the books? Segmental or suprasegmental? Exposure-based or explanation based? Humanistic or drillbased? Teacher-centred or student centered? Traditional or unusual? Use what you learnt in Chapter 9 to justify your answer. 2. Does it cover all aspects we have seen in the materials? Articulation, vowel/consonantal system, phonemic chart, connected speech, stress, intonation, foreign influence? Etc.? Refer back to the materials if any of those aspects needs definition. 3. Does any of them consider integrated skills? Do they teach vocabulary, as well? If they don’t, could you make a brief proposal for them to include vocabulary? 4. Which contexts of use are they intended for? Are there significant differences among the three of them? 5. Which one would you prefer to use as a teacher? Why? Relate you answer to Brinton’s variables.

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Practice Activities – FP005 T&P

INTRODUCTION Achieving a good pronunciation is one of the goals that many learners of any language, in this case, English desire to achieve. The way you speak and produce the sounds demonstrates how careful you are at learning the language and also denotes somehow, the way you learned it. The market in language teaching is full of materials and resources that supply the learning of a FL with lots of material designed with the purpose of helping all the members involved in this process. For that reason, while studying and in our case as educators, while teaching, it is of great importance to rely on material that could provide our students and ourselves with the necessary assistance for generating a better teaching and learning process. In order to make it more accessible to our students, there are a great bunch of strategies that will help them perceive that this journey, even though it is challenging, the results will be rewarding. QUESTION 1 What seems to be the general approach of the books? Segmental or suprasegmental? Exposure-based or explanation based? Humanistic or drill-based? Teacher-centred or student centered? Traditional or unusual? Use what you learnt in Chapter 9 to justify your answer. General approach of the books: segmental or suprasegmental The English Pronunciation In Use book is based on the bottom up segmental approach since it focuses on individual letters and sounds organized in each unit according to minimal pairs such us /eɪ/ and /æ/, /b/ and /p/, etc. The other book, Learning and Teaching Pronunciation is based on the segmental and suprasegmental approaches since in the discovery toolkit there are three levels: sounds in isolation, words in isolation, and connected speech. In the part that we analysed the focus is on the segmental approach: the introduction is about distinguishing vowels from consonants and unit 2 is about all the vowels monophthongs in the phonemic chart. Exposure based or explanation based Both books are explanation based. In the English Pronunciation In Use book, each lesson is divided into two pages. The first one has explanations and suggestions about how to pronounce the sounds and examples and the second has different kinds of exercises where students are exposed to different exercises and have to identify or complete the sounds. The other book by Underhill (2005) has discovery activities to help learners discover the theory by themselves by experiencing how to pronounce the sounds. In that way, learners experience the auditory, visual, and physical characteristics of the sound. Also, they

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Practice Activities – FP005 T&P

are asked some reflection questions such as what internal physical movements they notice, what they hear, etc to reflect about the activities. After each task, there is a commentary in which explanations and conclusions are provided. Humanistic or drill-based The focus on both books is humanistic although there are drills and repetition. In Underhill’s book (2005) students repeat sounds but the focus is on awareness about how the sounds are pronounced taking into account the auditory, physical and visual aspects. Based on these features, students are suggested to provide kinesthetic, auditory and visual feedback to themselves. In the book by Hanckok and Donna (2014) students are asked not only to repeat but also to do exercises to notice, classify, deduce differences in words that can cause misunderstandings, complete sentences with words that have the target sounds, students are asked to record and self-assess the audios to keep a record of their progress, and so forth. Also, it is important to highlight that students practice the sounds in context, for instance, conversations, sentences, stories, rhymes and the like. Teacher-centred or student-centred Both books are student-centred. In the one by Hanckok and Donna (2014), activities are self-explanatory and if students have difficulty or want to do further practice, they are asked to go to a special section of the book. Also, there is a suggestion by the end of each unit to record some words and listen to them two weeks later to self-assess students’ progress. This activity is related to consciousness raising (Ball, n.d.) because students can reflect on the task and if they notice problems they can practice to overcome them autonomously. The book about learning and teaching pronunciation is student-centred as well. As it was mentioned before, it provides students with guided discovery activities to foster awareness based on experiencing how sounds are pronounced. Traditional or unusual Neither the English Pronunciation in Use book nor the Learning and Teaching Pronunciation is traditional. We think that they are unusual because the first one is focused on intermediate English learners and guides them through practical and interesting activities where students integrate their listening and pronunciation skills. Besides, it provides all the tools to help and train learners to be independent. In the other book, students learn by experiencing how to pronounce each sound and it helps them to be more conscious about the articulation process. One might conclude that this book was written for teachers to help them to be more conscious about pronunciation and based on it to have more tools to help

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out and guide their students in a qualified way. We believe that this book can be used for self-study and also in a class to get feedback and help from a teacher. QUESTION 2 Does

it

cover

all

aspects

we

have

seen

in

the

materials?

Articulation,

vowel/consonantal system, phonemic chart, connected speech, stress, intonation, foreign influence? Etc.? Both books are aimed on articulation and provide diagrams. The book by Hanckok and Donna (2014) has simple diagrams of the mouth about how to pronounce the sounds. The book by Underhills (2005) provides diagrams of the articulatory system to explain how the phonemes have to be produced. The vocabulary is more specialized in the book by Underhill (2005) because it was written for teachers. The sounds foundation phonemic vowel and consonant chart is the base of the Teaching and learning pronunciation book and in the other book the IPA is used to help students understand the differences in pronunciation between minimal pairs. In respect of connected speech, it is studied in the third part of the book by Underhill (2005), stress and intonation are not mentioned but we do not know if in other parts of the book they are going to be studied. We think that foreign accent is not mentioned since the IPA International Phonetic Alphabet sounds can be adapted to the model that is being used by the teacher. Regarding the other book by Hanckok and Donna (2014), we do not know if connected speech, stress, intonation and foreign influence are going to be covered since we only analyzed the first chapters. QUESTION 3 Does any of them consider integrated skills? Do they teach vocabulary, as well? If they don’t, could you make a brief proposal for them to include vocabulary? Well, based on what we have seen in some classes taken previously, I consider this is an example of both, but of course an integrated skill however is easy to see on Excerpt 2. It is related more to the didactic aspects, it also seems to be more effective and friendly to be used in our classes taking into consideration the way all the exercises are structured. The Learning and Teaching Pronunciation book takes into consideration integrated skills, through vocabulary teaching as well. It considers the development of different activities through the use of many words which students can find aspects like articulation and so forth.

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Practice Activities – FP005 T&P

QUESTION 4 Which contexts of use are they intended for? Are there significant differences among the three of them? According to the sources provided for reading as a content the contexts found are; form, use and meaning. First of all it has to be considered that they have really significant differences. Therefore since there are big differences among them, we can consider the first one which is form. Form is based on the structure, the way it is composed, talking about use, we can see the connection that exists with the speakers including the production of the language and meaning is related to what the speaker wants to say or transmit. QUESTION 5: Which one would you prefer to use as a teacher? Why? Relate your answer to Brinton’s variables. As a teacher, I would prefer to use the English Pronunciation In Use book because it has a base on the “Exposure, Exercise, Explanation” paradigm by Dalton & Seidlhofer (1994). First, I would use exposure because it involves students in a real context by different types of activities. In the same way, I would use Exercise because it permits practicing the language in different scenarios. Also, the Explanation would be an important part of the teaching process because it allows clarifying some linguistic aspects students might find difficult. This paradigm should be adapted taking into account Brintion’s variables; students and setting, institutional variables, and linguistic and methodological variables because every teaching environment is different and we as teachers have to adapt our approaches and strategies to these variables every time we plan our classes. CONCLUSIONS As it was possible to see, there is a great number of variables that we as educators can take into consideration when developing our clases. From a class without any detailed information about phonetics and sounds to the one with more complex definition. No matter the route we as educators take, there are relevant factors that we need to be ready to deal with. One of those aspects is to have our students aware of the process they are going through. Even though the teacher is the guide in the process, students need to be aware and responsible of their own pace and rhythm and algo be mature enough to learn from their mistakes. There is no better environment to put into practice the language than the real one, therefore, the creation of spaces to practice, to take the risk to interact and to learn from

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it, depends entirely on the student who is the main character in this journey of learning a language. REFERENCES

Brinton, D. (1995): “Speak Out” in IATEFL SIG 16, August 1995. Dalton, C. & Seidlhofer, B. (1994). Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hancock, M & Donna, S. (2014) English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University. (pp. 10-19). Underhill, A. (2005). Learning and Teaching Pronunciation. Oxford: MacMillan. (pp. 14-24).

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