MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA
Pedagogická fakulta
Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury
Diplomová práce
Brno 2009
Bc. Klára Sedláčková
MASARYK UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Education
Department of English Language and Literature
Diploma Thesis
Non-native Acquisition of English Pronunciation in Spanish Speakers
A case study
Brno 2009
Supervisor: Author: PhDr. Jaroslav Ondráček Bc. Klára Sedláčková
Bibliografický záznam
Sedláčková, Klára: Non-native Acquisition of English Pronunciation in Spanish
Speakers: diplomová práce. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta pedagogická,
Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, 2009. Vedoucí diplomové práce PhDr. Jaroslav
Ondráček.
Keywords
phonetics, phonology, English pronunciation, non-native acquisition of English
pronunciation, the English sound system, the Spanish sound system, differences
between the English and the Spanish sound systems, difficulties with English
pronunciation typical of the Spanish
Klí čová slova
fonetika, fonologie, anglická výslovnost, osvojování anglické výslovnosti nerodilými
mluvčími, anglický zvukový systém, španělský zvukový systém, rozdíly v anglickém a
španělském zvukovém systému, potíže s anglickou výslovností typické pro Španěle
Annotation
The diploma thesis “Non-native Acquisition of English Pronunciation in Spanish
Speakers” deals with the question of non-native pronunciation of English. It explores
factors which have an influence on it. Furthermore, it offers a comparison between the
English and the Spanish sound systems. The thesis also illustrates examples of some
difficulties Spanish learners are likely to face in English pronunciation and processes
the results of a case study on six Spanish users of English.
Anotace
Tato diplomová práce „Osvojování anglické výslovnosti se zaměřením na španělské
uživatele tohoto jazyka“ se zabývá anglickou výslovností nerodilých mluvčí a zkoumá
faktory, které ji ovlivňují. Práce dále porovnává rozdíly mezi zvukovým systémem
anglického a španělského jazyka a uvádí příklady výslovnostních chyb, kterým mohou
Španělé v anglickém jazyce čelit. Praktická část práce srhnuje výsledky případové
studie vedené na šesti španělských mluvčích.
DECLARATION
I declare that I wrote the diploma thesis myself and used only the sources mentioned
in the enclosed bibliography.
I agree that the thesis will be deposited in the library of the Faculty of Education of
Masaryk University in Brno and made available for academic purposes.
……………………………………..
Bc. Klára Sedláčková
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor PhDr. Jaroslav Ondráček for his
help and support he provided me with throughout my thesis.
I would also like to express my appreciation to all the Spanish people who have been
involved in my study and who have devoted their valuable time to my research.
My thanks are also due to my Spanish teacher from Texas, Dr. Paniagua. I appreciated
his invaluable help with Spanish.
I owe my thanks to my friend Z who helped me judge the recordings.
My last, but not least, thanks go to my friend K who helped me find the Spanish
subjects for my study and who provided me with help with the Spanish sound system.
CONTENTS
Introduction...........................................................................................................................7
I. Theoretical part .................................................................................................................9
1. Non-native pronunciation ............................................................................................9
1.1 Factors influencing non-native pronunciation ........................................................10
1.1.1 Learner’s native language................................................................................10
1.1.2 Age of learner ..................................................................................................10
1.1.3 Amount of exposure to English .......................................................................11
1.1.4 Phonetic ability ................................................................................................11
1.1.5 Attitude and identity ........................................................................................12
1.1.6 Motivation and concern for good pronunciation.............................................12
1.2 The difficulties learners may have with English pronunciation .............................13
1.3 The main features of pronunciation ........................................................................14
1.4 Ways of analyzing comfortable intelligibility ........................................................15
2. Sound systems of English and Spanish .....................................................................16
2.1 Phonemic inventories of English and Spanish........................................................17
2.2 English and Spanish alphabets................................................................................17
2.3 Vowel sounds..........................................................................................................18
2.3.1 Vowel classification system.............................................................................18
2.3.2 The English vowel sounds (Roach) .................................................................18
2.3.3 The Spanish vowel sounds (Bartoš).................................................................18
2.3.4 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish vowels ..........19
2.3.5 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of vowels.........................20
2.4 Consonant sounds ...................................................................................................23
2.4.1 Consonant classification system ......................................................................23
2.4.2 English and Spanish consonant sounds ...........................................................26
2.4.3 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish consonants ....27
2.4.4 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of consonants ..................29
2.5 Positions of sounds in words ..................................................................................32
2.5.1 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish.......................32
2.5.2 Possible areas of difficulty in the positions of sounds in words......................32
2.5.3 Consonant clusters ...........................................................................................33
2.6 Cognates..................................................................................................................35
2.7 Suprasegmental features .........................................................................................37
2.7.1 Word stress ......................................................................................................37
2.7.2 Potential difficulties in the area of word stress................................................40
2.7.3 Sentence stress .................................................................................................41
2.7.4 Potential difficulties in the area of sentence stress ..........................................41
2.7.5 Intonation .........................................................................................................42
2.7.6 Potential difficulties in the area of intonation..................................................44
2.7.7 Rhythm.............................................................................................................45
2.7.8 Potential difficulties in the area of rhythm ......................................................46
2.7.9 Linking.............................................................................................................46
2.7.10 Potential difficulties in the area of linking.....................................................47
II. Practical part..................................................................................................................49
1. Introduction...................................................................................................................49
2. Methodology.................................................................................................................49
3. Subjects included in the study......................................................................................50
4. Material.........................................................................................................................50
5. Analysis of the questionnaires......................................................................................50
5.1 Description of individual speakers and their language backgrounds .....................51
5.1.1 Speaker no.1.....................................................................................................51
5.1.2 Speaker no. 2....................................................................................................52
5.1.3 Speaker no. 3....................................................................................................52
5.1.4 Speaker no. 4....................................................................................................53
5.1.5 Speaker no. 5....................................................................................................54
5.1.6 Speaker no. 6....................................................................................................54
6. Analysis of speakers´ mistakes.....................................................................................55
6.1 Mistakes in the read aloud text ...............................................................................55
6.1.1 Speaker no. 1....................................................................................................56
6.1.2 Speaker no. 2....................................................................................................57
6.1.3 Speaker no. 3....................................................................................................60
6.1.4 Speaker no. 4....................................................................................................62
6.1.5 Speaker no. 5....................................................................................................63
6.1.6 Speaker no. 6....................................................................................................66
6.2 Summary of results from the read aloud text..........................................................68
6.3 Mistakes in spontaneous speeches..........................................................................69
6.4 Suprasegmental features in the read aloud text and spontaneous speeches............70
6.5 Mistakes in word stress...........................................................................................71
6.6 Mistakes in sentence stress .....................................................................................72
6.7 Mistakes in linking..................................................................................................73
6.8 Mistakes in intonation.............................................................................................74
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................76
Résumé ............................................................................................................................77
Bibliography....................................................................................................................78
Appendices.......................................................................................................................83
7
Introduction It seems that some people can adopt the pronunciation of another language with very
little effort, but other just do not seem to lose their native accent, and no matter how
much they try, they will never sound authentic. The way a person speaks is a sign of
their origin. Even though learning pronunciation has become an integral part of
language learning and the situation in this field has improved recently, still not enough
attention is paid to it.
A lot of pronunciation errors that foreign learners make in English are not haphazard.
The sound system of a foreign language can influence the English pronunciation of its
learners who, due to the transfer of sounds from their native sound system into English,
unintentionally make an English word sound “foreign”, which is how it feels more
natural to them. However, correct pronunciation is very important because serious
weaknesses in it can create communication barriers and thus significantly impair one’s
ability to communicate.
In the diploma thesis, I made an effort to inquire into the problem of non-native
acquisition of English pronunciation and then investigate the matter of non-native
accent in Spanish speakers of English. The thesis provides an outline of difficulties with
English pronunciation typical of Spanish speakers and shows concrete examples of
some common mistakes they are likely to make due to their language background.
I have primarily chosen the topic for my diploma thesis because my bachelor thesis was
concerned with a similar issue. The main difference was the nationality of the research
subjects; whereas in the bachelor thesis I dealt with Portuguese learners of English, the
scope of this diploma thesis is limited to Spanish learners. I considered the fact that
Spanish and Portuguese are both Romance languages belonging to the Indo-European
family and they are therefore closely related to each other and I wondered what the
difference in their influence on English pronunciation would be.
Looking even further back, the main decision for writing my first thesis on this topic
was made in the Netherlands during my Erasmus study stay, where I was part of a
multilingual international class of students. I found it extremely intriguing to observe
8
English pronunciation of different nations´ representatives, and to discover what
particular mistakes they were making. Moreover, my one-semester stay in Texas, where
I had a chance to meet a number of English speakers of Hispanic origin, raised my
interest in the Spanish language and my newly gained knowledge then enabled me to
inquire about the theoretical foundations also in Spanish literature, which has been
enriching and highly beneficial for my research.
The theoretical part of this work is grounded on the study of several sources (both
English and Spanish, and also Czech) and it deals with non-native acquisition of
English1 pronunciation in general. Different factors that have an influence on the
process are examined in this part. Furthermore, it concentrates on basic differences
between the English and the Spanish sound systems in the area of both segmental and
suprasegmental features. It also reveals what the most common pronunciation-related
difficulties are that foreign learners of English have to face when acquiring the
language.
The second part of the thesis is practical and its focus is shifted from the theoretically
oriented foundations to real-life issues. It is concerned with the results of a case study
based on a small research conducted on six Spanish users of English. The case study
aimed at shedding light on some common pronunciation mistakes they tend to make and
on the influences which seem possible to have caused these errors.
1 Throughout the thesis, the use of the word non-native acquisition of English pronunciation is meant as learning pronunciation of a target language, English, in addition to the mother tongue of speakers. It also comprises formal training and personal experience of the speakers. In the thesis, learning and acquisition are used interchangeably.
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I. Theoretical part
1. Non-native pronunciation
Our diploma thesis draws upon the premise that there are no two people who pronounce
exactly the same way (Jones, 1992: 3). Each person’s performance is unique and there
are multiple reasons for that. One of them is connected to geography - the pronunciation
of a language varies from place to place, depending on how it developed among
speakers in a specific location. It is especially true for English that a “standard” is hard
to find. Some authors even claim that none exists (Jones, 1992: 3). What then appears to
be most important in life is that speakers are able to understand each other, despite their
distinct pronunciation.
In non-native speakers, the occurrence of pronunciation dissimilarities seems accented.
It can generally be said about learning a second language that it often becomes rather
complicated because the learner’s first language tends to influence the process. In the
field of pronunciation, such impact is particularly remarkable. As a result, a non-native
speaker normally develops a personal way of pronouncing English that reflects their
place of origin and the language they acquired in an early age. Hence, the speaker’s
origin can often be relatively easily recognized.
The principal reason for the above stated is the fact that every language employs a set of
sounds that are unique. For some of these sounds we can hardly find an exact equivalent
in a different language. Non-native speakers are therefore sometimes inclined to replace
these sounds, which are unnatural to them, by similar sounds that are part of their
mother tongue - and here we discover the roots of “a foreign accent”.
Nonetheless, the concrete realization of one’s non-native pronunciation - i.e. to what
extent it is driven by their first language and its sound system - largely depends on
many additional factors that need to be considered. Joanne Kenworthy (1987: 4)
provides an account of these factors, which we will explore in the following
subchapters.
10
1.1 Factors influencing non-native pronunciation
1.1.1 Learner’s native language
We have already briefly discussed what appears to be the most important cause of a
distinct non-native pronunciation: a major part is played by the transfer of phonetic
rules from one’s original language into the new one. To some extent, we can foresee the
resulting pronunciation when we compare the sound systems of both languages. It is a
general rule that the more dissimilarities there are between them, the more difficult it is
to learn the other language correctly and the more pronunciation mistakes are made. The
speakers are typically well aware that their accent is somewhat different, but they find
themselves incapable of identifying the particular features that make them sound “non-
native”, neither are they able to weigh the importance of the errors they make2.
1.1.2 Age of learner
The age of a learner is often considered a highly significant contributing factor. It is,
however, not yet completely understood what the exact relationship is between age at
which one starts learning and the ability to pronounce properly.
According to some researchers, the only way a native-like accent can be achieved is that
one commences learning early enough in childhood. They assume that the ability of
sound adoption diminishes after reaching adult age. Oyama (1976: 32) even says: “A
native-like pronunciation in a second language seems as rare in an adult learner as the
ability to run four minute mile”. The theory gives no chance of perfect pronunciation to
any adults, regardless of the time they have spent in the foreign country and even if their
vocabulary is at highest level.
On the other hand, there are linguists who claim otherwise. They argue that there is no
clear evidence supporting the view that the acquisition of proper pronunciation should 2 “For example, a Czech learner of English may have difficulties realizing that the last consonants in English words “let” (allow) and “led” (past tense of lead) should be pronounced voiceless in the first case and voiced in the second case. It is because in Czech the same words ´let´ and ´led´, even though having a different meaning, can both be pronounced voiceless, while the speaker does not have to be afraid of not being understood” (Sedláčková, 2007: 8).
11
only be restricted to learning in childhood. In their research3, youth have shown no
immediate advantage over adults in the matter of foreign sound pronunciation
(Kenworthy, 1987: 5).
1.1.3 Amount of exposure to English
There is no doubt that being frequently confronted with a second language is highly
beneficial for all of its learners, while, of course, in order to succeed in achieving good
pronunciation skills, learners need to be exposed to its spoken form. Also, the more they
practise speaking the language themselves, the closer to their ideal they get. Numerous
language schools take this as a ground to build their programs upon and various
conversation and immersion methods are now commonplace. It is also stressed to
teachers that they should take advantage of every opportunity to communicate with their
students using the target language.
It is certainly a great advantage to live in a country where the second language is
spoken, at least for some time. Nevertheless, great improvements should not be taken
for granted in such cases, since living itself does not provide a guaranteed access to
native speakers and it is not uncommon to find people of one cultural group staying
tight together in the foreign environment, maintaining little contact with the local
population. Sometimes it may even be more helpful for learners when native speakers
are available in their home country, so they can occasionally practise their skills
communicating with them.
1.1.4 Phonetic ability
Essentially, when discussing a person with a better or worse “phonetic ability”, what is
meant is the individual’s disposition for obtaining native-like pronunciation. The core of
the problem seems to lie in “hearing well”. Let us explain: While every human being is
equipped with an inborn ability of sound imitation, some can distinguish between
different phonetic features better than others. Consequently, these people perform better
when copying the sounds they hear, because they are aware of the difference. To
3 Such as the study of Hoefnagel-Höhle
12
exemplify, O’Connor (1989: 6) says: “Students who cannot hear a particular English
contrast have no chance of reproducing it. Until Spanish students can hear the contrast
between boat and vote, they have no chance of making the difference”.
Good news for students is that this skill can be improved quite extensively through
training. Therefore, those who seemed talentless, but have devoted their time and effort
to practice, often achieve better results than those people who appeared naturally
predisposed in the first place and decided to rely on that (Kenworthy, 1987: 7).
1.1.5 Attitude and identity
Some of the factors that affect both the process and the result of obtaining second
language pronunciation are psychological in nature. They can be surprisingly powerful.
An example could be one’s attitude to the foreign language they learn. If their approach
is positive and they have a strong inner motivation to learn, their performance is more
likely to be decent. On the contrary, if their desire of improvement is limited and if the
individual strongly identifies with their native culture, we will generally observe slower
and worse results. The latter is often the case in minority groups who do not welcome
the language of the majority and who thus develop a noticeable accent, sometimes even
hard to understand.
1.1.6 Motivation and concern for good pronunciation
There are people who want their spoken performance to be flawless, or at least best
possible. Comprehensibility is not enough for such speakers, they are concerned with
correctness and good pronunciation is an intrinsic part of that. These people are usually
industrious learners who like to be informed about the mistakes they make, so they
could progress.
Such an approach is appreciated in learners - unless constant worrying about possible
mispronunciations disturbs the flow of speech and hinders conversation, of course. We
generally wish learners to acknowledge the important role of proper pronunciation in
communication. They should be aware that if they mispronounce sounds consistently,
13
they are sometimes extremely hard to be understood by their counterparts, especially if
the other party are native speakers or speakers with a different language background.
Lastly, we should not forget to mention that the way a second language is taught to a
person will influence their pronunciation immensely. Their learning experience
(whether formal or informal) may boost motivation, it can stress the importance of the
subject, teachers can stimulate students’ phonetic skills through including specialized
materials into the educational process and it is also crucial to remember that their
personal pronunciation is likely to be imitated by students, so it should always be taken
great care of.
1.2 The difficulties learners may have with English pronunciation
It has already been suggested that a native language can have a significant role to play
in learning English. It is one of the causes from which learner’s mistakes may stem
from because some aspects of the mother tongue interfere with the target language.
There are certain aspects of English that make attainment of its pronunciation relatively
complicated. One of its characteristic features is the lack of one-to-one equivalence
between spelling and pronunciation. In other words, spoken word does not translate into
its written form according to phonemes and vice versa. The number of English
phonemes is greater than the number of letters in the alphabet: there are 44 different
sounds in spoken English, but there are 26 letters to represent them in the written form.
Learners find this difficult to get accustomed to and they typically start with
memorizing the spoken vocabulary and its written realization separately. It takes time to
discover the underlying rules and even fluent users of English sometimes hesitate about
the correct pronunciation of a word there are not familiar with.
On the other hand, many languages are so-called “phonetic languages”. Spanish is a
good example. It reads the way it is written with little exceptions, which will be
discussed later. There is an almost absolute one-to-one equivalence between letters and
phonemes. The pronunciation rules are very consistent in Spanish. Spanish learners
therefore struggle with English pronunciation, as they have a tendency to apply the
Spanish spelling-to-sound rules to it.
14
Apart from not being phonetic, English poses a challenge to some of its learners by
containing sounds that do not have a close equivalent it their native language. It is often
the case that an amount of training is required from the foreign speaker before they are
able to produce such an “unnatural” sound properly. In the meantime, or if they do not
pay enough attention to practice, they try to solve the problem with substitution -
instead of using the authentic phoneme they search their native phonetic inventory for a
sound that is at least similar to the correct one. This is how, for example, English /θ/
becomes /s/, /t/, or even /f/ in the performance of a foreign speaker.
Suprasegmental features are no less important for good pronunciation. Being
“suprasegmental” means that these features do not relate to segments - i.e. phonemes,
but rather to the other aspects of speech: linking, assimilation, stress, or intonation, to
name a few. A foreign language may have different stress and intonation patterns than
English, for instance, yet, learners should bear in mind that only a slight change in stress
and intonation, such as emphasizing wrong words in an utterance, can lead to a
significant shift of meaning and may cause misunderstanding. According to Celce-
Murcia, more serious misunderstanding can occur when a learner does not use correct
rhythm patterns and does not connect words than when a learner happens to use one
sound instead of another (1996: 131). “If learners use improper information intonation
contours, they can be perceived as abrupt, or even rude; and if the stress and rhythm
patterns are too nonnativelike, the speakers who produce them may not be understood at
all” (Celce-Murcia, 1996: 131).
Certainly, not all pronunciation mistakes necessarily inhibit successful communication.
People often make pronunciation errors which do not get in the way of their message
and the speaker is still understood. We still rightfully consider it a mistake, nonetheless.
1.3 The main features of pronunciation
In order to analyze pronunciation mistakes, it is necessary to be aware of all parts that
an utterance comprises. We need to investigate them individually, so that we can
identify problems precisely. We already briefly discussed these features in the previous
subchapter, so let us now summarize.
15
Two major groups of features can be distinguished:
• Segmental features are sounds that can be further analysed. They have a basis in
the sound system and they are also called segments. They are divided into
consonants and vowels.
• Suprasegmental features include stress (word and sentence stress), intonation
and also other aspects of connected speech such as assimilation, elision, linking,
intrusion, juncture and contraction.
1.4 Ways of analyzing comfortable intelligibility
Whilst gaining an authentic native accent does not seem realistic in many learners of
English, it surely should be their aim to reach at least what Kenworthy calls
“comfortable intelligibility”. Comfortably intelligible speakers not only successfully
communicate a message, their overall speech is also relatively easy to follow and
understand, despite possible imperfections.
Joanne Kenworthy claims there is no need for excessively complicated tests if we want
to assess the intelligibility of non-native speakers. She recommends rather simple
testing methods: reading aloud and spontaneous speech are the main sources and she
also suggests a recorded sample of speech (1987: 20).
However helpful for discovering pronunciation mistakes, both reading aloud and
spontaneous speech have their advantages as well as drawbacks. Reading aloud is
hardly a natural evidence of speaker’s performance, as it is seldom encountered in
everyday situations. The unusual task commonly makes the reader rather nervous and it
is probable that some mistakes would not be made in casual speech.
Utilising spontaneous speech for evaluation brings other pitfalls. Firstly, selection of
suitable topic may be demanding. Offering merely one topic can be perceived restricting
by the examinee. For this reason, it seems better to give speakers a choice of topics and
leave the decision to them, because, as it seems, “learners are more apt to provide a
fluent speech sample on a topic selected from a range of choices” (Celce-Murcia, 1996:
16
346). Secondly, samples of spontaneous speech lack uniformity, which makes them
harder to work with. Some answers may be too short, other strongly emotional and
some may not include the feature needed for confirmation of hypothesis, this all
reducing their value in the research. Celce-Murcia (1996: 346) advises a way of
overcoming this obstacle, which is to provide the speaker with some kind of visual
stimulus, such as a picture, a cartoon story without text, etc. Nevertheless, even such a
step rarely leads to an ideal result.
Recording speech samples is advisory especially when assessing a larger group of
speakers. Each recorded individual should be offered the same reasonable amount of
time to rehearse before reading aloud. This helps to eliminate a number of random
mistakes, as the recorded person uses the time to familiarize with the text they are
supposed to read and has time to think about pronunciation rules that apply. Also,
recordings become a useful tool of the examiner wishing to go in depth, as they can be
played more than once and may thus be listened to and evaluated more carefully.
2. Sound systems of English and Spanish
Both English and Spanish are part of the Indo-European language family, which
consists of a number of branches. Whereas English belongs to the Germanic group of
languages, Spanish is a part of the Romance branch. Therefore, phonological systems of
Spanish and English differ in many aspects, particularly in vowel sounds. Because of
that, Spanish learners may face a list of obstacles on the way to acquire a native English
speaker accent. “European Spanish speakers, in particular, probably find English
pronunciation harder than speakers of any other European language” (Coe in Swan,
2001: 91).
In the following section, we compare sound systems of English and Spanish.
Similarities and differences in consonant and vowel sounds between the two languages
will be examined and finally, sounds that may be responsible for difficulties in
pronunciation of English by Spanish speakers will be explored.
17
2.1 Phonemic inventories of English and Spanish
English sound system
Vowels – 20 vocalic sounds
short 7
long
monophthongs
5
diphthongs 8
Consonants – 24 phonemes
plosives 6
fricatives 9
affricates 2
nasals 3
lateral 1
approximants 3
Spanish sound system
Vowels – 19 vocalic sounds
monophthongs 5
diphthongs 14
Consonants – 19 phonemes plosives 6
fricatives 5
affricates 1
nasals 3
lateral 2
flap 1
trill 1
Chart 1 The English and Spanish sound systems
2.2 English and Spanish alphabets
Both languages use the Latin alphabet. Whereas the English alphabet consists of 26
Roman letters, three more can be found in the Spanish one.
a b c ch d e f g h i j k l ll m n ñ4 o p q r s t u v w x y z Chart 2 Spanish alphabet – the shaded letters are the three additional letters that are not concluded in the English
alphabet
The letters k and w do not appear in Spanish words very often unless they have been
borrowed from other languages. Sometimes, the letter w is not even considered to be a
part of the Spanish alphabet.
4 The little squiggle over the letter n is called a tilde.
18
2.3 Vowel sounds
According to Jones, “vowels, which may be called “pure musical sounds”
unaccompanied by any frictional noise, are continuous voiced sounds produced without
obstruction in the mouth” (1992: 12).
2.3.1 Vowel classification system
It is convenient to classify vowels according to three main phonetic criteria. The first
criterion is the vertical position of the tongue, which refers to the distance between the
tongue and the roof of the mouth. It divides vowels into close, close-mid, open-mid and
open. According to the second criterion, horizontal position of the tongue (the part of
the tongue between front and back), vowels can be front, central and back. Vowel
quality is also largely dependent on the last criterion, lip-rounding, which shows the
movement of lips while pronouncing particular vowels. We distinguish rounded, spread
and neutral vowels.
2.3.2 The English vowel sounds (Roach)
The English vowel sound system includes twenty vocalic sounds. Twelve of them are
pure vowels (seven short / ɪ, e, æ, ʌ , ɒ , ʊ , ǝ /, five long vowels /i:, ɜ:, ɑ:, ɔ:, u:/) and
eight diphthongs /ʊǝ, ɪǝ, eǝ, aɪ, ɔɪ, eɪ, ǝʊ, aʊ/. Roach characterizes diphthongs as
“sounds which consist of a movement or glide from one vowel to another” (2001: 21)
and pure vowels as “sounds which remain constant and do not glide” (2001: 21).
Furthermore, the English sound system also contains five triphthongs.
2.3.3 The Spanish vowel sounds (Bartoš) The Spanish vowel sound system includes nineteen vocalic sounds. Five of them are
pure vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ and the rest are diphthongs /ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou, ia, ie, io, iu,
ua, ue, uo, ui/. Furthermore, Spanish also contains five triphthongs. Pure vowels can be
further divided into two groups, strong vowels /a, e, o/ and weak vowels /i, u/. “Each
vowel has one pure unvarying sound. It must always be given its full value, whether it
bears the stress or not. The English tendency to diphthongize single vowels must be
strictly avoided” (Harmer, 1969: 1).
19
In Spanish, two successive weak vowels or a combination of a strong vowel and a weak
vowel form a diphthong and it is important to pronounce them on one breath as a single
syllable. Stress is always put on the strong vowel.
Chart 3 English and Spanish monophthongs - the English monopthongs are shaded, the Spanish ones are on a white background
2.3.4 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish vowels
The Spanish system of vowel sounds is much simpler than that of English. It does not
contain any long vowels, as it is the case in English. Therefore, Spanish learners may
find it difficult to produce or even perceive various English vowel sounds. Helman
(2004: 452) in her article describes commonalities and distinctions in the vowel sound
systems of both languages and further concludes possible areas of difficulty in terms of
production of vowels for Spanish learners of English.
Commonalities Vowel sounds listed in Chart 4 are sounds that are pronounced in the same way in both
languages, although they are at times spelled with different letters. “Vowels in Spanish
have relatively the same tongue height and tongue placement as their counterparts in
English, with the exception of /a/, which in Spanish is usually described as a low,
central vowel” (Goldstein, 2001: 55). Producing these sounds should pose no problem
20
because they are the same in both languages. “Confusion can arise when the letters used
to represent sounds differ between languages” (Helman, 2004: 455).
English letter Pronunciation of the letter in particular words
Similar vowel sound used in a Spanish word
English translation of the Spanish word
a /e/ - day /deɪ/ e – hermano brother
e /i:/ - clean /kli:n/ i - inglés English
i /aɪ/ - site /saɪt/ ai – aire air
o /ǝʊ/ - cope /kǝʊp/ o – ocho eight
u /ʊ/ - could /kʊd/ u - Usted you
Chart 4 Vowel sounds common to English and Spanish (Helman, 2004: 455)
Distinctions
“With approximately double the number of vowel sounds, the English system is much
more complex than that of Spanish” (Helman, 2004: 455). Compared to English where
length of the vowel plays an important role in distinguishing between the words, length
of the vowel in Spanish is not significant. Spanish vowels are always short and tense
and pronounced clearly even in unstressed syllables. Moreover, they are generally more
close than in English and are pronounced more to the front of the mouth. “They are
never drawn out with a u or i glide as in English: lo ≠ low, de ≠ day” (Knorre, 2009:
12).
In comparison with English, the following short vowels are not present in the Spanish
sound system or their pronunciation differ: /æ/ as in man /mæn/, /e/ as in pen /pen/, /ɪ/ as
in tip /tɪp/, /ʌ/ as in up /ʌp/, /ʊ/ as in could /kʊd/, r-controlled vowels (e.g. in her,
water), the schwa sound /ǝ/ as in away /ǝweɪ/ (Helman, 2004: 455). As a result, in order
to substitute the vowels not occurring in their sound system, Spanish learners try to find
the closest vowel sound.
2.3.5 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of vowels
We will now look at all English vowel sounds, provide examples of them in an English
and Spanish word (if the sound exists in the language) and try to predict what problems
of major significance can occur with the sounds when being used by Spanish speakers.
21
Here, we shall be inspired by Helman (2004: 457), who devoted one of her studies to
this particular issue.
As stated earlier, in general, length of vowels is not a distinctive feature in Spanish.
Consequently, Spanish learners of English will probably tend to make vowels equally
long and will find difficulty in differentiating between vowels where length plays an
important role. Thus, learners may encounter problems with distinguishing words such
as /ɪ/-/i:/ (bit - beat), /a/-/e/ (bat - bet), /ʊ/-/u:/ (book - boot) and /eɪ/-/e/ (ages - edges).
“Typically, at least two English vowels share the “phonetic space” occupied by one
Spanish vowel” (Swan, 2001: 91).
/i:/ - examples: English - mean; this sound, together with /ɪ/, corresponds to Spanish /i/
as in dinero (= money). The difference between kin /kɪn/ and keen /ki:n/ may not
therefore be seen by Spanish speakers, who will most likely pronounce both words
identically like kin /kin/.
/ɪ/ - examples: English - trick; the closest Spanish vowel to this sound is /i/ as in hijo
(= son). Words such as tip /tɪp/ and hit /hɪt/ may be pronounced like teep /ti:p/ and heat
/hi:t/.
/ʊ/ - examples: English - book; the closest Spanish vowel sound is /u/ as in uno (= one).
This short vowel may be replaced by the long vowel /u:/. The word such as pull may be
pronounced like pool.
/u:/ - examples: English - cool; Spanish speakers may substitute /ʊ/ for /u:/ and
pronounce fool /fu:l/ like full /fʊl/.
/e/ - examples: English - men; Spanish - tres (= three). We do not expect any problems
with the production of this sound.
/ǝ/ - examples: English - about; this most common sound in English has no counterpart
in Spanish. Spanish learners will most likely lower schwa to a vowel in close proximity
to it, i.e. /a/. Words such as away may thus change to /a'weɪ/.
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/ɜ:/ - examples: English - bird; r-controlled vowels in words such as bird, curve, curb
will most likely be pronounced as a monophthong vowel (either /i/ or /e/) and the
flapped /ɾ/ (/biɾd, keɾv, keɾb/).
/ɔ:/ - examples: English - more; the closest Spanish vowel sound is /o/ as in ocho (=
eight). Caught /kɔ:t/ may sound like cot /kɒt/.
/æ/ - examples: English - bad; this phoneme, together with /ʌ/ and /ɑ:/, corresponds to
Spanish /a/ as in ajo (= garlic). Thus, words such as hat, hut and heart may be confused
in perception and pronounced like /hat/.
/ʌ/ - examples: English - lucky; this vowel phoneme does not occur in Spanish. Thus, in
their attempt to produce the sound, learners may use /o/, /a/ or /u/ instead. The word
must would then sound like most or mast, the word luck would sound like luke.
/ɑ:/ - examples: English - smart; this phoneme will most likely be pronounced as a
monophthong and the flapped /ɾ/ (heart → /haɾt/).
/ɒ/ - examples: English - watch; this sound, /ǝʊ/ and /ɔ:/ may all be confused and a
vowel intermediate between /ɒ/ and /ɔ:/ may be used for all three sounds.
As far as all English diphthongs are concerned, sources differ rather substantially in
predicting the results of Spanish pronunciation attempts. While some authors claim that
all diphthongs will pose a difficulty for Spanish learners (Helman, 2004: 457), Coe in
Swan (2001: 92) maintains that the following four English diphthongs should not
present difficulties to any of such learners: /aʊ/, /eɪ/, /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/. According to Helman,
Spanish speakers will most probably simplify the diphthongs and while pronouncing
them they will put more emphasis on the second vowel (2004: 457).
Let us now look and consider each diphthong individually:
/ɪǝ/ - examples: English - here; the diphthong may be replaced by the first vowel of the
diphthong and the Spanish flapped /ɾ/. Speakers might thus pronounce the word here
like /hɪɾ/.
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/ʊǝ/ - examples: English - tour; the diphthong may be replaced by the first vowel of the
diphthong and the Spanish /r/. Speakers might thus pronounce the word tour like /tʊr/.
/eǝ/ - examples: English - hair; the diphthong may be replaced by the vowel and the
Spanish /r/. Speakers may pronounce the word aired like /aɪrd/.
/eɪ/ - examples: English - bay; the diphthong may become a monophthong /e/. Speakers
may thus change the word ages into edges.
/ɔɪ/ - examples: English - boy; the phoneme may become a monophthong /ɒ/. Spanish
speakers might pronounce the word coin /kɔɪn/ like con /kɒn/.
/aɪ/ - examples: English - night; the diphthongs may change into the monophthong /a/
(e.g. mine /maɪn/ → /man/).
/ǝʊ/ - examples: English - road; the sound may not be distinguished from /ɔ:/. The word
coach /kǝʊtʃ/ may be pronounced /kɔ:tʃ/.
/aʊ/ - examples: English - trout; there may be a tendency to make a monophthong and
pronounce only the first letter a (e.g. about /ǝbaʊt/ → /ǝbat/).
2.4 Consonant sounds
“If the tongue is held very close to the roof of the mouth and a voiced airstream of
ordinary force is emitted, a frictional noise is heard in addition to the voice. The sound
is a consonant” (Jones, 1992: 12). Standard British English contains 24 consonant
phonemes and standard European Spanish comprises 19 consonant phonemes.
2.4.1 Consonant classification system
There are three main criteria according to which consonants can be classified. The first
criterion is voicing. Depending on the presence or absence of vibration of vocal chords,
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we can distinguish either voiced or voiceless consonants.5 There are several groups to
which consonants can be divided according to the manner and place of articulation.
According to IPA6, ten groups of consonants can be distinguished according to the
manner of articulation and with regard to the place of articulation, we can divide
consonants into eleven groups. All the possible types needed for the purposes of this
work are shown in the following charts and a simplified description of each group is
provided.
Chart 5 Division of consonants according to the place of articulation (Jones, 1992: 25)
5 Even though we classify consonants as either voiced or voiceless sounds, they can be sometimes voiced for only part of their time. English plosives b, d and g serve as good examples. Although these are normally considered voiced consonants, they can sometimes be pronounced voiceless. When they occupy the initial position in words (e.g. bag, dog and good), the voicing starts only just before the end of the consonant. Conversely, when these consonants appear in the final position in words (e.g. hob, bad and leg), the initial voicing is diminished (Roach, 2001: 20). 6 The International Phonetic Alphabet is the system of transcription used today. 7 The three remaining groups of consonants according to the place of articulation are pharyngeal, retroflex and uvular consonants. We decided not to include them in Chart 15 as they are part of neither the English nor the Spanish sound systems.
Place of articulation7 Characteristics
bilabial articulated by both lips pressed together
labiodental articulated by the lower lip touching the upper front teeth
dental articulated by the tongue tip touching the upper teeth
alveolar articulated by the blade of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge
post-alveolar articulated by the blade (or tip) of the tongue and the area between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate
palatal articulated by the front of the tongue against the hard palate
velar articulated by the back of the tongue against the soft palate
glottal articulated in the glottis; audible friction made by the gap between the vocal cords
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Manner of articulation 8
Characteristics
plosive A complete closure is made in the vocal tract, the soft palate is raised, air is compressed behind the closure and is released at the end. Plosion, a short explosive noise, follows.
fricative Two articulators approach each other but they never touch. The air escapes with difficulty between two articulators and a hissing sound is produced.
affricate An affricate starts as a plosive (a complete closure is made in the mouth, the soft palate is raised) and then the air is released more slowly.
nasal The oral cavity is completely closed (closure is made either by the lips, or by the tongue against the hard palate), the soft palate is lowered and air escapes through the nose.
lateral The blade of the tongue is in close contact with the alveolar ridge and makes a partial closure. Air escapes along the sides of the tongue.
approximant Articulators approach each other, but not much like in the case of fricatives.
tap9 or flap One articulator is quickly thrown against the other (the tongue strikes the roof of the mouth) and the flow of air is therefore interrupted for a short time.
trill Trill is produced by vibration of the articulator in the airstream (in case of the Spanish r, the place of articulation is the alveolar ridge).
Chart 6 Division of consonants according to the manner of articulation (Kelly, 2000: 6)
8 The two remaining groups of consonants according to the manner of articulation are ejective stops and implosives. We decided not to include them in Chart 6 as they are part of neither the English nor the Spanish sound system. 9 “Flap is a very brief speech sound in which the tongue is curled back, then flicked forward against the alveolar ridge” (Roach, 2001: 109).
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2.4.2 English and Spanish consonant sounds
Place of articulation
Front Back
Chart of English consonant phonemes (Roach)
bilabial labiodental dental alveolar post-
alveolar
palatal velar glottal
plosives p b t d k g
fricatives f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
affricates tʃ dʒ
nasals m n ŋ
laterals l
Man
ner
of a
rtic
ulat
ion
approximants w ɹ10 j
Chart 7 English consonants. Voiceless phonemes are shaded, their voiced counterparts are on a white background
Place of articulation
Front Back
Chart of Spanish consonant phonemes (Bartoš)
bilabial labiodental dental alveolar post-
alveolar
palatal velar
plosives p b t d k g
fricatives f θ s j x
affricates tʃ
nasals m n ɲ
laterals l ʎ
flaps ɾ
Man
ner
of a
rtic
ulat
ion
trills r11
Chart 8 Spanish consonants. Voiceless phonemes are shaded and voiced consonants are on a white background
10 In the IPA system, the phonetic symbol /r/ represents the Spanish trill. Although some sources (Roach, 2001: 65; Kelly, 2000: 7) use the same symbol to signify the English realization of r, it should be, according to the IPA system, represented by the symbol /ɹ/. In order to distinguish between these two phonemes in the thesis, the symbol /ɹ/ will be used for the English post-alveolar approximant. 11 This sound, known as rolled r, can also be found in varieties of British and Scottish English.
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2.4.3 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish consonants
Commonalities
A lot of consonant phonemes are shared by both languages. The following English
consonant sounds also exist in Spanish - /p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, f, s, tʃ, j, l/. Many Spanish
consonants have almost identical pronunciation as the corresponding English sounds.
Distinctions
Although many consonant phonemes are shared by both languages, each of the
languages also contains unfamiliar sounds for the other language. In general, Spanish
consonants are pronounced more clearly, more quickly and they are usually not so
strongly released nor so strongly pronounced as the corresponding ones in English. A
few Spanish consonants do not even have close approximations in English.
Perception and consequent production of sounds that are not part of the phonetic
inventory of one’s native language will most likely cause difficulties. “The phonemes
and clusters present in English and not in Spanish are apt to cause the most problems for
Spanish speakers learning English” (Helman, 2004: 454). Chart 9 shows consonant
phonemes present in English but not included in the Spanish phonetic repertoire. Chart
10 presents letters and letter combinations in Spanish that are the most different from
English.
English sound
/dʒ/ /ɹ/ /v/ /z/ /ʃ/ /ð/ /ʒ/ /ph/12 /th/12 /kh/12 /ŋ/
Sample word
joke rope van zipper shop this measure pen ten Ken hung
Chart 9 Consonant phonemes that occur in English but not in Spanish
12 “Aspiration is a noise produced by the rapid flow of air from the larynx through the vocal tract and is
usually found after the release of plosive consonants” (Roach, 2001: 108). In comparison with English,
the Spanish consonants p, t, k are not accompanied by aspiration.
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Spelling Spanish sample word
English translation
Equivalent English pronunciation
ch mucho a lot, much /tʃ/ in chair ge (gi) Geraldo Gerald soft like h qu que that /k/ in collar (without aspiration) h hola hello always silent gu (ga, go)
gastar spend /g/ in garden
ll me llamo my name is /lj/ in million ñ señor Mr. /nj/ in knew
profesora professor clear trill with the tip of the tongue r13, rr carro, rosa car, rose strong trill (2 - 3 tongue rolls), several
Spanish r’s in a row v vino wine like Spanish b, although not so strongly
released b bueno good not so strongly released like in English,
lips barely touch ce, ci cebolla,
cinéma onion, cinema /θ/ in thin
d dónde where similar to /ð/, pronounced more softly with the tip of the tongue slightly protruding between the teeth
l libro book much more rapid j jugar play similar to the English phoneme /h/ mixed
with the Spanish /x/ z Zaragoza Zaragoza /θ/ in thin Chart 10 Spanish sounds most different from English
By examining Chart 9 for features that are present in English but not in Spanish, we can
project possible phonemic difficulties for Spanish speakers of English and by examining
Chart 10 we can predict what sounds Spanish learners may use as replacements. It is
important to mention that some of the sounds above described as sounds occurring only
in English but not in Spanish may still appear in the phonetic inventories of some
Spanish dialects.
13 “The letter r has two pronunciations in Spanish: the trilled r - /r/ (written as rr between vowels, e.g. guerra = war, or as r at the beginning of a word, e.g. rosa = pink), and the flap r - /ɾ/, which appears in all other positions, e.g. tren, caro). Because mispronunciations can alter the meaning of a word, it is important to distinguish between these two pronunciations of the Spanish r. The flap r is similar to the sound produced by the rapid pronunciation of tt and dd in English” (Sabló-Yates, 2009: 70).
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2.4.4 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of consonants
In the following section, all English consonants will be looked at in detail and each
consonant will be followed by description of major difficulties Spanish speakers may
encounter while attempting to produce the sounds.
/p/ - examples: English - pen, Spanish - pastilla (= pill). Spanish learners will most
likely pronounce the initial aspirated plosive /ph/ without the puff of air. The phoneme
may therefore sound like /p/, or sometimes it may even approach /b/. It is because
aspiration naturally devoices a plosive, while the lack of it lets some voice into the
utterance.
/b/ - examples: English - book, Spanish - basquetbol (= basketball). In Spanish, this
phoneme is not clearly differentiated from /v/. As a result, it may be replaced by /v/
(especially between vowels, where /b/ is softer and not a stop, but a continuous sound).
At the end of words, learners may use voiceless /p/ (cub /kʌb/ → cup /kʌp/).
/t/ - examples: English - ten, Spanish - tren (= train). This sound is very dental in
Spanish. In addition, in cases where /th/ should be pronounced, the aspiration will most
likely be omitted.
/d/ - examples: English - dog, Spanish - dónde (= where). This phoneme is produced at
the alveolar place of articulation in English, compared with a more dental place of
articulation in Spanish. It may be substituted with /ð/ (e.g. day /deɪ/ → they /ðeɪ/).
However, at the beginning of a word and after n or l, it is pronounced similarly to
English d (Sabló-Yates, 2009: 81). At the end of words, /d/ may become /t/ (sad /sæd/
→ sat /sæt/).
/k/ - examples: English - control, Spanish - Carlos (= Charles). In Spanish, this sound is
most commonly represented by the letter c followed by any vowel except e or i14. Due
to the absence of aspirated /kh/ in Spanish, the initial /k/ will be pronounced without the
puff of air. Besides, /k/ and /g/ may be confused, pronouncing got /gɒt/ as cot /kɒt/ and
14 As already stated above, the pronunciation of the letter c followed by e or i would be /θ/. In Spanish, the sound /k/ may also be represented by the letter k, however, its occurrence is very rare as the letter appears only in borrowed words (e.g. kilómetro = kilometre).
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the reverse. If this sound is to be found in final consonant clusters, it may be deleted
(tank → tan).
/g/ - examples: English - got, Spanish - guerra (= war). This phoneme is likely to be
pronounced as /k/ at the end of words (e.g. smog /smɒg/ → smock /smɒk/).
/f/ - examples: English - fly, Spanish - factoría (= factory). The Spanish sound system
possesses the identical sound. Therefore, no problems are expected.
/v/ - examples: English - very, Spanish - vino (= wine). In Spanish, the letter v at the
beginning of words is pronounced /b/. Learners may carry over this rule into English
and replace /v/ by /b/ (e.g. very /veɹi/ → berry /beɹi/).
/θ/ - examples: English - think, Spanish - cebolla (= onion). The production of this
sound itself will pose no problem. However, its utilisation differs in Spanish (where the
th-cluster is not common at all) and learners may replace it with /t/ in some words.
Therefore, thick /θɪk/ would be pronounced as tick /tɪk/.
/ð/ - examples: English - this. This phoneme may be troublesome because it is absent in
the Spanish sound system. Learners will most likely use /d/ instead.
/s/ - examples: English - site, Spanish - sábado (= Saturday). This sound exists in
Spanish and no problems with it should arise.
/z/ - Examples: English - zipper. Spanish learners may be unfamiliar with the
production of this sound due to its absence in the Spanish sound system. They may use
/s/ instead and as a result confuse words such as zoo /zu:/ and Sue /su:/ or they may
replace the sound with /θ/ as its pronunciation represents also the Spanish letter z (e.g.
Zaragoza /θaɾagoθa/).
/ʃ/ - examples: English - shop. This sound does not occur in Spanish and learners may
use either /tʃ/ or /s/ instead. They may struggle to distinguish between words like she
/ʃi:/ and see /si:/. In case learners know how to produce the sound /ʃ/, they may overuse
it and pronounce cherry /tʃeɹi/ as sherry /ʃeɹi/.
/ʒ/ - examples: English - measure. This phoneme is not present in the Spanish sound
system, the learners may use /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ instead (e.g. pleasure /pleʒǝ/ → /pleʃǝ/).
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/h/ - examples: English - hotel, Spanish - hablar (= to speak). The letter h is never
pronounced in Spanish (e.g. hora /ora/ = hour). It is therefore possible that the sound
will be dropped where it has to be pronounced or it will be pronounced with a hissing
sound.
/tʃ/ - examples: English - chair, Spanish - chico (= boy). Learners may encounter
troubles with distinguishing words such as cheap/sheep/jeep.
/dʒ/ - examples: English - jacket. In Spanish, this phoneme may be confused with /tʃ/,
/tʃ/ being used for both (e.g. joke /dʒǝʊk/ → choke /tʃǝʊk/). Moreover, learners may not
see the difference between joke /dʒǝʊk/ and yoke /jǝʊk/. Therefore, joke may sound like
yoke.
/m/ - examples: English - monster, Spanish - madre (= mother). This sound should pose
no problem unless it appears at the end of a word (e.g. Sam). In Spanish, it never occurs
in final position and may thus be replaced by /ŋ/ or /n/.
/n/ - examples: English - now, Spanish - novia (= girlfriend). No problems are expected
with the production of this sound.
/ŋ/ - examples: English - raining /ɹeɪnɪŋ/. This sound does not occur independently in
Spanish and may be replaced by /n/, / ŋg/ or /nk/ (e.g. thing /θɪŋ/ → thin /θɪn/).
/l/ - examples: English - lonely, Spanish - lavar (= to wash). English recognizes two
types of the consonant l - clear l found before vowels (e.g. slim) and dark ɫ occurring
before consonants (e.g. old) or at the end of words (e.g. tool). Spanish l is always clear.
Learners may have troubles with producing the dark ɫ.
/w/ - examples: English - wing. In Spanish, this phoneme appears only in borrowed
words (e.g. walkman). It may be mispronounced as a /b/, or /g/ may be inserted before
the sound (went - Gwent).
/ɹ/ - examples: English - relax. This phoneme is a continuant in English but in Spanish,
the tip of the tongue trills against the alveolar ridge. Learners may also use w and
pronounce rope as wope.
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/j/ - examples: English - yellow, Spanish - ayer (= yesterday). The phoneme /j/ as in yet,
yes may be replaced by the sound represented by the letter y in Spanish (e.g. ayer =
yesterday where /j/ is a palatal fricative in Spanish). Moreover, Spanish learners may
not see the difference in pronunciation of /j/ in words such as yet /jet/ and jet /dʒet/.
Therefore, yell may sound like gel.
2.5 Positions of sounds in words
Each language has its own rules about positions of consonants and vowels in words -
sounds which can go together, sounds which begin or end words and sounds which may
change according to their placement in a word. Both similarities and differences in
positions of sounds in words can be traced in English and Spanish.
2.5.1 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish
Commonalities
All of the consonant and vowel phonemes can begin a word in both English and Spanish
except the English sound /ŋ/.
Distinctions
Most consonants in English may end a word. On the contrary, only a few consonants
can appear in the final position in Spanish - l, flapped r, d, n and s (inusual = unusual,
bailar = to dance, sed = thirst, función = function, colores = colours). Concerning
vowels, it is the exact opposite. In Spanish, most vowels can have the final position
(except /eu/), while there are five vowels which may never end an English words - short
a, short e, short i, short u and long o. A lot of Spanish words finish by the vowel a.
2.5.2 Possible areas of difficulty in the positions of sounds in words
According to Helman (2004: 454), two possible key areas may cause difficulty:
• Spanish learners may fail to pronounce the final consonants accurately or
strongly enough due to the higher number of consonants which may end words
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in English. Words which end with a consonant not permitted in Spanish may be
problematic - card may be pronounced as cart, bridge as brish, think as thing
and so on.
• Consonant clusters at the end of words (hard, best, curl) can be extremely
troublesome for Spanish speakers. They either omit or substitute the sound with
what seems more natural to them. Consonant clusters will be dealt with in the
following paragraph.
2.5.3 Consonant clusters
Consonant cluster is a group of consonant sounds that appear together without an
intervening vowel in any possible position in a word. According to their position in a
word, consonant clusters can be further divided into three groups:
• Initial consonant clusters occur at the beginning of words. A higher number of
them can be found in English, some of them being permissible only in this
language, but not in Spanish. They are presented, together with a sample word in
Chart 11. Initial consonant clusters shared by both languages include pl, pr, bl,
br, tr, dr, cl, cr, gl, gr, fl and fr (Helman, 2004: 453). Sample words containing
these clusters can be found in Chart 12. As we can notice, the main category of
clusters that are distinct in English are those beginning with the letter s, which
Spanish does not allow. Learners may therefore try to slightly change such
words. The translation of English words beginning with the letter s into Spanish
usually starts with e (school - escuela, student - estudiante, Spain - España,
etc.). Spanish learners may apply this to other words beginning with s-clusters
and exhibit either epenthesis, which is prefixing such words with an /e/ sound or
inserting other vowels (e.g. smile becomes esmile, snake → esnake, school →
eschool and Spain → espain) or cluster reduction, which is simplification of a
cluster by deleting the initial sound (e.g. star → tar). The tendency for
epenthesis can be traced especially in initial clusters - strike → satrike, spring
→ sipring (Rogerson, 1990: 8). Unlike English, which counts several three-letter
initial clusters (split, strike, etc.), Spanish has combinations of no more than two
letters.
• Consonant clusters that occur in the middle position are much less troublesome
for the Spanish, as they are very common in their native language. In Spanish,
34
the middle position in words can easily be occupied by consonant clusters
consisting of two or even more phonemes. Examples include words like
aspirador, escribir, transporte, sombra, Alfredo, etc. (= vacuum cleaner, to
write, transport, shade, Alfred, etc.). Four-phoneme consonant clusters exist in
Spanish, although their occurrence is rare (e.g. construcción = construction). A
high number of consonant clusters in the middle position of words can be found
also found in English (e.g. construction, obstacle, etc.).
• Final consonant clusters may be extremely troublesome for Spanish learners of
English as there is no final combination of two or more consonants without an
intervening vowel allowed in Spanish. On the contrary, English offers a wide
range of final consonant clusters. Spanish learners may not cope well with those
ending in /t/ and /d/ (e.g. next, walked) and may simplify them by deleting the
final /t/ or /d/ or by inserting a vowel between the final consonants. This would
result in forms like nex or nexet, walk or walked. Another combination, which
may appear to be problematic, is /s/ + a consonant + /s/ (e.g. tests, risks). The
learners tend to delete one of the s. Norman Coe in Swan suggests other typical
simplifications: breakfast → brefas; cars, carts, cards → cars (2001: 94). The
longest English final consonant cluster consists of four sounds and appears in
the word twelfths /twelfθs/.
Consonant cluster Sample word Consonant cluster Sample word sk/sc scar tw twice sl15 slim qu (kw) quick sm small scr screw sn snore spl splash sp spy spr spring st star str street sw swine squ (skw) square Chart 11 Initial consonant clusters permissible in English but not in Spanish + sample word
15 Although a few words with initial clusters sl, sp, etc. (slalom, spaghetti) can be found in Spanish dictionary, we consider them as examples because they are all borrowed from foreign languages.
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Consonant cluster English sample word
Spanish sample word
English translation of the Spanish word
pl plastic planta plant pr promise prado meadow bl blind blanco white br brother brazo arm tr truth tr abajo work dr drive droga drug cl class claro clear cr crew creer to think gl glue globo balloon gr green Granada Granada fl floods flor flower fr French fr uta fruit Chart 12 Initial consonant clusters shared by English and Spanish
2.6 Cognates
Marty Knorre describes cognates as “related words between two languages that are
similar or identical in form and meaning” (2009: 8). On the one hand, cognates can help
Spanish learners of English enrich their vocabulary as the words are spelled similarly or
even exactly the same and are therefore easy to learn, but on the other hand, they are the
most difficult to pronounce because they are never pronounced exactly like their
Spanish equivalent and they may pose problems to the Spanish.
30-40% of all words in Spanish are cognates of English (Knorre, 2009: 8). Chart 13
brings a few examples of such words. It is important to stress that the chart should not
be perceived as a complete list of all the cognates. We divided them according to the
word classes they belong to.
Word class Final syllables Spanish → English
Spanish examples
English cognate
ción → tion nación nation
ante → ent estudiante student
or → or doctor doctor
nouns
al → al animal animal
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ista → ist optimista optimist
comedia comedy
factoría factory
ia, ía, io → y
diccionario dictionary
dad → ity nacionalidad nationality
ismo → ism optimismo optimism
ncia → nce experiencia experience
ario → ary vocabulario vocabulary
el → el cruel cruel
ante → ant importante important
ente → ent inteligente intelligent
ista → istic optimista optimistic
oso → ous delicioso delicious
ario → ary ordinario ordinary
ido → id esplendido splendid
ble → ble terrible terrible
ivo → ive efectivo effective
ico → ic melancólico melancholic
adjectives
il → ile movil mobile
ar → ate operar operate
exportar export tar, tir → vowel + consonant + t
insistir insist
ar → vowel + consonant + e
invitar invite
verbs
ificar → ify significar signify
adverbs
mente + (omitting or adding a vowel) → ly
exactamente exactly
Chart 13 Examples of cognates
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2.7 Suprasegmental features
2.7.1 Word stress
“Every English word has a definite place for stress and we are not allowed to change it”
(O’Connor, 2004: 90). It is most commonly placed on the first syllable but many words
are stressed on the second syllable. Some words (mostly compounds) even have two
stressed syllables. The placement of stress is English depends on the grammatical
category of the words. Moreover, the weight of the syllable (i.e. whether the vowel is
short or long as well as the number of consonants that follow it) plays an important role
as well (Goldstein, 2001: 59). There is no simple way of predicting which syllable or
syllables must be stressed. Therefore, whenever a foreign speaker learns a new word, it
is advisable to learn it individually with its stress. This information can be found in any
good dictionary of English and foreign learners should pay a large amount of attention
to it because incorrect placement of stress may be a major cause of intelligibility
problems.
Basically, syllables in English are divided into two groups – the strong and weak ones.
Only strong syllables can be stressed. Roach defines them as “syllables that have a
rhyme which either has a syllable peak which is a long vowel or a diphthong, or a vowel
followed by a coda (i.e. one or more consonants) and a weak syllables as syllables that
have a syllable peak which is a short vowel, and no coda unless the syllable peak is the
schwa vowel /ǝ/ or /ɪ/” (2001: 98).
“Unlike English, where words are often phonetically confusing, difficult to sound out,
and contain syllables with varying amount of stress, Spanish words are pronounced
exactly as they are written” (Stein, 1999: 10).
“Stress in Spanish can occur on the last syllable, on the penultimate syllable, or on the
antepenultimate syllable” (Goldstein, 2001: 59). Whereas stress in English is much
more complicated and depends on a number of factors, the rules for stress in Spanish
words are straightforward. Three basic ones need to be followed. Stress is placed:
• on the penultimate syllable if a word ends in a vowel, an n and an s - e.g.
choco'late, e'xamen, 'lenguas (= chocolate, exam, languages).
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• on the last syllable if a word ends in any letter except those mentioned above -
e.g. espa'ñol, doc'tor, natu'ral (= Spanish, doctor, natural).
• where the written accent is placed over the vowel to mark departure from the
rules of stress placement - e.g. bo'lígrafo (= pen).
Whereas Spanish word stress can be decided simply in relation to the syllables of words
and their endings according to the above mentioned rules, placement of stress in English
is a very complex issue and it is therefore very difficult to predict it. Complicated
though the issue is, let us introduce a few rules for placement of stress in English in the
simplest possible form. We have already briefly discussed what needs to be considered
in order to decide correctly on stress placement. Apart from the grammatical category
the word belongs to and a number of syllables it contains, we need to recognise whether
the word is simple or complex.16 Stress rules for simple words are mostly unpredictable
and they are so complex that it seems easier to treat stress placement as an inseparable
part of the word and learn it when the word itself is learnt.
Unlike in English, where stress is most commonly placed on the first syllable, the two
most frequent patterns for stress in Spanish are those on the penultimate and on the last
syllable. Although all Spanish words of more than one syllable have a stressed vowel,
most words do not have a written accent mark because they have the word stress exactly
where native speakers of Spanish would predict it.
Stress placement in complex words
Rules for complex words´ stress placement are much easier than those for simple words.
In order to place stress correctly, it is necessary to understand the difference between
stress neutral, stress shifting suffixes and suffixes that carry primary stress themselves.
In the first group, adding a suffix to the stem does not affect the stress placement of the
word to which the suffix is attached.
16 “Simple words are not composed of more than one grammatical unit” (Roach, 2000: 104). On the contrary, complex words are composed of two or more grammatical units (e.g. hope is a simple word, hopeful and hopeless are complex as well as hopefully and hopefulness). There are two major types of complex words: words containing one or more affixes (e.g. hopefully) and compounds, which are words consisting of more than one stem (e.g. fireman).
39
“Suffixes -able, -age, -al, -en, -ful, -ing, -ish, -like, -less, -ly, -ment (noun), -ness, -ous, -
fy, -wise, -y” are examples of stress neutral suffixes (Roach, 2000: 106). The word
wonder is stressed on the first syllable /'wʌndǝ/ and so is the word wonderful /'wʌndǝfl/.
In the second group, suffixes have an influence on the stress placement. Such suffixes
include -eous, -graphy, -ial, -ic, -ion, -ious, -ty, -ive (Roach, 2000: 107). The word
uniform carries the stress on the first syllable /'ju:nɪfɔ:m/ and by adding the suffix –ity,
the primary stress is shifted /ju:nɪ'fɔ:mǝti/.
Suffixes that carry primary stress themselves include the following: -ee, -eer, -ese, -ette
and -esque (Roach, 2001: 106). As far as prefixes are concerned, their effect upon stress
placement is not so regular and predictable like in the case of suffixes. It is therefore
better to learn words with prefixes and their stress placement as an individual item.
Stress placement in compounds
As far as stress in compound words is concerned, there are two possibilities. It is placed
either on the first or on the second constituent word of the compound. The most
common compound pattern in English is composed of two nouns with the stress on the
first noun (e.g. staircase /'steǝkeɪs/). The second noun receives secondary stress. The
following compounds tend to have stress on the last element: heavy-'handed (an
adjective + the -ed morpheme), second-'class (a number + a noun), South-'West
(adverbs), ill-treat (an adverb + a verb). However, a learner may still make a mistake in
stress placement after acquiring these rules as stress placement varies in context - e.g.
'heavy-handed 'sentence (Roach, 2001: 109).
It is important to distinguish noun compounds ('greenhouse = a building made of glass
used for growing plants) from nouns modified by an adjective (green 'house = a house
with a green paint on it). In Spanish, the stress in compound words is either on the
second element (e.g. guarda'bosque = ranger) or different word order is used.
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2.7.2 Potential difficulties in the area of word stress
Neither English nor Spanish have fixed word stress placement. A word can be stressed
on any syllable. However, certain rules for it exist in both languages. In comparison
with Spanish, which possesses more transparent stress placement rules, English rules
are complex and may thus be found confusing by Spanish speakers. Moreover, there are
exceptions to the rules and English, unlike Spanish, does not indicate irregularly placed
stress patters through accent marks.
There are some tendencies in Spanish, which, if carried over into English, may lead to
incorrect stress placement. Particular problems can appear with multisyllabic cognates.
English words ending in -sion and -tion have stress placed on the penultimate syllable
(de'cision, re'lation, ope'ration). In Spanish, the stress would normally fall, according to
the rule, on the same syllable. However, the presence of the written accent over the
letter o postpones it until the last syllable (decisión, relatión, operación). Misplacing
stress may not have to be the case of the cognates ending only in -sion/-tion. More
distinctions are illustrated in Chart 14 that follows.
Word class Stress in English Stress in Spanish
noun 'animal ani'mal
adjective in'telligent inteli'gente
verb in'vite invi'tar
adverb e'xactly exacta'mente
Chart 14 Differences in cognates´ stress placement between English and Spanish
In order to show contrast, Spanish uses word order so learners may be unfamiliar with
the use of stress to sense the distinction between noun compounds and nouns with an
adjective modifier such as 'white house and white 'house, 'blackbird and black 'bird,
'greenhouse and green 'house. In Spanish, phrases such as 'new friend and new 'friend
would be translated using different word order - nuevo amigo and amigo nuevo. As we
have already discussed, Spanish often stresses the second element of compound words.
As a result, Spanish speakers may incorrectly use the same stress pattern in English
compounds (e.g. type'writer would be respectively stressed on the second element).
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2.7.3 Sentence stress
In English, it is up to the speaker to decide what word they want to emphasise and put
more stress on. Any stressed syllable in a sentence can bear the intonation nucleus.
When a word has already been mentioned before, it is given less prominence than a
word which is considered important by the speaker. English sentence stress falls on the
last lexical word in a sentence, i.e. the word that carries the most meaning. Similarly,
Spanish sentence focus is usually on the last stressed syllable. It is enabled by freer
word order when the stressed element is allowed to be moved to the back of the
sentence. If Spanish learners were asked: “What did Mary do?” they would correctly
place the stress on “Mary went to the shop” . However, if they were asked: “Who went
to the shop?” they would pose difficulty in producing the pattern “Mary went to the
shop”.
Sentences with contrastive stress, where the contrasting word is heavily stressed in
English, may present a problem for Spanish speakers because they may put the stress on
the last, not the contrasting word - e.g. With or without sugar? Con o sin azúcar?
instead of With or without sugar?.
2.7.4 Potential difficulties in the area of sentence stress
According to the rules for sentence stress placement in Spanish, the sentence stress falls
on the last word in a sentence no matter what. The stress is retained on the last syllable
even in cases where English would place it elsewhere.
“Many meanings which are conveyed in English through sentence stress are conveyed
in Spanish through particular words” (Kenworthy, 1992: 155). In English, two different
meanings can be expressed by stress placement on the information focus (e.g. I have
some photos versus I have some photos). The speaker emphasises the possession of
photos and nothing else in the first sentence whereas the quantity of photos is the most
important part of the message in the second sentence. Spanish would use two different
words (unos, algunos) to convey these two different meanings and the translation of the
sentences would thus be Tengo unos libros (= I have some photos) and Tengo algunos
libros (= I have some photos).
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2.7.5 Intonation
Intonation is an extremely important feature of connected speech because it can
sometimes change the meaning of an utterance completely.
Intonation patterns employed by English speakers differ from those of Spanish
speakers. To put it metaphorically, “Spanish speakers may feel that English speakers
produce a roller coaster of peaks and valleys in their speech” (Eddington, 2004: 53).
This is due to the fact that English speakers use a much wider range of pitch than the
Spanish. They reach higher highs and lower lows. As a result, Spanish may be
perceived as rather monotone and not so melodic as English.
The two main melodies are rising and falling and they can also be combined (rise-fall,
fall-rise, etc.). As far as the intonation contours for statements, questions and
exclamations are concerned, English and Spanish differ. “In English, utterances begin at
an overall higher pitch than in Spanish and during the utterance itself, there is a large
pitch change on the most emphasized word. In Spanish, utterances begin at an overall
lower pitch and the major pitch change usually takes place on the first stressed syllable”
(Goldstein, 2001: 60). Practically, it would mean that in an English utterance such as I
am going to the shop, the higher pitch used at the beginning would gradually lower until
the end of the utterance, where the word shop would be given the most emphasis. If the
same sentence was pronounced by Spanish speakers, most probably it would begin at a
low pitch, which would then be raised on the first stressed syllable of the sentence (in
the sentence above the word going).
Before looking at individual types of intonation contours used in various types of
utterances, it is important to note that whenever intonation patterns are influenced by
emotions, they become very hard to classify.
Declaratives
Both English and Spanish use a final falling pitch for statements (e.g. Todavía no ha
llegado el tren. = The train has not arrived yet). In Spanish, the first stressed syllable
(toda'vía) is high in pitch and then the unstressed syllables that follow continue the pitch
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of the preceding stressed syllable. At the end, the high pitch descends to a lower pitch
on the last stressed syllable ('tren) followed by a falling contour until the end of the
sentence. We assume that intonation in an English statement does not in essence differ
from the Spanish one, the highest pitch being on the first stressed syllable ('train) and
descending on the last stressed syllable ('yet).
In English, the fall-rise pattern is commonly used. It can be often found in clauses with
two intonation units (e.g. If you find the keys, let me know - the first dependent clause
has a fall-rise pattern, whereas the independent clause uses falling tone).
Interrogatives
English and Spanish intonation contours for questions depend on the type of the
question. We can distinguish three types of questions: yes/no questions, wh-questions
and choice questions.
English yes/no questions end in a rising pitch when the speaker does not know the
answer to the question (e.g. Is he handsome? Do you want some coffee?). In addition to
the rising tone pattern, English also employs a falling tone if the speaker expects
confirmation (e.g. in tag questions - The weather is good, isn’t it?) or if the speakers is
sure that the answer to the question is positive. On the contrary, Spanish never allows
using a final falling pitch in yes/no questions. Such questions always rise at the end
(¿Es el libro interesante? = Is the book interesting?). The pitch is high on the first
stressed syllable, then the trajectory remains the same until the last stressed syllable
where it rises again (e.g. Todavía no ha llegado el tren? Has the train arrived yet? ).
In English, wh-questions have a final falling pitch (e.g. Where did you study English?).
Similarly, intonation pattern for Spanish wh-questions ends in a falling pitch (e.g.
¿Dónde estudiaste inglés?). The pitch is highest on the stressed syllable of the wh-word
and then it falls. Basically, intonation patterns employed for a Spanish statement and a
wh-question do not differ. It is the presence of a question word at the beginning that
signifies that a sentence is a question.
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Both English and Spanish employ identical intonation patterns for a question which
offers a choice between more alternatives (e.g. Do you prefer juice, tea or coffee? =
¿Prefiere usted zumo, té o café?). Each choice carries a rising pitch except the last one,
which has a falling tone.
Exclamations and imperatives
In Spanish, the most common type of intonation in exclamations is that of a statement.
Similarly, English exclamation generally has a falling tone (e.g. Mind your head!).
However, a rise or a rise-fall can occur in Spanish exclamations to convey attitudes such
as surprise, sadness, refusal, etc. (e.g. rise-fall in Se casó. ¡Ah! ¿Se casó? = She got
married. Oh! Did she?). In both languages, imperatives are very hard to classify as their
intonation contours vary according to the intention of the speaker.
Requests
To indicate that a sentence is a request, both English and Spanish have a final falling
contour (e.g. Please, sit down. = Siéntese, por favor.).
2.7.6 Potential difficulties in the area of intonation
Kenworthy (1992: 155) suggests three main problematic areas:
1. “Pitch range. Spanish speakers seem to use too narrow a pitch range. Where
English speakers will start quite high and finish fairly low in their range, perhaps
hitting extreme pitches within a phrase as well, Spanish speakers keep to a much
more restricted pitch movement over a phrase or clause.
2. Final falling pitch movement (for example, on statements or last items in a list).
The final falling pitch may not sound low enough. This may be due to the fact
that Spanish speakers rarely use a slight rise before the final falling pitch, which
makes the final pitch movement sound too flat.
3. The rise-fall seems difficult. This may be because the pitch-reversal itself is
difficult for learners to do, especially on short phrases or one syllable (Oh! or
Wonderful idea!) or because of shyness or self-consciousness.”
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“Problems in areas 1 and 3 may result in learners failing to convey “involvement” or
“interest” in conversations with English speakers, who seem to use wide range and
extreme pitch reversals to signal “interest” or “involvement” in the topic of
conversation” (Kenworthy, 1992: 156).
We expect Spanish learners to face problems maintaining the correct intonation pattern
in English yes/no questions where the speaker expects the answer to be positive. In such
cases, English employs a final falling pitch (e.g. the tag question She is clever, isn’t
she?). Spanish, in this case, would use a rising tone as a rule (e.g. ¿Es lista, verdad?).
2.7.7 Rhythm
The rhythm of an utterance is created by combining two suprasegmental features, word
stress and sentence stress. Languages fall into one of two distinct rhythmic groups -
stress-timed languages or syllable-timed languages.17 Whereas Spanish belongs to the
latter group, English represents the former group. When Spanish speakers transfer the
intonation patterns of their mother tongue into English, the result can be barely
comprehensible to native English speakers. This is because the meaning or information
usually conveyed in English by the combination of stress, pitch and rhythm in a
sentence is flattened by the Spanish learner and it may sound to English speakers as if
there was not a difference in prominence between unstressed and stressed syllables.
English has a characteristic rhythm. The syllables of the language are not of the same
length and “there is an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, with stressed
syllables coming at regular intervals and the unstressed syllables being squeezed in
between them to maintain the regular beat” (Rogerson, 1990: 21). By contrast, Spanish
syllables are of approximately the same length and the length of a sentence depends on
their number. As a result, a sentence with twelve syllables (e.g. Elena es más alta que
su hermana = Elena is taller than her sister) will be twice as long as a sentence with six
syllables (e.g. Elena es alta = Elena is tall).
17 In a stress-timed language, syllables are stressed at roughly regular intervals, which are achieved by shortening and weakening unstressed syllables (typically articles, prepositions, etc.). In a syllable-timed language, there is no strong pattern of stress; syllables maintain their length and vowels their quality and the length of an utterance depends on the number of syllables. Certain syllables are still stressed, but not according to a regular pattern (Kelly, 2000: 70).
46
English rhythm is based on sentence emphasis effects. “There is a tendency in English
for the strong beats to fall on nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs (i.e. words that carry
meaning) and for the weak beats to fall on prepositions, articles and pronouns (words
with grammatical function)” (Kenworthy 1987: 10).
“English and Spanish behave very similarly in terms of sentence emphasis but there is a
difference at the level of syllable timing which gives a difference in the rhythmic
impression of the two languages” (Rogerson, 1990: 21).
2.7.8 Potential difficulties in the area of rhythm
Spanish is a syllable-timed language and rhythm is “a function of the number of
syllables in a given phrase, not the number of stressed elements” (Celce-Murcia, 1996:
153). Spanish learners may therefore find it difficult to reduce and squeeze unstressed
syllables in between stressed syllables. They will most likely stress syllables in English
more equally and insufficient stress will be put on the main words (e.g. in Joe is older
than Peter, is and than may bear the same prominence as old). Sufficient reduction of
unstressed syllables may also cause difficulties.
2.7.9 Linking
“Linking is connecting of the final sound of one word or syllable to the initial sound of
the next” (Celce-Murcia, 1996: 158). Words are not separate units in connected speech.
They are linked together and are always combined to form phrases, clauses and
sentences. While learning English pronunciation, it is important not to make gaps
between them. According to Rogerson (1990: 31), “non-native speakers of English do
significantly less linking than native speakers. Furthermore, linking is a major source of
intelligibility problems for learners of English”. Nevertheless, as far as linking in
Spanish is concerned, very similar rules are applied like in English and learners find it
natural to link words in a sentence. Furthermore, it is often difficult to hear where one
word ends and another begins in Spanish. However, the context makes it clear where
the word boundary comes.
The most common case of linking in English is the use of linking r. In the BBC accent,
r occurring in a word in the final position is not pronounced. However, when the
47
following word begins with a vowel, the r is pronounced (such as there are). Intrusive r
is sometimes used to link a word ending in a vowel with another word beginning a
vowel. “Some English speakers and teachers still regard this as incorrect or sub-
standard pronunciation, but it is undoubtedly widespread” (Roach, 2000:144).
In both English and Spanish, words in a sentence are linked together based on the
following rules:
• If a word ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel,
the consonant is linked to the initial vowel and its pronunciation is transferred to
the beginning of the second word. Examples include sentences like He had ̮ a
black ̮ and white shirt and Mis ̮ amigos regresan ̮ a ̮ casa muy tarde a veces (=
My friends sometimes return home very late).
• If a word or a syllable ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a different
vowel, they are linked into a single syllable or linking with a glide (either /y/
glides or /w/ glides) occurs both in English and Spanish (e.g. be ̮yable; voy ̮ya
venir = I will come; blue ̮wink; ruido - r ̮
wido = noise; muchacho ̮ antipático =
unpleasant boy).
• If two or more same vowels appear next to each other in a phrase or a syllable,
they blend together and are pronounced as a single sound (e.g. ¿Qué es esto?
/kes esto/ = What is it?; cooperar /koperar/, busca a Ana /buskana/ - to look for
Ann). Conversely, the two same vowels are pronounced separately in English
(e.g. cooperate /kǝʊɒpǝɹeɪt/).
• If a word ends in a consonant and the following word begins with the same
consonant, the consonant is pronounced only once in Spanish (e.g. al lado de
/alado de/ = next to).
2.7.10 Potential difficulties in the area of linking
As we have already mentioned, only five consonants may end a word in Spanish. The
majority of words end with a vowel sound. As a result, Spanish learners may have a
tendency to move any consonant in the final position to the following word in order to
obtain words beginning with a consonant and ending with a vowel.
48
Another feature which Spanish learners may encounter difficulties with is closely
related to consonant clusters. If a word ending in a consonant or a consonant cluster
appears next to a word beginning with a different consonant or a consonant cluster,
speakers will be tempted to either insert a vowel sound in between the consonants or
delete one element of the consonants cluster (next year → nex year; I live in Spain → I
live in espain).
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II. Practical part
1. Introduction
The practical part of the thesis focuses on the practical point of view of non-native
acquisition of English pronunciation. A case study was carried out on six Spanish
speakers of English and this part of the thesis provides a detailed analysis of the results
obtained from the study, which sought to investigate pronunciation-related difficulties
with English in Spanish speakers.
2. Methodology
The case study was divided into three parts. Firstly, data about the individual speakers´
language background with the emphasis on English pronunciation learning were
collected using a questionnaire created for this purpose. The main goal of the
questionnaire was to find out more about the instruction in pronunciation the speakers
have gone through in their lives. Moreover, it helped to reveal other influences on
English pronunciation of the particular speaker.
Secondly, the subjects were recorded while reading aloud a short piece of text entitled
“My favourite sport”. The sample was shown to them on beforehand in order to provide
them with a chance to rehearse until they felt comfortable reading it. The text was
identical for all the speakers. Therefore, it enabled to compare the individuals´ speaking
performances. Moreover, it contained all or most of the segmental and suprasegmental
features of English so they could be accurately diagnosed. On the other hand, reading
aloud is unnatural and may make the speakers nervous and evoke mistakes which they
would not normally make while speaking. Therefore, it was essential to obtain and
incorporate a short spontaneous speech into the study. Reading was followed by
recording spontaneous speeches. Subjects were given one or two minutes to prepare
their spontaneous speech on a topic chosen in advance (“Which activity or sport do you
enjoy?”). By recording the read aloud text reading and spontaneous speeches, the
learners were asked to produce samples of both controlled and uncontrolled speech, in
which typical common phonological difficulties could be exemplified. In addition, the
50
text for reading was carefully chosen in order to indicate as many areas of difficulty
Spanish speakers may have.
Finally, the subjects were asked to read aloud a set of tasks which contained exercises
examining word stress, sentence stress, linking and intonation.
All the speakers were tested individually in quiet areas with no visual or auditory
distractions and the whole testing lasted approximately 30 minutes per speaker.
3. Subjects included in the study
The research described in the thesis is a case study of six Spanish speakers. All of them
come from various parts of Spain. The test subjects range from age 23 to 27 and their
command of English pronunciation varies; mostly in relation to the opportunities each
of them has had to spend some time in English-speaking countries or interact with
native speakers. They have been taught British English in their schools. We had one
short previous contact with the speakers to be assessed in order to arrange the
recordings. Moreover, we did not want to limit the value of subsequent judgments by
becoming accustomed to their speech and voice.
4. Material
All materials which were used for the recordings are included in appendices. The
questionnaire can be found in Appendix 1 and the read aloud text is included in
Appendix 2. Appendix 3 offers exercises aimed at examining word stress, sentence
stress, linking and intonation. The accompanying CD, which is attached to this work,
includes recordings of the Spanish speakers referred to in the thesis.
5. Analysis of the questionnaires
The initial task was written. The questionnaires provided further insight into the
speakers´ language backgrounds. The respondents were asked to comment on twelve
questions, which concerned their former English education, their English pronunciation
51
and other issues related to the English language. They were asked to evaluate their
English pronunciation on a scale of 1-10 (one was the best, 10 the worst).
5.1 Description of individual speakers and their language backgrounds
5.1.1 Speaker no.1
The first subject, a 27-year-old male, started to learn English at the age of 10 and
studied it for 8 years. The need for English and intelligible pronunciation is relatively
high since this speaker’s work involves frequent use of English as a means of
communication both with English speakers and non-natives from various parts of the
world. His recent stay in the Czech Republic is not his first experience with living in a
foreign country.
His passion for travelling also contributes to frequent interaction with speakers from
various foreign countries. The person stayed several times in both English speaking
countries and countries where he had to use English regularly. He spent two years in
Sweden and one year in Japan. “I also lived in Edinburgh for one year, in New Orleans
for three months and in London for three months as well.”
Non-native friends and teachers of this speaker are believed to negatively influence his
English pronunciation. On the contrary, watching films, listening to music and talking
to native-speakers were mentioned as the most significant factors which contributed by
a great deal to the development of his English pronunciation.
The subject ascribes a lot of importance to his pronunciation no matter who the listener
is. However, he feels more relaxed when talking to non-native speakers. When being
questioned about his awareness of difficulties with English pronunciation, he admits
encountering problems with some vowels. “There are more vowels in English than in
Spanish, they are not read exactly as they are written and I sometimes pronounce them
incorrectly (for example cut/cat, hat/hut) but I am aware of it and it does not usually
happen.”
52
5.1.2 Speaker no. 2
This speaker is a 24-year-old female who stopped systematic studying of English 6
years ago. She admits having no pronunciation practice ever. Unlike the other speakers,
she has never been abroad for a longer period of time. The stay in the Czech Republic is
her first experience.
When being questioned about what she considers to be difficult in English
pronunciation, the speaker replied: “I don’t know the correct pronunciation so I make
the same mistakes again and again. And also the movements in my mouth are really
different from Spanish.”
Talking on the telephone in English and giving presentations in front of many people
make this subject extremely nervous. The subject’s level of Czech is still low and
sometimes, the only way to make friends among the Czech is to speak English. She
revealed: “I keep telling them not to call me on the telephone because I don’t like to talk
English when I am, for example, on the bus. I prefer receiving and sending messages
instead.” However, the subject does not avoid the presence of English speaking friends.
5.1.3 Speaker no. 3
This speaker is a 26-year-old male. He recalls all the teachers of English from primary
and secondary education. He remembers that not much attention was paid to English
pronunciation training. The situation improved during attending Official School of
Languages (EOI)18 where pronunciation became an integral element of the language
course. Later, the speaker could practice English even more thanks to the scholarships
from the Spanish government. “I was six weeks in Ireland and six weeks in England.”
Moreover, the subject was also exposed to English on a 5-month business stay in
Slovenia. In addition, he has been living in the Czech Republic for ten months and
therefore needs English for communication with people around him.
18 EOI (Escuela Oficial de Idiomas) is a Spanish network of schools specialized in the learning of foreign languages.
53
The speaker stresses the importance of pronunciation. However, his main goal is to be
understandable and able to maintain a conversation. “I think pronunciation is really
important but as long as I am understandable, I am happy with my Spanish accent. I
would rather have a real strong Spanish accent than a fake British accent.” The speaker
pays more attention when talking to native speakers then to non-native speakers because
he assumes native-speakers would have more difficulties understanding him in case he
does not pronounce well.
The subject finds talking to native speakers of English or people with good
pronunciation to be the most efficient way to help him improve his pronunciation skills.
“Native voices serve as good models,“ he wrote. Moreover, the positive influence of his
teacher from the language school increased the enthusiasm for good pronunciation of
this speaker. The speaker assumes that imitating sounds from series and films on TV
also positively influenced his pronunciation. On the contrary, he regrets not taking
learning English seriously before the age of 23.
The vowel system of English seems overwhelming for this speaker. He admits
encountering problems with weak vowels and sounds that are not present in the Spanish
vowel sound system.
5.1.4 Speaker no. 4
The speaker is a 24-year-old male who has been studying English for 15 years. As long
as he could remember, all his non-native English teachers gave more importance to
grammar than practising pronunciation.
The subject later started to attend English evening classes in a language school. He
considers his pronunciation to be very important, especially when talking to native
speakers. He explains: “I always want to pronounce well but sometimes I am too lazy to
pay attention to it. When I talk to native speakers, I have more respect and I try harder,
whereas when I talk to non-native speakers, I don’t care so much and I make a lot of
mistakes.”
54
The subject has been working in the Czech Republic for 6 months. He needs English
both for business communication and everyday life in this country. This learner admits
having difficulties some sounds in English that make him feel confused. As an example,
he mentions the words dear/there.
Like the other research subjects, this one also assumes that watching movies has the
biggest influence on his English pronunciation.
5.1.5 Speaker no. 5
The speaker is a 26-year-old Spanish speaking male living in the Czech Republic for
two years and using English in everyday life as a means of communication. His prior
English language exposure includes English as a school subject, English courses in
language schools and a one-month-stay in the United States of America.
Attention to pronunciation was integrated into the language practice at school. The
subject still has a strong motivation to have good pronunciation as he claims: “I try to
do my best in all cases, with native speakers as well as with non-native speakers.” More
than by his English teachers and studying from books, this person believes to have been
positively influenced by watching movies and TV series.
According to this speaker, the difficulties with English pronunciation for Spanish
learners can be attributed to the lack of rules in English. He wrote: “In English, one
letter can have different pronunciation in different words.”
5.1.6 Speaker no. 6
This research subject is a 27-year-old male. Interestingly, nearly all of the participants
reported experiencing living abroad for a certain period of time. The subject presents no
exception. His one-month stay in Wales with other Spanish people did not bring great
improvements in English. However, eight months in Ireland made a valuable
contribution to improvement of his English pronunciation.
55
According to this subject, pronunciation is by a great deal influenced by television and
music. He regrets not having had a chance to watch English and American films with
their original sound. He adds: “I wish I could have watched American films when I was
younger but all foreign films are dubbed into Spanish in my country.” Apart from TV,
this subject reckons that his native language has an influence on his English
pronunciation. “Long and short vowels in English confuse me. Sometimes, I don’t see
the difference between them. And I think I am lazy to pronounce plurals of English
words, I very often omit -s or -es at the end of words.”
Besides having English as a school subject, he attended private lessons in language
school where the emphasis was placed not only on grammar and vocabulary but also on
pronunciation.
The speaker tries to pronounce better when talking to native speakers. “My
pronunciation is not good and I try to speak more clearly to native speakers so that they
understand me.” The subject gets anxious whenever he has to speak English publicly.
“When I have to speak English, my voice starts trembling. The only time when I am not
nervous when I speak English is in the pub.”
6. Analysis of speakers´ mistakes
6.1 Mistakes in the read aloud text
The read aloud text was chosen so as to contain as many sounds which were thought to
cause difficulties as possible. Finally, we opted for a sample from the student’s book of
intermediate level, New Headway Intermediate. Each speakers´ mistakes in the
production of vowels and consonants are described in the following subchapters. It is
important to stress that we concentrated on one mistake at a time in the transcriptions of
mispronounced words. Therefore, one word may be analysed more times, each time for
a different pronunciation mistake.
56
6.1.1 Speaker no. 1
Mistakes in the production of vowels
- there was a strong tendency to use the Spanish /a/ as a replacement for the English
phoneme /æ/. Difficulties occurred in the words absolutely, practice, matching,
tracksuit, fact and matter, which were pronounced as /absǝlu:tli, pɹaktɪs, matʃɪŋ,
tɹaksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.
- the absence of /ǝ/ in the Spanish sound system caused the subject to use the Spanish
/o/ and /ɾ/ in the word colours /kʌloɾz/.
- the long vowel /ɑ:/ in the word after was shortened and pronounced /ʌftǝ/. Similarly,
the long vowel /i:/ was pronounced shortly in the word week /wɪk/.
- the long vowel /ɔ:/ in the word course became the short vowel /o/ and a flapped /ɾ/,
pronounced as /koɾs/ respectively.
- the pronunciation of the cognates special and colours (especial and colores in
Spanish) implies the influence of Spanish. The English vowel sounds were replaced by
the Spanish ones and the words were thus pronounced /speʃial, koloɾz/.
Mistakes in the production of consonants
- using voiceless phonemes instead of their voiced counterparts at the end of the words
caused wrong pronunciation in the following examples: love, years, evenings, mornings,
matches, colours, always, comes, lose, etc. /lʌf, jɪǝs, i:vnɪŋks, mɔ:nɪŋks, mætʃɪs, kʌlǝs,
ɔ:lweɪs, kʌms, lu:s/.
- /ŋ/ was pronounced correctly in some of the words. However, swallowing of the final -
ing or using /n/ or /nk/ instead was observed in the words raining, mornings, winning,
etc. /ɹeɪnɪn, mɔ:nɪnks, wɪnɪn/.
57
- the subject proved to have troubles with the production of the sound /dʒ/ in the word
just, which sounded like /ʒʌst/.
- devoicing of the consonant sound /z/ in the middle position and using its voiceless
counterpart /s/ instead occurred in the word doesn’t /dʌsnt/.
- the English sound /ɹ/ was replaced by the Spanish /r/ or /ɾ/ in the majority of words
containing the /ɹ/ sound. A few examples include: favourite, practice, brilliant, course,
protection, pronounced as /feɪvǝrɪt, praktɪs, brɪlɪǝnt, kɔ:ɾs/.
- the subject did not pay attention to the correct pronunciation of the /ð/ sound. It was
pronounced as /d/ instead and the words the and that sounded like /dǝ/ and /dǝt/.
- /ph/, /th/, /kh / - the subject failed to accompany the sounds /p/, /t/ and /k/ with the puff
of air. The lack of aspiration was noticeable in the words play, practice, coaching, kit,
team, etc. They were pronounced as /pleɪ, pɹæktɪs, kǝʊtʃɪŋ, kɪt, ti:m/.
6.1.2 Speaker no. 2
Mistakes in the production of vowels
- the subject encountered difficulties with the sound /æ/, which was substituted by the
Spanish /a/ or /e/ in the words matches, practice, back, pads, tracksuit, fact and matter
/matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs, bek, pedz, tɹaksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.
- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ in the word coach was changed to the long monophthong /ɔ:/ -
/kɔ:tʃ/ or the short monophthong /ɒ/ in the word don’t - /dɒnt/.
- the diphthong /eǝ/ in the word care was changed to the monophthong /ɑ:/ and the
flapped /ɾ/ - /kɑ:ɾ/.
- the long diphthong /ɜ:/ in shirt was pronounced as the monophthong vowel /i/ and the
flapped /ɾ/ - /ʃiɾt/.
58
- the subject seemed to see no difference in long and short vowel sounds /i:/ and /ɪ/. The
long vowel /i:/ was shortened in week and evenings - /wɪk, ɪvnɪŋz/ and the short vowel
/ɪ/ was lengthened in pitch - /pi:tʃ/. Similarly, the long vowel /u:/ was shortened to /ʊ/ in
the word boots /bʊts/.
- the word football was once heard to be pronounced /fɒtbʌl/.
- the Spanish pronunciation of the cognates ´specially, special and colours projected
into the English pronunciation. Words sounded like /espesǝli, spesial, koloɾz/.
- the words always was mispronounced as /elwes/, even as /ɪven/.
- the diphthong /ɪǝ/ in the word nearly was replaced by the vowel sound /ɜ:/ and the
Spanish flapped /ɾ/ → /nɜ:ɾli/.
- the Spanish vowel /a/ was inserted between the sounds /k/ and /l/ in the word local
/lǝʊkal/ and in the same word, the diphthong /ǝʊ/ was replaced by Spanish sounds /o/
and /u/ - /loukal/.
- vowels were insufficiently reduced where it was necessary. The sound /ǝ/ was replaced
by the Spanish /e/ in the words about, that, etc. /ebaʊt, ðet/.
Mistakes in the production of consonants
- the learner did not cope well with consonant clusters beginning with the letter s (skills
and stuff). An attempt to slightly change such words resulted in the following
pronunciation of the words - /eskɪlz, estʌf/. Moreover, the subject also tended to insert a
vowel between the words our football /aʊǝ efʊtbɔ:l/.
- final consonant clusters were found problematic by this subject. Simplification of
consonant clusters ending in /t/ by deleting the final /t/ was evident in right and just /ɹaɪ,
dʒʌs/.
59
- the consonant combination in the phrase nine years was simplified and pronounced as
/naɪjɪǝz/.
- the voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/ not present in the Spanish sound system caused
the learner to use /ʃ/ instead. It can be clearly heard in the word pleasure pronounced as
/pleʃǝ/.
- devoicing of the consonant sound /z/ in the middle position and using its voiceless
counterpart /s/ instead occurred in words doesn’t and isn’t /dʌsnt/ and /ɪsnt/.
- devoicing at the end of words occurred in love, years, matches, evenings, mornings,
pads, always, lose and other words. They were pronounced as /lʌf, jɪǝs, mætʃɪs,
i:vnɪŋks, mɔ:nɪŋks, pæts, ɔ:lweɪs, lu:s/.
- pronunciation of the sound /dʒ/ was confused with /j/. Examples include enjoy and just
pronounced as /ɪnjɔɪ, jʌst/.
- /n/ was used as a substitute for /ŋ/. Examples include the words watching, playing,
coaching, raining, etc. /wɒtʃɪn, pleɪɪn, kǝʊtʃɪn, ɹeɪnɪn/.
- the initial /s/ in support was replaced by /ʃ/ - /ʃǝpɔ:t/.
- /t/ was replaced by its voiced counterpart /d/ in matter /mædǝ/.
- the subject struggled with the production of /w/ sound. This sound, present only in
borrowed words in Spanish, was prefixed with /g/. The word when was pronounced
/gwen/.19
- the word mum was mispronounced as /nʌm/, the word twice as /twɪs/.
- the lack of aspiration was evident in most words containing the sounds /ph, th, kh/. A
few examples include play, team, pitch, kit /pleɪ, ti:m, pɪtʃ, kɪt/.
19 The same mistake occurred in this subject´s spontaneous speech. Words as when, was, what were pronounced as /gwen, gwɒz, gwɒt/.
60
- the production of the English /ɹ/ was problematic. The sound was substituted by the
Spanish trill /r/ in the words practice, brilliant, etc. /præktɪs, brɪlɪǝnt/.
- the sound /ð/ became /d/ in the words the and that /dǝ, dǝt/.
6.1.3 Speaker no. 3
Mistakes in the production of vowels
- the vowel /æ/ seemed to cause problems. It was often replaced by a sound
corresponding to the Spanish /a/, or by /e/. Wrong pronunciation appeared in words
matches, have, practice, back, matching, pads, fact, tracksuit, matter /matʃɪz, hav,
pɹaktɪs, bek, matʃɪŋ, pedz, fakt, tɹaksu:t, matǝ/.
- the subject had difficulties to pronounce short /ɪ/ in words pitch, this and shin. The
long counterpart /i:/ used instead made the words sound like peach, these and sheen -
/pi:tʃ, ði:z/ and /ʃi:n/.
- the production of /ǝ/ showed to be problematic in the following examples: about
/ebaʊt/, support /sʌpɔ:t/ and and /end/.
- the pronunciation of the cognates special, brilliant, colours and local was influenced
by the Spanish pronunciation of the words /speʃial, briliant, kolors, loukal/.
- the diphthong /ɪǝ/ in the word nearly was replaced by the vowel sound /ɜ:/ and the
Spanish flapped /ɾ/ → /nɜ:ɾli/.
- the subject had a difficulty to discriminate between the sounds /ʌ/ and Spanish /o/.
Examples can be heard in the words love /lov/, colours /kolǝrz/.
- the diphthong /aʊ/ was used instead of /ǝʊ/ in the word coaching pronounced
incorrectly as /kaʊtʃɪŋ/.
- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ was reduced to the monophthong /ɔ:/ in the word also /ɔ:lsɔ:/.
61
- the diphthong /ɔ:/ was substituted with the Spanish /o/ and /ɾ/ in the word support.
Mistakes in the production of consonants
- the subject kept replacing the English voiced post-alveolar approximant /ɹ/ with the
Spanish trilled /r/ or flapped /ɾ/. It can be observed in almost all the words containing /ɹ/
in the text. Some examples include crazy, years, protection and others - /kreɪzi, jɪǝɾz,
prɒtekʃn/.
- difficulty with the consonant sound /dʒ/, which was replaced by /j/ sound (enjoy was
pronounced as /ɪnjɔɪ/, just as /jʌst/).
- the production of /ʒ/ appeared to be problematic for this speaker. The phoneme /ʃ/ was
used instead of it - pleasure was pronounced as /pleʃǝ/.
- prefixing of the initial consonant cluster -sp clearly indicates Spanish language
interference. Examples include: ´specially /espeʃǝli/, skills /eskɪlz/, after school /ɑ:ftǝ
esku:l/.
- devoicing of the consonant sound /z/ in the middle position and using its voiceless
counterpart /s/ instead occurred in words doesn’t and isn’t /dʌsnt/ and /ɪsnt/.
- substitution of /ŋ/ for /n/ can be heard in the words watching, playing, coaching,
matching, training, winning, etc. - /wɒtʃɪn, pleɪɪn, kǝʊtʃɪn, mætʃɪn, tɹeɪnɪn, wɪnɪn/
respectively. The phonemes /k/ + /s/ were added to the words mornings and evenings -
/mɔ:nɪnks, i:vnɪnks/.
- devoicing of the consonants in final positions can be noticed in many words from the
sample. Examples include love, years, matches, skills, have, colours, pads, always, lose,
and - /lʌf, jɪǝs, mætʃɪs, skɪls, hæf, kʌlǝs, pæts, ɔ:lweɪs, lu:s, ǝnt/ respectively.
- /ð/ in the definite article the was pronounced /d/.
62
- the phoneme /θ/ was pronounced correctly in the words with and think (the first think
in the text). However, the word think was used repeatedly in the sample and the second
time it was used, the subject pronounced the phoneme /t/ instead.
- devoicing of the consonant /b/ in the word absolutely /ʌpsɒltli/ (the subject also
omitted the phoneme /u:/ in the word).
- the subject used /d/ in the word matter and together with the replacement of /æ/ for /a/,
the word resembled more to the word mother.
- pronunciation of the words ´specially, local, special, brilliant, colours were
immensely influenced by their Spanish pronunciation /espesiali, loukal, spesial, briliant,
kolors/.
- the lack of aspiration was observed in the majority of words containing / ph, th, kh/. It
could be heard in pads, practice, team, kit, pleasure, etc. /pædz, pɹæktɪs, ti:m, kɪt,
pleʒǝ/.
6.1.4 Speaker no. 4
Mistakes in the production of vowels
- the learner also found it difficult to pronounce /æ/. He used the Spanish /a/ or /e/
instead in matches, practice and pads /matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs, pedz/.
- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ contained in the word local was reduced into the monophthong /ɒ/ -
/lɒkl/.
- /ɒ/ was replaced by /ʌ/ in the word socks and it thus sounded like the word sucks
/sʌks/.
- the subject had a tendency to use the short vowel /ɪ/ instead of the long vowel /i:/. The
mistake was obvious in the word evenings /ɪvnɪŋz/.
63
Mistakes in the production of consonants
- the voiced bilabial plosive /b/ was exchanged for its voiceless counterpart /p/ in the
word absolutely /ʌpsɒlu:tli/.
- problems with the production of /ʒ/ appeared in the word pleasure read as /pleʃǝ/.
- some of the consonants in the final position were devoiced. Examples: love, years,
pads, lose /lʌf, jɪǝs, pæts, lu:s/.
- the sound occurring in the word this /ðɪs/ seemed to be troublesome and was
pronounced /dɪs/.
- the learner often substituted /n/ for /ŋ/. Examples include the words evenings,
mornings, coaching, raining /i:vnɪns, mɔ:nɪns, kǝʊtʃɪn, ɹeɪnɪn/.
- /t/ was replaced by its voiced counterpart /d/ in matter /mædǝ/ and /s/ by its voiced
counterpart /z/ in twice /twaɪz/.
- lack of aspiration can be spotted mainly in the words containing /th/ - team, taking.
Conversely, aspiration was correctly used in some of the words containing /kh/ - coach.
- the Spanish pronunciation of the cognate ´specially (especialmente) was reflected in
the subject’s pronunciation of the word /espeʃli/.
- /ɹ/ was sometimes replaced by the Spanish sound /r/. However, this subject’s r was not
strongly pronounced as it was in case of other speakers.
6.1.5 Speaker no. 5
Mistakes in the production of vowels
- the monophthong /u:/ was changed into the monophthong /ɔ:/ in boots /bɔ:ts/.
64
- the speaker’s replacement of the /æ/ sound with the Spanish /a/ or /e/ sounds was
evident. The words matches, practice, back, matching, tracksuit, fact and matter were
thus pronounced /matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs, bek, matʃɪŋ, tɹeksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.
- length of vowels posed difficulties to this speaker. Whereas some long vowels were
shortened, some short vowels were lengthened - shin, pitch /ʃi:n, pi:tʃ/.
- the long vowel /ɜ:/ in the word shirt was pronounced as the monophthong vowel /i/
and the flapped /ɾ/ - /ʃiɾt/.
- pronunciation of the words ´specially, special, brilliant, colours and local, which have
a very similar or identical form in Spanish (especialmente, especial, brilliante, colores
and local) was strongly influenced by their Spanish pronunciation /espeʃiali, speʃial,
briliant, kolors, loukal/.
- the subject had a strong tendency to replace the English phoneme /ʌ/ with either /ʊ/ or
/ɒ/. The following words were thus mispronounced: just, lucky, stuff, us /dʒʊst, lɒkɪ,
stɒf, ɒs/.
- the long monophthong /i:/ in the words even and evenings was replaced by the vowel
/e/ - /evǝn, evnɪŋz/.
- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ in the word don’t was changed to the short monophthong /ɒ/ -
/dɒnt/.
Mistakes in the production of consonants
- a few consonant sounds in both middle and final positions were substituted by their
voiceless counterparts (e.g. absolutely, love, crazy, years, matches, isn’t, always, good,
doesn’t /ʌpsɒlu:tli, lʌf, cɹeɪsɪ, jɪǝs, mætʃɪs, ɪsnt, ɔ:lweɪs, gʊt, dʌsnt/).
- the subject encountered difficulties with the production of the consonant sound /tʃ/
occurring in the middle position of the following words: watching, matches, coaching
and matching. The subject kept replacing it by the voiceless counterpart /ʃ/ - /wɒʃɪŋ,
65
mæʃɪz, kǝʊʃɪŋ, mæʃɪŋ/. Nevertheless, no mistakes were detected in the production of the
same sound appearing in the final position of the words pitch and coach /pɪtʃ, kǝʊtʃ/.
- the production of /ʒ/ caused troubles; /ʃ/ was used instead in the word pleasure /pleʃǝ/.
- the speaker had a tendency to use /t/ instead of /θ/ in the words think /tɪnk/ (occurring
twice in the sample) and Thursday /tɜ:zdeɪ/.
- no difference was seen between /ð/ and /d/ in the definite article the /dǝ/ and the
pronoun this /dɪz/.
- after prefixing the initial consonant clusters beginning with -s, the words skills became
/eskɪlz/.
- final consonant cluster with /t/ was simplified by deleting the final letter in the word
just /dʒʌs/ and don´t /dǝʊn/.
- substitution of /n/ or the combination of the sounds /n/ and /k/ for /ŋ/ was another
problematic feature of this learner. This phenomenon can be noticed in the following
words: coaching, evenings, raining and winning - /kǝʊtʃɪn, i:vnɪnks, ɹeɪnɪnk, wɪnɪn/.
- Tuesday was wrongly pronounced /tu:zdeɪ/ instead of /tju:zdeɪ/.
- the sounds /p, t, k/ were not accompanied by aspiration in the words play, pitch,
coaching, kit, taking, etc.
- the subject kept replacing the English /ɹ/ with the Spanish /r/ - e.g. in practice,
brilliant , etc.
- the word twice was mispronounced as /twɪs/.
- pronunciation of the words ´specially, special, brilliant, colours and local was
influenced by their Spanish pronunciation /espeʃiali, speʃial, briliant, kolors, loukal/.
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6.1.6 Speaker no. 6
Mistakes in the production of vowels
- like the other speakers, this subject proved to have problems with the /æ/ sound.
Replacing it by the Spanish /a/ or /e/ was spotted in these words: matches, practice,
matching, have, tracksuit, fact, matter which were thus pronounced /matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs,
matʃɪŋ, hev, tɹeksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.
- the subject had problems with long and short vowels, which were either shortened or
lengthened. The words week, shin, this and after were pronounced /wɪk, ʃ i:n, ði:z, ʌftǝ/.
- the subject’s pronunciation of cognates was also influenced by their Spanish
pronunciation /feivourit, espesiali, speʃial, briliant, kolors, loukal/.
- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ was reduced to the monophthong /ɔ:/ in the words old and also
/ɔ:ld, ɔ:lsɔ:/.
- the diphthong /eǝ/ in the word care was reduced to a monopthong /e/ and the Spanish
/ɾ/ was added to it - /keɾ/.
Mistakes in the production of consonants
- due to the absence of the sound /ʒ/ in the Spanish sounds system, the subject chose /ʃ/
instead. The word pleasure was thus pronounced /pleʃǝ/.
- the sound /dʒ/ caused troubles in the word just. The subject used /j/ instead resulting in
/jʌst/.
- the sound /z/ occurring in the intervocalic position in the word crazy was substituted
by /s/ - /cɹeɪsɪ/ respectively. The same problem appeared with the sound /z/ in the
position between a vowel and a consonant in the words isn’t /ɪsnt/ and doesn’t /dʌsnt/.
67
- the speaker found difficulty in differentiating between the consonant sounds /b/ and
/v/. The pronunciation of very /beri/ equalled the pronunciation of berry. Similarly, /b/
in the word brilliant was replaced by /v/ and therefore sounded /vɹɪlɪǝnt/.
- initial consonant clusters starting with -s were problematic. The words sport, school,
skills and stuff were prefixed with -e /espɔ:t, esku:l, eskɪlz, estʌf/.
- voiced consonants at the end of words were often devoiced. Apart from this, plural
endings -s and the third person singular -s are often omitted. The words love, years,
evenings, mornings, have, comes, lose were thus pronounced /lʌf, jɪǝs, i:vnɪŋ, mɔ:nɪŋ,
hǝf, kʌm, lu:s/.
- /ŋ/, not occurring in the Spanish sound system, was replaced by /nk/ or /n/ in the words
watching, evenings, matching, training, raining /wɒtʃɪn, i:vnɪns, mætʃɪnk, tɹeɪnɪn,
ɹeɪnɪn/. The word think /θɪnk/, where the final /k/ was supposed to be pronounced,
sounded like thin /θɪn/.
- the final consonant cluster /ld/ in the word old was simplified by deleting the final /d/
sound /ǝʊl/.
- most of the aspirated initial plosives /ph, th, kh/ were not accompanied by the puff of
air. A few examples include the words play, pitch, training, team, coach, care, taking,
counts, etc.
- the sound /d/ occurred instead of the sound /ð/ in the words the, this.
- in many words, /r/ was used instead of /ɹ/ - e.g. in favourite, practice, etc.
- Spanish pronunciation of the cognates favourite, ´specially, practice, special was
reflected in the English pronunciation /feɪvʊɹɪte, espeʃɪʌlɪ, praktɪs, speʃɪʌl/.
68
6.2 Summary of results from the read aloud text
Chart 15 offers a list of sounds that caused most difficulties in the read aloud text.
Furthermore, it mentions sounds which were most commonly used as a replacement. It
also shows the occurrence of a mistake, i.e. the number of speakers facing the mistake.
We decided to include only mistakes that were found in the reading of two and more
speakers.
English sound/feature Replaced by Occurrence Examples of most commonly mispronounced words
/i:/ /ɪ/ 4 week, evenings
/ɪ/ /i:/ 4 pitch, shin, this
/u:/ /ʊ/ 3 boots
/ǝ/ /e/ 4 about, and, at, a
/ɜ:/ /ir/ 3 shirt
/æ/ /a/ 6 play, matches, practice, matching, tracksuit, fact, matter
/æ/ /e/ 6 back, pads, have
/ɑ:/ /ʌ/ 2 after
/ɪǝ/ /iɾ/, /ɜ:ɾ/ 4 nearly
/ǝʊ/ /ɒ/, /ɔ:/ 4 don’t, also, coach, coaching
/θ/ /t/, /s/ 3 think
/ð/ /d/ 6 the, that
/z/- intervocalic position
/s/ 4 crazy, isn’t, doesn’t
/ʒ/ /ʃ/ 5 pleasure
/tʃ/ /ʃ/ 2 watching, matches, match
/dʒ/ /j/, /ʒ/ 4 enjoy, just
/ŋ/ /n/, /nk/ 6 watching, playing, evenings, mornings, coaching, matching, etc.
/ɹ/ /r/, /ɾ/ 6 crazy, practice, brilliant, course,
/ph/ /p/ 5 play, pitch, practice, pads, part, pleasure
/th/ /t/ 6 team, protection, Tuesday, training, taking
69
Chart 15 Sounds most commonly mispronounced in the read aloud text
6.3 Mistakes in spontaneous speeches
The speakers were recorded while talking about the sport or activity they enjoy. In order
not to put them under stress, we did not give them any time limit. As a result, the
speeches differed in duration. If the speech was too short, an additional question was
prepared for the speakers.
Assessing the spontaneous speeches of individual speakers, we focused on troublesome
areas in the production of individual sounds. Furthermore, some suprasegmental
features of the language were also considered.
We gave the speakers a topic to talk about freely, which resulted in six individual
speeches. Therefore, the performances could hardly be compared. Nevertheless, it was
noticed that all the speakers repeatedly struggled with the pronunciation of the same
sounds as in the read aloud text. Therefore, we decided to present only the mistakes that
appeared in the spontaneous speeches and did not occur in the read aloud text. Also, if a
mistake in the read aloud text was found in only a small number of speakers and it
proved to be problematic for more of them in the spontaneous speeches, it will be
mentioned here.
/kh/ /k/ 5 crazy, kit, colours, course, comes, coach, counts
/z/, /v/ - final position /s/, /f/ 6 love, years, matches, have, evenings, mornings, skills, pads, always, comes, lose
cognates influence of Spanish pron.
6 favourite, ´specially, local, practice, brilliant, special, colours, fact
initial /sp, st, sk/
prefixed with /e/
5 sport, ´specially, school, skills, special, stuff
between 2 words
a sound inserted in between the words/deletion
3 nine years, love football
cons. clusters
final simplification 3 just, don’t, old
70
4 speakers out of 6 did not differentiate between long /u:/ and short /ʊ/. 3 speakers out
of 6 replaced /ɔ:/ with /oɾ/ (e.g. sport, anymore, before). The production of the
diphthong /ǝʊ/ was found difficult by 5 speakers (e.g. so, also, don’t, know). More
speakers seemed to encounter problems with the /s/ sound. In two cases, it was replaced
by /ʃ/ (e.g. support, so). The production of /ʃ/ was found difficult by the speaker 6 who
constantly used /s/ instead (e.g. should). He also replaced this sound with /s/ in the word
special and with /t/ in the word actually.
The speakers were immensely influenced by the pronunciation of Spanish cognates
(especial, actually, active, different, favourite and selection etc.).
6.4 Suprasegmental features in the read aloud text and spontaneous
speeches
As far as suprasegmental features are concerned, we detected no major mistakes in the
placement of word stress in the subjects´ spontaneous speeches except the following:
some'times, any'one, any'more, some'thing (speaker 3). In the read aloud sample, stress
in the word even twice fell on the last syllable e'ven (speakers 2, 5).
Regarding the intonation of the speeches, we noticed more enthusiasm in spontaneous
speeches than in the read aloud sample. However, speeches of the speakers 4 and 5 in
both sounded very monotonous in both performances. The subject 2 had evident
difficulty with a falling intonation pattern at the end of statements. She had a tendency
to use a rising tone instead.
As it was stated in the theory, Spanish belongs to another rhythmic category of
languages than English. This fact was projected into the performances of all speakers. A
strong tendency to give syllables approximately equal stress was evident in both reading
and spontaneous speeches of all speakers. Moreover, no sufficient reduction of
unstressed syllables was observed. Strong forms (e.g. in for, to, would, have) were used
instead.
71
6.5 Mistakes in word stress
Assessment of placement of word stress consisted of one task, in which the speakers
were asked to read nineteen words. Among them, we have decided to include several
cognates (e.g. chocolate, future, famous, delicious, station, engineer, decision,
television, occupation - Spanish translations: chocolate, futuro, famoso, delicioso,
estación, ingeniero, decisión, televisión, ocupación) that were expected to cause
difficulties due to their different position of stress in Spanish. Whereas stress falls on
the penultimate syllable in the Spanish words chocolate, futuro, famoso, delicioso,
ingeniero, it is placed on the first syllable of the equivalent English cognates chocolate,
future, famous, on the penultimate syllable in the word delicious and on the last syllable
in the word engineer. Stress in the rest of cognates in Spanish falls on the last syllable
due to the written accent (i.e. in estación, decisión, televisión, ocupación), whereas
English stresses the first syllable of station and the penultimate syllable of television,
decision and occupation.
No mistakes with stress placement in the words and phrases station, famous, bedroom,
chocolate, delicious, crazily, together, decision, beautiful, it’s over, you’re joking,
television and occupation were detected in any of the speakers. Conversely, difficulties
were encountered with the rest of the words or phrases, which will be looked at in
details in Chart 16. Pronunciation mistakes were not taken into account in this task.
English word/phrase Incorrect stress placement No. of the speaker
future - on the last syllable speaker 2
engineer - on the penultimate syllable speaker 2
give her one - on the word give speakers 1, 5
departure - on the first syllable speaker 2
can’t believe it - on the word can’t speakers 5, 6
it’s in the paper - on the word it’s speaker 5
Chart 16 Mistakes in the area of word stress
72
Although we expected the subjects to make more mistakes in this area (especially while
stressing the cognates), none of the speakers was believed to have major difficulties in
the area of word stress.
6.6 Mistakes in sentence stress
The subjects were given two short texts to read and their task was to pay attention to
sentence stress and place it correctly. The first text was taken from Rogerson (1990: 3)
and the second text from Cunningham (1990: 27).
While assessing this task, we concentrated on sentence stress placement (underlined
words).
A: What’s the matter?
B: I’ve lost my hat.
A: What kind of hat?
B: It was a rain hat.
A: What colour rain hat?
B: It was white. White with stripes.
A: There was a white hat with stripes in the car.
B: Which car?
A: The one I sold!
Two out of six speakers (number 2, 6) proved to have difficulties with the correct
placement of sentence stress which they constantly put on the last word in a sentence.
Moreover, speaker 2 did not stress the word stripes. The stress placement on the last
word in a sentence clearly shows the influence of Spanish where the stress would be
placed likewise. Speakers 1, 3, 4 and 5 had no difficulties with the first exercise.
A: I’m going to meet Ann, grandfather.
B: You’re going to meet Sam? Who’s Sam?
A: No Sam – Ann. We’re going to play tennis.
B: You’re going to play with Dennis? And who’s Dennis?
73
A: Not Dennis. Tennis. We’re going to play tennis in the park.
In the second set of tasks, speakers 1, 3, 4 and 5 did not encounter major difficulties. On
the contrary, a few mistakes were made in the performances of speakers number 2 and 6
who did not put any prominence to the words Ann in the sentence No Sam - Ann. In
addition to this mistake, speaker 6 did not stress tennis in Not Dennis. Tennis.
6.7 Mistakes in linking
The learners were recorded reading a short passage borrowed from Celce-Murcia (1996:
355). They were asked to focus on linking between words within the sentences and they
had an opportunity to rehearse before recording. No major difficulties with this feature
were expected as linking is based on almost identical, above described rules.
Linking between these words has been observed:
June ̮ and Bill ̮ are classmates ̮ in ̮ an ̮ Italian conversation course. This ̮ afternoon they ̮
are having ̮ a drink together ̮ at ̮ an ̮ outdoor café near the school. They ̮ are talking ̮
about how much they would like to go ̮ on ̮ a trip to ̮ Italy next ̮ year.
The following mistakes occurred in the area of linking:
- June ̮ and Bill - 2 speakers did not link the consonant sound /n/ to the following
vowel a (speakers 4, 5).
- Bill ̮ are - 1 speaker did not link the final l to the initial a (speaker 2).
- this ̮ afternoon - all the speakers correctly linked the consonant to the following
vowel, however, all of them pronounced it as /ðɪs/ instead of
/ðɪz/.
- together ̮ at̮ - none of the speakers linked these two words together.
- go ̮ on - 2 speakers separated these two words (speakers 3, 5).
As expected, the results have proved that the learners did not have major problems with
linking between words.
74
6.8 Mistakes in intonation
In order to find out about speakers´ usage of correct intonation patterns, we chose two
short samples, the first of which was taken from Cunningham (1997: 10) and the second
from Taylor (1993: 166). The samples included declarative sentences and various types
of questions (yes/no questions, wh-questions and choice questions).
Assessing the test focused on intonation turned to be one of the most demanding tasks
for the evaluator. The principal reason was that each speaker’s performance was highly
individual - each of them read the same utterance in a very different, personal way. It
appeared as if most of them were confused and uncertain and were neither lead by the
intonation rules of English, nor were they transferring many Spanish patterns, as we
expected.
After being given a mix of various questions and statements to read, all the subjects
showed a tendency to distinguish between a question and a statement by applying some
pitch change. In their effort, however, most of them failed to identify the right moment
for the high pitch to be positioned. Since in some sentences each of them put it in a
different place, it was almost impossible to find a rule by which they were guided.
Speaker 2 transferred Spanish patterns into her English the most. She seemed, for
example, to always put a great amount of stress on the word like. We extrapolated that
she might have been “translating” the sentence into Spanish, where its equivalent gusta
would equally be stressed (first stressed syllable). Such a rule was difficult to find in
other speakers, nevertheless.
Despite all difficulties, some typically Spanish features could be observed. Most
generally, the speakers were not employing much of a pitch range, compared to what
would be normal in native English speakers. The overall impression of their speech was
quite monotonous. An uninformed English listener might therefore “accuse” them of
not showing enough enthusiasm (That’s perfect, thank you), or wonder about what the
actual point of interest in some of their questions was. On this account, however, it
should also be born in mind that the speakers were only reading the text, and not all of
75
them perhaps were great actors. We believe that some acting talent is necessary in order
to succeed in such a challenging exercise requiring a lot of imagination and empathy.
The initial pitch position was rather low in most speakers. They had a tendency to stress
the last element in the sentence, which was most noticeable in the sentence How about
this one, Sir?, where the majority of them distinguished the word one.
Some speakers struggled when differentiating between yes/no questions and wh-
questions. They applied the same melody to both (Speakers 2 and 5).
Falling intonation pattern at the end of declarative sentences posed least problems to the
speakers and managing the melody in choice questions was not problematic either -
most of the speakers sounded natural. This is in accordance with the theory.
76
Conclusion
In the thesis, we have discussed the problem of non-native acquisition of English
pronunciation and shed light on some common mistakes Spanish speakers are likely to
make in English pronunciation. Our study, based on a small research conducted on six
Spanish speakers of English, was intended to measure the speakers´ command of
segmental and suprasegmental features of the English language. A comparison of the
English and the Spanish sound systems has been made and it has shown that English
contains a lot of sounds that cannot be found in the Spanish sound system. Our study
have also found out that, in addition to these elusive sounds, suprasegmental features of
the English sound system presented obstacles for Spanish learners to overcome.
It is important to stress that the mistakes found in the performances of the research
subjects might not apply to every Spanish speaker of English as many mistakes of these
speakers might have remained unnoticed. Further investigations are planned to be
attempted in the near future.
It can also be concluded from the results that not only the presence or absence of certain
sounds plays a role in English pronunciation of the speakers, but also individual
speakers´ language backgrounds. As expected, exposure to English during their stays
abroad seemed to positively affect particular speakers´ English pronunciation.
We hope that working with Spanish learners of English during the recordings for our
research was an interesting experience for them, as it was for us. The author of the
thesis also believes that the work will be of some help to the subjects of the study and to
all those who are interested in English pronunciation and its acquisition by foreign
learners.
77
Résumé (EN)
The diploma thesis deals with the question of non-native pronunciation of English and
is particularly concerned with Spanish speakers. The author’s goal is to find out what
English pronunciation mistakes are typical of Spanish users of the language. The thesis
has two major parts, a theoretical and a practical one. Its theoretical part presents the
problem of non-native acquisition of English pronunciation in general. Furthermore, by
comparing the sound systems of English and Spanish in the areas of both segmental and
suprasegmental features, the author of the work predicts some pronunciation-related
difficulties Spanish learners of English might encounter.
The practical part of the thesis processes the results of a case study conducted on six
Spanish speakers whose performances were recorded and mistakes in English
pronunciation later analyzed.
Resumé (CZ)
Tato diplomová práce se zabývá anglickou výslovností u nerodilých mluvčí a je
konkrétně zaměřena na španělské uživatele tohoto jazyka. Autor si klade za cíl
proukoumat výslovnostní chyby v anglickém jazyce, jakých se Španělé nejčastěji
dopouštějí. Práce je rozdělena na dvě části, teoretickou a praktickou. Teoretická část
popisuje osvojování anglické výslovnosti nerodilými mluvčími. Dále porovnává rozdíly
mezi zvukovými systémy anglického a španělského jazyka a na jejich základě autor
vypisuje příklady potíží, se kterými se Španělé mohou běžně setkávat.
Praktická část práce shrnuje výsledky případové studie vedené na šesti španělských
mluvčích, jejichž anglická výslovnost byla nahrána a chyby v ní následně rozebrány.
78
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Appendices
Appendix no. 1 - Questionnaire
Appendix no. 2 - My favourite sport (read-aloud text)
Appendix no. 3 - Tasks on suprasegmental features
Appendix no. 4 - Compact disc with recordings of the Spanish research subjects
Appendix no. 1
Questionnaire
1) What is your name and how old are you?
2) How long have you been studying English?
3) Do you remember the teachers you had at school?
4) Have your previous English teachers taught you pronunciation? If so, can you give
some details?
5) What do you think about your English pronunciation? Is it important for you when
talking to non-native speakers? Does it differ when talking to native-speakers?
6) Have you ever been to an English speaking country for a longer period? Have you
ever stayed in a foreign country where you had to use English regularly? What country
and for how long?
7) Who and what do you think influences your pronunciation (both positively and
negatively - e.g. native language, friends, teachers, watching TV, music etc.)?
8) What do you find difficult about English pronunciation?
9) Are you aware of some mistakes you make?
10) How would you rank your English pronunciation on a scale from 1-10? (1 – best, 10
– worst)?
11) Is there a particular situation that makes you nervous about your English
pronunciation (e.g. on the telephone, at the bank, in front of friends, adults, classmates,
teacher, when giving presentations, etc.)?
12) On the contrary, in which situation do you feel comfortable speaking English?
Appendix no. 2
My favourite sport
I absolutely love football. I’m crazy about it. It’s the best! I love watching it but I
´specially enjoy playing it. I am nine years old and I play for the local team at my
school’s football pitch. I play matches twice a week – on Thursday evenings after
school and on Sunday mornings. And we also have coaching on Tuesday evenings
when we just practice all our football skills. It’s brilliant! Er – we all have a special kit –
a football shirt with a number on the back – er – I’m number 7, it’s my lucky number!
And we wear shorts, socks and stuff, all in matching colours and of course our football
boots – oh – and we also have to wear shin pads for protection, you know. We have a
team tracksuit, too – but we only wear this before and after matches and for training.
Erm – my mum always comes to support us – even when it’s raining. Mmm….my team
isn’t very good, in fact we nearly always lose – but we don’t care! Our football coach,
Martin, says winning doesn’t matter – it’s taking part that counts – maybe he’s right, but
do you know what I think? I think it’s just a pleasure when we win! Yeah.
QUESTION: What sport or activity do you enjoy?
Appendix no. 3
Tasks on suprasegmental features
Pronounce these words or phrases with the correct stress placement:
station famous bedroom future chocolate
delicious crazily together engineer decision
beautiful give her one it’s over you’re joking departure
television occupation can’t believe it it’s in the paper
Read the following text aloud, paying special attention to sentence stress A: What’s the matter? B: I’ve lost my hat. A: What kind of hat? B: It was a rain hat. A: What colour rain hat? B: It was white. White with stripes. A: There was a white hat with stripes in the car. B: Which car? A: The one I sold! A: I’m going to meet Ann, grandfather. B: You’re going to meet Sam? Who’s Sam? A: No Sam - Ann. We’re going to play tennis. B: You’re going to play with Dennis? And who’s Dennis? A: Not Dennis, tennis. We’re going to play tennis in the park. Read the following aloud, paying special attention to linking between words June and Bill are classmates in an Italian conversation course. This afternoon they are
having a drink together at an outdoor café near the school. They are talking about how
much they would like to go on a trip to Italy next year.
Decide if the intonation goes up or down at the end 1. Do you like American films? 2. What would you like for dinner? 3. Which newspaper do you read? 4. Would you like to watch the news? Decide what the intonation will be like
A: Can I help you?
B: I’d like a sweater, please.
A: Which size would you like? Small, medium or large?
B: Medium please.
A: How about this one, Sir?
B: That’s perfect. Thank you.
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