«Current ideas focusing on specific pronunciation features»

Kim Rimma

Senior teacher of the department of «Foreign languages»

Taraz State Pedagogical Institute

In many English language classrooms, teaching pronunciation is granted the least attention. When ESL teachers defend the poor pronunciation skills of their students, their arguments could either be described as a cop-out with respect to their inability to teach their students proper pronunciation or they could be regarded as taking a stand against linguistic influence. If we learn a second language in childhood, we learn to speak it fluently and without a ‘foreign accent’; if we learn in adulthood, it is very unlikely that we will attain a native accent. Pronunciation has a positive effect on learning a second language and learners can gain the skills they need for effective communication in English.

Teaching English pronunciation is a challenging task with different objectives at each level.

One of the general objectives for foreign language teaching and learning is to teach the learner to be mastered in oral or written communication in the target language they learn.

It is very common that many foreign language learners have problems in teaching and learning process.

In this case, many of English foreign learners have difficulties in pronunciation teaching process because of some factors influencing their pronunciation. These factors are known as mother tongue, age, amount of exposure, phonetic ability, personality, and motivation [1].

That is why it is difficult to teach pronunciation because the students are varied and they are all influenced by their own mother tongues. Consequently, almost of students have difficulties in pronouncing English words. Therefore, it needs appropriate technique in teaching and improving pronunciation. General observation suggests that it is those who start to learn English after their school years are most likely to have serious difficulties in acquiring intelligible pronunciation, with the degree of difficulty increasing markedly with age.

This difficulty has nothing to do with intelligence or level of education, or even with knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary. Of course there is no simple answer to why pronunciation is so difficult to learn - indeed there is a whole range of theoretical perspectives on the question. What is generally accepted among psycholinguists and phonologists who specialized in this area, is that the difficulty of learning to pronounce a foreign language is cognitive rather than physical, and that it has something to do with the way « raw sound» is categorized or conceptualized in using speech [2].

Pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds. Word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spoken English, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together in casual speech. 'What are you going to do?' becomes 'Whaddaya gonna do?'[3].

English pronunciation involves too many complexities for learners to strive for a complete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost self esteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better job or at least more respect in the workplace. Effective communication is of greatest importance, so choose first to work on problems that significantly hinder communication and let the rest go. Remember that your students also need to learn strategies for dealing with misunderstandings, since native pronunciation is for most an unrealistic goal.

A student's first language often interferes with English pronunciation. For example, [p] is aspirated in English but not in Spanish, so when a Spanish speaker pronounces 'pig' without a puff of air on the[p], an American may hear 'big' instead. Sometimes the students will be able to identify specific problem sounds and sometimes they won't. You can ask them for suggestions, but you will also need to observe them over time and make note of problem sounds [4].

Another challenge resulting from differences in the first language is the inability to hear certain English sounds that the native language does not contain. Often these are vowels, as in 'ship' and 'sheep,' which many learners cannot distinguish. The Japanese are known for confusing [r] and [l], as their language contains neither of these but instead has one sound somewhere between the two. For problems such as these, listening is crucial because students can't produce a sound they can't hear. Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students increase their awareness of subtle sound differences.

So that to make learning of English pronunciation less difficult and less confusing some simple ideas of specific pronunciation features should be taken into account by ESL teachers.

Voicing

Voiced sounds will make the throat vibrate. For example, /g/ is a voiced sound while /k/ is not, even though the mouth is in the same position for both sounds. Have your students touch their throats while pronouncing voiced and voiceless sounds. They should feel vibration with the voiced sounds only.

Aspiration

Aspiration refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced. Many languages have far fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing the aspiration. The English /p/, /t/, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more commonly aspirated sounds. Although these are not always aspirated, at the beginning of a word they usually are. To illustrate aspiration, have your students hold up a piece of facial tissue a few inches away from their mouths and push it with a puff of air while pronouncing a word containing the target sound.

Mouth Position

Draw simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions. Make sure all students can clearly see your mouth while you model sounds. Have students use a mirror to see their mouth, lips, and tongue while they imitate you.

Intonation

Word or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by humming. This will take the students' attention off of the meaning of a word or sentence and help them focus on the intonation [5].

Linking

We pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of a series of separate words. 'Will Amy go away,' is rendered 'Willaymeegowaway.' To help learners link words, try starting at the end of a sentence and have them repeat a phrase, adding more of the sentence as they can master it. For example, 'gowaway,' then 'aymeegowaway,' and finally 'Willaymeegowaway' without any pauses between words [6].

Vowel Length

You can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones. Then let the students try it. For example, the word 'fifteen' would have the rubber band stretched for the 'ee' vowel, but the word 'fifty' would not have the band stretched because both of its vowels are spoken quickly [7].

Syllables

Have students count syllables in a word and hold up the correct number of fingers, or place objects on table to represent each syllable.

Illustrate syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the syllables of a word. For example, the word 'beautiful' would be loud-soft-soft.

Practice with short lists of words with the same syllabic stress pattern ('beautiful,' 'telephone,' 'Florida') and then see if your learners can list other words with that pattern.

Specific Sounds

Minimal pairs, or words such as 'bit/bat' that differ by only one sound, are useful for helping students distinguish similar sounds. They can be used to illustrate voicing ('curl/girl') or commonly confused sounds ('play/pray'). Remember that it's the sound and not the spelling you are focusing on.

Tongue twisters are useful for practicing specific target sounds, plus they're fun. Make sure the vocabulary isn't too difficult.

Generally, if we want to change the way a learner pronounces words, we have to change the way they think about the component sounds of those words. This goes not just for individual sounds, but for bigger elements of speech, such as syllables, stress patterns and rhythm. Despite this, the teaching of pronunciation remains largely neglected in the field of English language teaching. In this study, the researchers discuss common misconceptions about pronunciation, factors affecting the learning of pronunciation. Then, they review the needs of learners, suggestions for teaching pronunciation.

Bibliography

1 Kenworthy, J. Teaching English pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987

2 Davis, R. Speaking activities for the Classroom. England: Cambridge University Press, 2003

3 Senel . Approaches and Methods in language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003

4 Harmer, J. The practice of English language teaching. New York: Longman Publishing, 2007

5 Baker, C. Practical English Language Teaching. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003

6 11 Hancock, M. Pronunciation games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003

7 McDonough, J. and Shaw, C. Materials and Methods in ELT: A teacher’s guide. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003