March 2010
Teachers are really concerned about teaching pronunciation because it is a topic of great interest to the teaching profession due to its importance to the performance of the teaching jobs. Some of us, teachers, are still unacquainted about some aspects of teaching this subject, but during the debate we could learn how our classmates are dealing with this issue and had the opportunity to share our thoughts in a fruitful discussion and a gigantic exchange of knowledge on how to best teach pronunciation to suit students’ needs taking into account what the scenario is and how that is supposed to be taught without being overwhelming.
ESL students, especially the ones that are new to the USA and have never attended EFL or ESL classes before, have the need to identify the articulation of individual sounds in order to succeed in the suprasegmental level so that when they are exposed to pronunciation patterns they will be able to adapt their pronunciation as they learn them gradually.
The problems that can be an impediment for competent communication during the transfer between Spanish and English vary from consonants with no sound transfer or no sound-symbol match such as /z/ to digraphs such as /ch/ in the word match that has a sound transfer but there is no sound-symbol match, just mentioning a few to illustrate how bewildering it can be for the Spanish speaking students learning English.
In this assignment, I am going to analyze pronunciation at the segmental level in two distinct problems, explain the causes o problems in phonetic or phonological terms and lastly suggest a solution taking into account the three “E” variables and Brinton’s five variables.
2. The importance of Bottom-up approach
I have students from at least 20 different countries, the biggest group being the Spanish speaking one with learners coming from Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Honduras and Cuba.
These learners come with a load of regional accents and their natural way of adapting the words to the way they think they are pronounced or due to having some knowledge of English. The bottom-down approach is essential for these students, so they have an additional small group class for phonics and broad phonemic transcription is worked with them without making them feel overwhelmed with symbols and charts that they will not need for being living in English speaking country. The language transfer in this group varies according to their first language
Bottom-up strategies play an important role in teaching pronunciation and help my students produce language.
3. Problem 1
The first problem to be analyzed is going to be the consonant / j / in the graphemes j as in jacket, g as in cage and dge as in badge. Students find it difficult to say the word yellow or yes with the sound of /y/.
The same grapheme exists in both English and Spanish, but is has a different sound. Students say jes instead of yes. The sound of /y/ is read as /j/ by Spanish speakers.
4. Problem 2
The second problem that I notice in my Spanish speaking students is how the short vowels transfers happen. The vowels /a/, /i/,/o/ and /u/ have approximate sounds but have no sound-symbol match. The short vowel /e/ is the only one that has a sound transfer and a sound-symbol match.
The short vowel /a/ as in cat and map the phoneme or grapheme does not exist in Spanish and the phoneme or sound is substituted when read in English.
The short vowels /e/ as in wet and /o/ as in cot have similar phonemes in both Spanish and English and same grapheme in Spanish and English.
The short vowels /i/ as in lid and /u/ as in put have different phoneme in English, but the same grapheme in Spanish and English.
All these differences are accentuated by the fact that their Spanish comes from different countries or regions.
5. The three ‘E’ variables
5.1 Exposure
Exposure to the language is of vital importance for the students to be able to practice the words in the problems mentioned above. The students learn English at school immersed in the American language, but tend to speak their mother tongue with their families because most of the parents cannot speak English or prefer to use their first language at home to keep cultural ties.
While at school, these students will have the opportunity to compare their speaking to the way their American classmates speak or even choose the teacher as the model for how they would like to sound like. Not that these students will become native-live speakers, but they will have lots of opportunities to practice the target language and eventually pronounce /y/ as it should be and say yellow instead of jellow. Acquisition of new second language rules develops through participation in various types of discourse. But, are EFL learners able to acquire these rules when they don’t have enough exposition to an environment where they can practice their English and start to make their own rules for their language learning? It seems that they will have to go a long way in order to reach this if they really struggle to conquer the native-like competence.
5.2 Exercise
Exercise is vastly offered to these learners in the ESL classes. The students have the chance to practice the target sounds in small groups without being put as a spot in the regular classroom. At my school, the ESL teacher has a great communication with the classroom teachers, which allows them to better help the non-native students. Students can also exercise the language by listening to CD’s and repeating sounds and sentences.
Teachers also use computers as an aid to make the students exercise the language and make them feel more comfortable with the new language and not be afraid of making a mistake.
If those students were attending a language course, I believe that exposure could happen by having a guest speaker come to class and allowing students to ask questions in interview like activities or even having a kind of party where the students would have the opening to practice the language. Watching movies and using songs in class would also be an alternative to allow exposure and exercise the language. For an EFL student, when reaching conversation levels, language interference and code switching usually take place, because they rely on the fact that the other speaker knows his first language too and communication won’t be broken because of this.
5.3 Explanation
Even though exposure and exercise promote ways to achieve success in the target language, explanation is key for the comprehension and communication in the language and hence completes the set of the three variables.
Explanation is necessary because students need to understand why there are certain rules and also have the opportunity to compare what they are learning to their first language.
6. Brinton’s five variables
6.1 The learners and setting variables
The group of students identified in topic number 2, are students in the third, fourth and fifth grades at an elementary school in North Carolina, USA. Their ages range from 8 to 11 years old and their proficiency level in the English language is at the entering and developing levels.
6.2 Institutional variables
These students attend regular mainstream classes in public American schools, but also have pull outs for ESL classes. The ESL classes happen in the same building and in the period that students attend classes, although there are tutoring classes in the afternoon for some students. The course book used for the ESL classes in called Avenues from the Hampton Brown publisher and comes with practice books for the students; phonics sets with transparencies, letter tiles and decodable books. The ESL classes also use the software Kidspiration to allow students more practice with writing and vocabulary. The curriculum focus on the four skills and all the classes are entirely in English. The course book provides a wide range of activities for students at all proficiency levels and perfectly fits mixed-abilities groups.
6.3 Linguistic and methodological variables
Linguistic variables have been previously discussed in the problems presented in topics 3 and 4 in this paper.
The communicative approach is in place as well a collaborative learning environment where all students can participate and have their opinions respect no matter where the student comes from.
6. Conclusion
Teaching pronunciation is a very important subject and teachers pay special attention to their lesson plans when this topic is going to be taught.
We are models for our students and have to provide them with all the information they need to succeed in the target language learning respecting their goals towards the language. Pronunciation has to be taught taking into consideration all the variables presented in this paper.
In this assignment I presented two very common problems that Spanish speaking students face when learning English. The problems presented here are more likely to happen at regular school than at language courses. However, in both situations teachers should he ready to help the students.
As a conclusion, we learned that there are many questions about the process of teaching pronunciation that still have not been answered and there is still a lot to be figured out about the best way to teach it.
7. Bibliography
Abercrombie, D. (1967): Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press.
Avery, C. & Ehrlich, B. (1994): “Preliminary considerations in the teaching of pronunciation”. TESOL Quarterly Vol. 17, June 1994.
Barber, C. L. (1965): The Story of Language. London: Pan Books.
Barnes, M. (1988): “Does Intonation Matter?” in IATEFL SIG 17, January 1996.
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Brazil, D. (1985): Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: London Academic Press.
Brinton, D. (1995): “Speak Out” in IATEFL SIG 16, August 1995.
Brown, A. (1991): English Pronunciation. London: Routledge.
Brown, G. (1990): Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman.
Bryson, B. (1991): The Mother Tongue. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. & Goodwin, J. (1996): Teaching Pronunciation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English. Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
Krashen, S. & Terrel, R. (1983): The Natural Approach – Language Acquisition in the Classroom. Oxford: Pergamon Institute.
http://bilinguistics.com/education/abad_0701/abad_0701.pdf
http://www.ldldproject.net/languages/spanish/written/phonics.html
