• Author / Uploaded
• Ely A G Bald

Citation preview

TEMA 9. Descripción del sistema fonológico de la lengua inglesa. Modelos y técnicas de aprendizaje. Percepción, discriminación y emisión de sonidos, entonaciones, ritmos y acentos. La corrección fonética. TOPIC 9.

Description of the phonologial system of English. Models and

techniques of

learning. Perception, discrimination and production of

sounds, intonation, rhythm and stress. Phonemic correction. 1. INTRODUCTION 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF ENGLISH 3. PERCEPTION, DISCRIMINATION AND PRODUCTION OF SOUNDS, INTONATION, RHYTHM AND STRESS. 4. MODELS AND TECHNIQUES OF LEARNING 5. PHONEMIC CORRECTION 6. CONCLUSION 1. INTRODUCTION From early years, we should develop in our students the four basic language skills (oral comprehension, oral expression, written comprehension and written expression) that make the communicative competence, which according to RD 126/2014* is stage objective “f” for the Primary Stage aiming that students are competent when understanding and producing the foreign language in everyday situations. It is widely known that the area of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is closely linked to the key competence developed in the Order ECD/65/2015* and which states, following Canale and Swain (1980), that the communicative competence has five components, being of them the linguistic subcometence and which results in several dimensions:

lexis, grammar, semantics,

phonological, ortographic and orthoepic. It is obvious that all these aspects must be taught, along with the four language skills and the rest of competences, in an integrated way but along this unit, we will briefly focus on the phonological and orthoepic components, affecting directly the oral skills, due to the scope of 1

it and the time constraint but highlighting the need of teachers to have a deeper understantind about phonetics and phonology for their teaching practice as well as methods and techniques, within an eclectic approach (Finocciaro), to apply them. 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF ENGLISH When we speak, we use the air from our lungs. First, we breathe it in and then, almost instantly and unconsciously we breathe it out slowly so the air, due to the fact that the air flow passes through different speech organs (vocal cords, jaws, mouth, palate, tongue and lips) and, we can encounter different sounds, either when listening (encoding and decoding sounds from word of mouth in a shared context within the same linguistic code) or speaking (encoding sounds orally from a shared linguistic code), that is to say, through the oral medium. Thus, from the moment we speak about sounds in a language, we are referring to phonemes (regularly used units of sounds: vowels and consonants) which are encompassed within the field of phonetics (the study and classification of speech sounds without considering the relation they have to their linguistic meaning) and the phonology discipline (the contrastive study of relationships among the speech sounds when working in the language) but we be careful not to confuse phonemes with graphemes (graphic representation of speech).

Likewise, the pronunciation system consists of two big categories: segmental and suprasegmental (also called prosodic) features. 2

Within the segmental features, we can distinguish vowels (voiced sounds which are produced when a stream of air is exhaled with no obstruction nor occlusion) and consonants (voiced or unvoiced sounds which are produced when a stream of air is exhaled with either some obstruction or occlusion) that will be analysed below: Concerning vowels, we can distinguish 12 different vowels and although, there are many ways of classifying vowels, we will just focus on two of them, depending on: 

Lip-rounding: -

Rounded/closed vowels. The corners of the lips get close and the lips are pushed forwards.



-

Spread/open vowels. The corners of the lips move away.

-

Neutral/middle vowels. Lips are not rounded or spread.

Length: -

Long vowels: /a:/ /ɜː/ /i:/ /ɔː/ /u:/

-

Short vowels: / æ/ / ʌ/ / ə/ / ɪ/ / ɒ/ /ʊ/

As regards as diphthongs (sounds consisting of a glide from one vowel to anther and in which the first of them is pronounced more clearly than the second), we can distinguish two types:  Centring – (they end in the middle vowel /ə/): /eə/ (chair, dare) / ɪə/ (ear, here, beer, fear)

/ ʊə/ (tour, poor, moor)

 Closing – (they end the closed vowels: / ɪ/ or /ʊ/) 

/ aɪ / (hi, fly, nice)

/eɪ / (face, grey, make)

/ ɒɪ/ (boy, toy,

voice) 

/au/ (house, loud, how)

/əu/ (grow, go, soap)

These five closing diphthongs can be followed by the sound /ə/ to make triphthongs: 3

o / aɪə / (fire, liar, hire) o /eɪə / (player, layer, conveyor) o /ɒɪə/ (employer, loyal, royal) o /auə/ /hour, power, shower) o /əuə/ (lower, slower, mower)

Consonants can be grouped in terms of the:  Phonation. As it has been already mentioned, we can classify them into: -

voiced consonants (the vocal chords vibrate)

-

unvoiced (the vocal cords do not vibrate)

 Manner of articulation. They have to do with how the air escapes through the vocal tract when the consonant is made. 1. Approximants or semivowels. A voice gliding sound that starts as a vowel and moves away to another vowel. /w/ /j/ 2. Plosives. The air flow encounters a closure in the vocal tract but then it is released explosively. /p/ /t/ /k/ /b/ /d/ /g/ (trick: petaca-bodega) 3. Affricates They occur like in plosives but the air is released less explosively. /dʒ/ /tʃ/. 4. Fricatives. Two organs get so close that a friction is produced. /f/ /v/ /s/ /ʃ/ /ʒ//z/ /r/ /h/ /ð/ 5. Lateral. The air flows around the sides of the tongue /l/

4

6. Nasal. The air flows out through the nasal cavity /n/ /m/ /ŋ/ (trick: no more singing) 7. Rolled. It is produced when a quick succession of taps takes place /r/  Place of articulation. It refers to the place in which the obstruction of the vocal tract occurs and which organs are involved. 1. Labial. Lips are used and almost get closed: /b/ /p/ /m/ 2. Dental. The tip of the tongue is against the upper teeth. /θ/ /ð/ 3. Alveolar. The tip of the tongue is against the alveolar ridge. /t/ /d/ /l/ /n/ /z/ /s/ /r/ 4. Palato-alveolar. The tip of the tongue against the back part of the alveolar ridge 5. Velar. The back of the tongue is against the soft palate. /k/ /g/ /ŋ/ 6. Palatal. The front of the tongue is against the hard palate. /j/ 7. Glottal. The gap between the vocal cords make friction /h/ 3.PERCEPTION, DISCRIMINATION AND PRODUCTION OF SOUNDS, INTONATION, RHYTHM AND STRESS.

Suprasegmental (also called prosodic) features refers to stress, rhythm and intonation. These elements are not limited to single sounds as segmental elements do but they extend over syllables, words or phrases.  Stress is the intensity given to a syllable of speech by special effort resulting in loudness to differentiate it from other syllables or words. It is not marked in written English, unless we use phonetic transcriptions. There are two types: -

Primary stress. It is represented with a stroke on the upper part before the stress syllable.*

-

Secondary stress. It is represented with a stroke on the lower part before the stress syllable in very long words* 5

It can refer to a syllable (word stress) or to a word (sentence stress), making them stand out from the rest. Teaching our students both word stress and sentence stress involve some difficulty:  Words cannot be divided into syllables in accordance to their orthography, but their pronunciation  There are not any visual hints to guess where the stress is and there are not fixed rules but they depend on what we want to emphasise (noun or verb in case of word stress or feelings we want to express concerning sentence stress)  Stressed and unstressed syllables are much stronger than in Spanish and that is the reason why Spanish sound flat to native speakers.  There is a lot of words which can be pronounced with a weak form or a full form depending on the contexts. They can verbs, personal pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, indefinite adjectives.

Rhythm. It is the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables that enables us to slow down our speech or speed it up, be emphatic or make our speech more aesthetic. It is of a vital importance in English (stress-timed rhythm) but as it does not happen in Spanish (syllable-timed rhythm) . In addition, to keep the English rhythm we must pronounced unstressed syllables faster than stress syllables. For this reason, work on rhythm in the English class is essential. Intonation. It is the way of rising or falling the voice in speaking, so we can encounter and produce different types depending on the context: -Rising intonation utterances: requests, suggestions, yes/no questions… -Falling intonation utterances: statements, questions, commands… -Falling-rising intonation: expressing doubt -Rising-falling intonation: expressing surprise or other genuine feelings. There are two main problems when teaching pronunciation in the English classroom: 6

 Its teaching is neglected (descuidado) as it is overlooked or teachers lack of self-confident to teach it properly because they need a good grounding, theoretical knowledge or practical skills.  It is usually reactive. Only when a particular problem arises, children are taught pronunciation but it is not strategically planned to make it effective.

Nevertheless, it is mandatory for teachers to teach these contents as the Decree 198/2014 states in the blocks of contents related to the oral skills in the following way: - To use extra linguistic sounds and conventional prosodic features. - Sound, stress, rhythmic and intonation patterns.

In the same way, we provide our students with listening comprehension exercises; we should do the same with pronunciation, either in an integrated way or not. Thus, we will able to distinguish three different levels in the mastery of phonetics: -

Perception. Students identify segmental or suprasegmental features of language.

-

Discrimination. They can differentiate them.

-

Production. They can produce them in their oral productions with little difference in comparison to native speakers.

4.MODELS AND TECHNIQUES OF LEARNING English long ago outgrew its limits of land and this is why we can find so many English-speaking countries with so many English varieties in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other African and Caribbean countries which were once ruled by the British. Having said that, we as teachers ask ourselves: what model should we teach? First of all, we can describe a model as pronunciation characteristics of the language that a teacher presents to their learners in the classroom. 7

We must admit that RP (Received Pronunciation), also called The Queen English or BBC English has been the imposed or the most implemented model both in Britain and British teachers teaching overseas but this is not really happening nowadays taking into account that only 3% of the British population speak this English variety. As a consequence, there is no easy nor clear answer to this question but it all depends on the students we have in our class, their needs, characteristics, background, bearing in mind that our Royal Decree 126/2014* which states that a student-centred approach must be carried out; but particularly, the nationality of those native people our students may get in touch in the short or long term, being this the main reason we opt for teaching Standard British English in our English lessons in Spain but Standard American English in Mexico although it is widely accepted that we must make our students aware that lots of varieties exist among countries and even regions. It now more clear that pronunciation teaching must be an integral part of our teaching plan and that it is a must for teacher nowadays making students aware of the different sounds and features they can encounter to improve their speaking and listening proficiency. Nevertheless, we must highlight that we do not aim at making them sound like a native speaker but at making themselves be understood and understand other people.

Thus, we can opt for different alternatives to teach pronunciation in Primary Education according to Harmer:  whole lessons. They can be integrated, remedial or practice lessons and the teacher devotes a whole session to focus on a specific aspect of the phonological system.  discrete slots. The teacher plans short and separable bits of pronunciation over lessons.

8

 integrated phases. During certain moments of a lesson, depending on the skill students are working on, some specific aspects are explained or practised.  opportunistic/reactive teaching. Teachers stray from their original plan to work on a problem or doubt concerning pronunciation but it was not planned at all. As regards as the techniques, strategies or activities we can use in the English classroom, we can highlight that in the past, the most common techniques sere drills, detailed descriptions, tongue twisters or even transcription practice. Now things have changed for the better and we must bear in mind what Gilbert claims in relation to it so that students are willing to learn improve their pronunciation but effectively: o Avoid mechanical drills o Emphasise the musical aspects at a discourse level o Teach real speech patterns

In any case, it does not mean that we cannot use drills or transcriptions but we must vary the materials and activities we use as Decree 198/2014 states, so depending on our aims, we can implement the following techniques and activities from very different fields taking into account that within the Communicative Approach, we must work on both fluency and accuracy unlike in other methods (TPR, audio-lingual method, the Silent Way…):  Minimal pairs  Odd one out

 Rhymes,

chants,

nursery

rhymes, jolly songs

 Pronunciation notebook

 Jokes

 Wall charts

 Collaborative writing

 Meaningful drills

 Poetry such as limericks

 Tongue-twisters

 Role-plays,

simulations

or

dramatisations  Dictionary work 9

 Games (sound bingo, running dictations, hangman, the feather game, hands up, noughts and crosses, snap, chaining, sticky sounds, phonemic crosswords). There is no doubt that games are a valuable and useful resource that we must make the most of as Vernon (2009) states because they make learning fun, purposeful, they foster interaction (competition, cooperation) and they create a relaxing or lively atmosphere, which will lower the students’ affective filter according to Krashen so input will enter easily. But we should also make meaningful use of ICTs (198/2014), integrating computer-based activities and, depending on the possibilities, mobile learning as there are lots of apps and websites that offer our students working on pronunciation in a fun way:  Merriam-Webster Learners Dictionary  Soundsofenglish.org  Sound-o-matic.com or  Howjsay.com, among others, by making use of a blended learning approach It would be highly advisable too that we could make different activities for different leaning styles (visual, hearing, tactile, kinaesthetic…) so as to cater for diversity and we could use authentic material as the aforementioned decree states (nursery rhyme books, jokes, comic strips, advertisements, slogans…). We can also use the phonetic chart so that they can recognise the different phonemes in the English language in a progressive way. There is no denying that we must make them aware of those features that are different to the Spanish system

5. PHONEMIC CORRECTION 10

Mistakes may produce difficulties in understanding a word or sentence, and as a result, producing a breakdown in a conversation. This is the main reason why mistakes must be corrected from early stages so that they do not become fossilised errors. Nevertheless, we should not discourage students overcorrecting them but it is necessary that we model problematic or tricky words from the first time we present them so as to make learners aware of possible mistakes they can make and a good resource would be the “black list of mispronounced words”. We should also create a supportive atmosphere in which instilling students, within a communicative approach, that errors are a natural part of the learning process and we can definitely learn from them. This way, we can make them feel less scared or embarrassed at the same time their self-confidence and motivation increases, which is vital according to Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis It is true that we must correct mistakes but depending on the activity or aim in the lesson, we must focus on accuracy or fluency and, related to this, we should progressively develop in them the monitor device described by Krashen so that they can correct themselves when they notice they have mispronounced or misspelled a word. Following Dickenson we must carry out the so-called covert rehearsal which means that we must encourage them to: -

Talk to themselves in English

-

Predict pronunciation by making use of the rules they own.

-

Listen extensively and intensively

-

Foster peer-correction

-

Set themselves objectives

We as teachers must take into account that particularly Spanish students have some problems with English due to the fact that the Spanish language has a

11

more phonetic script system (direct correlation grapheme-phoneme). Some of these difficulties are shown below:  Concerning vowels:

-The liquid “s” at the beginning of a

They found difficult to differentiate

word

long from short vowels

-The glottal “h”

The schwa sound in comparison

-Silent letters

with /æ/ or /e/

-/v/ and /b/

The difference between /æ/ and /ʌ/

-Final consonants - -ed pronunciation in past tense - - s pronunciation in present simple and plurals

 Regarding consonants:  In terms of suprasegmental features, we can highlight problems in: -Stressing syllables or words -Differentiating weak and strong forms -Keeping a rhythm and a proper intonation depending on the situation, among others.

6. CONCLUSION Pronunciation is probably the most neglected aspect of English teaching and most times it is due to the teachers’ lack of confidence, no strategic planning or lack of opportunities provided to students. This the reason why teachers must have a good command of pronunciation as well as theoretical principles and teaching skills to deal with these contents so that their students can acquire the communicative competence by the end of the Primary Stage. As Charles Fries emphasises pupils should not be so impatient to learn and widen their voculary but they must master the new phonological system because from the moment a pupil confuses one phoneme with another, constant confusions will be made as they progress and it is likely that these

12

mistakes will produce breakdowns in conversation and add a difficulty to convey meaning. We must teach them both segmental and suprasegmental, up to the extent we consider depending on the students level and age, in a motivating and varied way in which error correction plays an important role providing it takes place in a supportive environment at the same time we develop the rest of language skills and subcompetences. To finish, I would like to cite the most important books I have consulted for the development of this unit: Celce-Murcia, M.. Teaching Pronunciation. Cambridge. 2008 Kelly, G. How to Teach Pronunciation. Pearson Education Limited. 2000. Harmer, J. How to Teach English. Longman. 2007

13