Universidad de Jaén
ASSIGNMENT – TP
SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:TEACHING PRONUNCIATION
GENERAL INFORMATION:
This assignment has to fulfil the following conditions:
- Length: between 4 and 6 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –ifthere are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.- Size: 11.- Line height: 1.5.- Alignment: Justified.
The assignment has to be done in this Word document and has to fulfil the rules ofpresentation and edition, as for quotes and bibliographical references which aredetailed in the Study Guide.
Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the Study Guide.Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not permitted.
In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can befound in the Study Guide.
The assignment mark is 80% of the final mark, and the participation in the activitiesperformed during the tutorials constitutes the remaining 20%.
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OPTION A.
Take two distinct problems of transfer between Spanish and English (Spanishspeakers with English as the target language) which you consider to beobstacles to efficient communication. The problems can either be segmental orsuprasegmental.
FIRSTLY, explain, as accurately as you can, the causes of the problems inphonetic or phonological terms. SECONDLY, illustrate and explain how you could solve these problems withinthe normal framework of a language course - the level, age and type of studentpresumably being determined by the type of problem you have chosen. Nevertheless, you should consider the problems in terms of the three ’E’variables, and also with reference to Brinton’s five variables, mentioned inSection 9.
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Name and surname(s): Rebecca FitzellLogin: ESFPMLAEILE1823552Master edition: 2014 - 2015Date: 23rd February 2015
Index
Page
1. Introduction
5
2. Brinton’s five variables
5
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ASSIGNMENT – TP
3. Problem 1 - /b/ and /v/
7
4. Problem 2 - /s/, /z/ and /ェ z/
7
5. Exposure, Exercise, Explanation - /b/ and /v/
8
6. Exposure, Exercise, Explanation - /s/, /z/ and /ェ z/
9
7. Conclusion
10
8. Bibliography
11
9. Appendices
12
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1. Introduction
When learning a language, communication is of the utmost
importance. Learners wish to not only communicate with native
English-speakers, but also with non-native speakers as it is the
Lingua Franca of today with many universities and careers
offering opportunities in English.
Nowadays there is a general stigma around pronunciation and
it is said that the prototype we should be learning is either
British Received Pronunciation (RP) or General American English
(GA). Obviously, it is very difficult to organise every English
learner or speaker into one of these groups because of many
factors, including their location, whether or not they have
access to speakers with RP or GA and their linguistic and
educational backgrounds. In reality, a very little percentage of
people speak, for example, RP and it is said to be not based on
the area from where people are from, but from the social class
which they are part of.
Typically, students would like to dedicate their time
improving their speaking competence but in order to do this,
they must begin with the basic expertise in correct
pronunciation. Bad pronunciation can cause misunderstandings and
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Universidad de Jaén
ASSIGNMENT – TP
uncomfortable situations. It can also hinder a student’s
learning process as he / she may not feel confident when
speaking. I believe it is important to encourage correct
pronunciation on a daily basis, integrate it with various skills
and to start this at an early age, as to avoid future problems.
2. Brinton’s five variables (1995)
Learner variables: In this assignment, I will consider the
pronunciation proficiency of adults learners. They are all
Spanish speakers, aged between eighteen and twenty-five,
attending university and are preparing for their Cambridge B1
exam which they hope to take in July of this year. They attend
our private school twice a week for ninety minutes, which I
believe is not sufficient, but due to timetable restrictions of
both the students and the school, it is impossible to increase
contact hours.
Setting variables: All the students have their own English book named
‘Objective PET’, published by Cambridge University Press. This
book deals with the preparation required to take the Cambridge
B1 exam. It has a high content of a mix of the four skills
covered over thirty short units, with one Pronunciation section
in each unit. The students are living in Jaén and have very
limited opportunities to speak English outside the classroom
unless they are in contact with English-speaking Erasmus
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ASSIGNMENT – TP
students at the local university or native English-speaking
teachers or language assistants.
Methodological and institutional variables: When addressing their previous
knowledge of English, all have achieved a good command of
English grammar, reading and writing throughout their schooling
in ESO and Bachillerato, but when we arrive to their
capabilities in listening and speaking, they flounder.
I began teaching these learners in September 2014 and when
I started the class, I conducted a Needs Analysis Questionnaire,
which I find a highly useful when getting to know my students.
All of the students, of whom there are twenty-two spread across
two groups, highlighted that they wanted to improve their
pronunciation and placed it as one of the most important issues
that they had, along with speaking. This leads us to think that
pronunciation and speaking obviously go hand-in-hand. They also
believed that because of the traditional Grammar-Translation
method of the 19th-20th century, they did not get enough error
correction with their pronunciation while at primary and
secondary school. The preferred a communicative approach in
class which we have given them.
Also, another factor worth noting is that they preferred
coming to a private ‘academy’ and selecting a class with a
native English-speaking teacher because they felt they could
assimilate pronunciation more efficiently. Having said that,
should they have chosen a class with a non-native English-
speaker, I believe that their progress would not have been much
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different as all teachers are qualified, have great experience
and a fantastic command of English pronunciation. When we
consider these two types of teachers, as highlighted by Jenkins
(1998: 122), the crucial difference between a non-native speaker
of English and a native speaker as regards segmentals, which I
will discuss in this assignment, is that the non-native may
deviate from native models in precisely those sounds that are
considered to be ‘core’ sounds of English, and therefore
essential to approximate closely because they figure in all
native varieties.
Linguistic variables: The main linguistic variables which I wish to
discuss in detail are highlighted in part 3 and 4 of this
assignment. We must also consider that the students addressed in
this essay all come from Jaén and the small towns and villages
surrounding it. Jaén province has a reputation of having an
unusual way of speaking its native Spanish, with habits such as
not pronouncing the correct amount of syllables for example,
“¿Qué ha pasado?” is pronounced as “¿Qué ha pasao?”, pronouncing
an extra syllable for the regular past form -ed ending, or
having problems including the inability to distinguish vowels
correctly, for example: A/E and E/I.
The above are some general errors which my students make
during pronunciation but in this assignment I will focus on two
distinct problems which have appeared on numerous occasions
during my five years of teaching in a private school. These two
problems, the difference between /b/ and /v/, and the correct
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use of /s/, /z/ and /ェz/ in plurals and third person forms, are
at a segmental level. First, it is important to highlight that
these problems are segmental because they deal with the practise
of the pronunciation of particular individual sounds. First, I
will highlight the problems in phonetic terms and then I will
propose a possible solution by considering the three ‘E’
variables.
3. Problem 1 - /b/ and /v/
In my classes, problems have arisen with learners’ confusion of
the sounds and spellings of the minimal pairs of consonants, the
bilabial /b/ and the labiodental /v/. The problem has been that
the learners can rarely pronounce the words correctly as they
find it difficult to make a link between the sound and the
actual letter is represents. In Spanish the sounds are quite
similar and there actually is a sound in Spanish phonetics which
is a combination of these two confusing sounds. The labiodental
sound of /v/ is more difficult because it does not exist in
Spanish. With younger students, the problem arose in spelling
the Spanish word for grape, “uva”. Half of the students thought
it was spelt with “b” and the others with “v”. This type of
confusion between two sounds and spellings in their own language
can transfer to their English learning and in many situations,
like with my adult students, they did not recognise a difference
and found it quite difficult to complete some activities to
practise this.
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ASSIGNMENT – TP
4. Problem 2 - /s/, /z/ and / ェ z/
When we add “-s”, “-es” and “-’s” to a word, it is for one of
four purposes:
to create a plural noun, for example, one dog, two
dogs.
to conjugate a verb into the third person, for
example, I play, you play, he / she plays.
for contractions, for example, she’s tall (she is
tall) or she’s got a sister (she has got a sister).
for possessives, for example, my father’s car, my
parents’ cars.
The “-s”, “-es” and “-’s” have three different pronunciations,
respectively:
/s/
/z/
/ェz/
As Kenworthy (1987) points out, learners will tend to add /s/
for noun plurals, even where /z/ is required, so ‘pens’ will
sound like ‘pence’. Both of these sounds are alveolar, thus
students make a similar sound for them. Like with the previous
problem, we should take ‘Exposure, Exercise and Explanation’
into consideration when attempting to rectify this issue.
5. Exposure, Exercise & Explanation: /b/ and /v/
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ASSIGNMENT – TP
There are many ways that this problem can be addressed,
practised and improved. First, let us think about Dalton and
Seidlhofer’s (1994) “Exposure, Exercise and Explanation”. In
Exposure, the students will do some communicative activities, so
they will be exposed to the target language and pronunciation.
Then, in Exercise, they will identify the sounds we want to
stress on paying attention to and practise these sounds.
Finally, with explanation, they will become more aware of the
real pronunciation they are expected to produce by the teacher
explaining how to pronounce these words. Of course, there are
different forms of doing these Three E’s and the can follow a
different order.
First, to expose the students to the pronunciation, tongue
twisters could be used. These are a fun, communicative way of
exposing the learners to the target pronunciation. An example of
a tongue twister could be: “Betty bought the violet, velvet vest
which she loved the best.” The students read the tongue twister
and read it several times with a partner. Then the teacher could
ask the students what they think the target pronunciation is
which they need to practise.
After this, the teacher can explain the pronunciation
rules with diagrams (Appendix 5.1 and 5.2) as highlighted by
Baker (1977). By doing this, we make pronunciation visible, as
Underhill (1998) said that even as one becomes slightly more
sensitive to the inner muscular movements, so one is more able
to observe them visually in another speaker.
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Also, as highlighted by Kenworthy (1987), the basic thing
to remember about these sounds is that it is important to draw
attention to the fact that for the /b/ sound, the lips should
start out very tightly closed and then this closure is quickly
released. For /v/ the lower lip should touch the upper teeth and
should produce a more buzzing sound.
Then, students can brainstorm vocabulary which they
already know with the target sounds of /b/ and /v/. To further
exercise these sounds, students could work in pairs and use the
vocabulary from the brainstorming activity to make their own
personal tongue twisters which they can practise and exchange
with different pairs of students. This is quite a useful
activity which I have used many times. Students genuinely
remember their own tongue twisters and feel a sense of
achievement after completing one. It is also very funny as
students find it very comical.
A further activity to help students would be a listening
activity with two lists of similar words with the /b/ sound and
with the /v/ sound. Students have two opportunities to listen to
the audio and they must choose the alternative option which they
hear in the listening. You can find an example list of these
words in Appendix 5.3.
6. Exposure, Exercise & Explanation: /s/, /z/ and / ェ z/
First, we can expose the dilemma by presenting a sentence on the
board:
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“Sally loves cakes and watches soap operas on Tuesdays.”
Students can work in pairs reading the sentence and finding any
different sounds which they may come across with regards to the
letter “-s”, “-es” or “-’s”. Usually, they will only find one,
namely /ェz/ because it causes an extra syllable. They will find
the difference between /s/ and /z/ very difficult to find. At
first, they may not even agree with the teacher that these are
particular plural sounds.
Then, the teacher can explain the different sounds by
drilling the pronunciation of these words. Again, like the
previous process, Baker’s (1977) diagrams (Appendix 6.1 and 6.2)
can help the students with their pronunciation.
After this has been completed, exercises must be carried
out to practise the pronunciation. An activity for doing this
may be giving the students a list of words and a table with
three columns: /s/, /z/ and /ェz/ (Appendix 6.3). Students must
work in pairs, pronounce the words together and put the words
into their correct column, according to their sound. This is a
more communicative task as the students work together and debate
the correct sound they should use. They also usually find this
quite funny. After, they can listen to the teacher to check
their answers.
Two further activities which may be completed is one which
I have taken from the New English File: Pre-Intermediate series
by Oxenden, Latham-Koenig & Seligson (2001). In the first
activity (Appendix 6.4) we can see a table with the three sounds
being represented by the phonetic symbols. These symbols also
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ASSIGNMENT – TP
depict a picture of a word in which this sounds appears, for
example, /s/ for snake. I found the phonetic table highlighted
by these series of books very useful as the students will make a
connection between the picture of the word they see and the
sound. It is a great way for them to memorize and practise the
different sounds. In this particular activity, students listen
and repeat the sentences to identify the target sounds. Then,
they must look at six verbs and put them into the third person
singular and highlight the sound used for the ‘s’. After, they
must do something similar but this time with the plural ‘s’ of
nouns. Finally, they can listen and check their answers.
The final activity which I have included (Appendix 6.5) is
similar to a “Spot the difference” activity. Individually,
students looks at the sound and the three verbs below it. They
must circle the verb with a different sound. After, thay can
consult with their partner before having an open-class feedback.
7. Conclusion
Good pronunciation is vital in order for students to communicate
without any awkward difficulties. Teachers must take extra care
when planning their lessons as to provide students with a good
basis of pronunciation, with solid practise and correct output.
We must take all the variables into consideration in our
planning so that they are effective. Tasks should be fun and
innovative and not the usual standard of listening, repeating
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ASSIGNMENT – TP
and drilling. All activities should be practical and
communicative to encourage better speaking abilities.
The teacher should also stand as a model for correct
pronunciation, thus students can go to him / her for help and
guidance. By optimising these factors, students’ pronunciation
will develop and improve and their overall confidence and their
proficiency will grow.
8. Bibliography
Baker, A. (1977): Ship or Sheep. An intermediate pronunciation
course. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge
Dalton, C & Seidlhofer, B. (1994): Pronunciation. Oxford
University Press. Oxford.
Jenkins, J. (1998): “Which pronunciation norms and models for
English as an International language?”. In ELT Journal 52/2,
pp.119 -126
Kenworthy, J. (1987): Teaching English Pronunciation. Longman. London.
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Oxenden, C., Latham-Koenig, C. & Seligson, P. (2011): New English
File: Pre-intermediate - Student’s Book and Workbook. Oxford University Press.
Oxford.
Underhill, A. (1998): “Get an ear for pronunciation”. in El
Gazette Issue no. 223, August 1998, p.10
9. Appendices
Appendix 5.1 - Baker (1977) p.
78 Appendix
5.2 - Baker (1977) p. 120
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Appendix 5.3 - Practising
the pronunciation of /b/
and /v/
1. B V2. bat VAT3. berry very4. best vest5. ban van6. boat vote7. bow vow
Appendix 6.1 - Baker (1977) p. 97 Appendix
6.2 - Baker (1977) p. 100
Appendix 6.3 - Practising the pronunciation of /s/, /z/ and /ェz/
- Part I
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Work with a partner and put the following list of words into the
correct column according to the sound of the ‘s’ letter. Is
it /s/, /z/ or /ェz/?
glasses, shops, legs, cakes, classes, toothbrushes, schools, chips, boots, plays, Sundays, watches, books, shoes, finishes
/s/ /z/ /ェz/(answers)shopscakeschipsbootsbooks
legsschoolsplaysSundaysshoes
glassesclassestoothbrusheswatchesfinishes
Appendix 6.4 - Practising the pronunciation of /s/, /z/ and /ェz/
- Part II
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Oxenden, C., Latham-Koenig, C. & Seligson, P. (2011): New English
File: Pre-intermediate - Student’s Book. p.7. Oxford University Press.
Oxford.
Appendix 6.5 - Practising the pronunciation of /s/, /z/ and / ェ z/
- Part III
Oxenden, C., Latham-Koenig, C. & Seligson, P. (2011): New English File: Pre-intermediate - Workbook. p. 6. Oxford University Press. Oxford.
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