June 2017 Vol. 1
ULACIT
TEACHING PRONUNCIATION
Pronunciation Magazine for teachers By Katherine Arburola
Hello everyone!, This is my project for Teaching Pronunciation course at ULACIT, every page on this magazine is a weekly summary of what we learn during the quater, I hope you like it!
By Katherine Arburola Sandí
Page 1
ENTRY 1
1. Define what pronunciation is and its importance in learning a language Pronunciation is an entire system which explains the sounds of a language, or how the words should be said. It is important to have a good pronunciation because the message must be understood by the other speakers of the language. 2. What aspects are important in teaching pronunciation? The most important part of teaching pronunciation is the material, a good textbook with the theory will guarantee students have access and double check their knowledge. Â Plenty of examples gave us a nice picture of the sounds and it would be easier to identify the phoneme in new words. The teacher should articulate correctly the words, since students are learning from him/her. Good audio-visual material will help students connect with real word material (authentic material) Meaningful activities are essential to reinforce the knowledge and make it valuable and not easy to forget.
3. What aspects should a teacher take into consideration when teaching pronunciation? Student’s English level: are they beginners or are they taking the English career to become teachers? Student’s goal for learning English: Are they learning English as a hobby or do they need to get a job in a call center? Student’s background: Are they from rural areas or from the city? Have they visited other countries, or have they been in touch with English speaking people? Student’s age: It is not the same to teach children, to teach teenagers o adults. It depends on the age of our audience the speed in which we will teach the subject and the type or examples and material we will use.
ENTRY 2
ENTRY 3
Glossary Chapter #3 Segmental: inventory of vowels and consonants Phonemes: sounds differences that distinguish word Allophones: sounds that are perceptibly different but don’t distinguish a word Contrastive distribution: minimally distinctive units of sound that can alter the meaning of a word. Positional variation: depending on the position of the allophone, the pronunciation can vary. Voicing: whether the vocal cords are vibrating Place of articulation: where the sound is made Manner of articulation: how the airflow is affected Dental: produced with the tongue tip on or near the inner surface of the upper teeth Alveolar: produced with the tongue tip on or near the tooth ridge Palatal: produced with the tongue blade or body near the hard palate Velar: produced with the tongue body on or near the soft palate Glottal: produced by the air passing from the windpipe through the vowel Stop: when the airstream is blocked or stopped completely before its release. pbtdkg Fricative: the air passage from the lung is not completely stopped, it causes a friction when forced through this passage. fvθðszʃʒh Affricate: sounds are a combination of a stop and fricative ʧ,ʤ Nasal: air passes through the nasal cavity mnŋ Approximant: the airstream moves around the tongue and out the mouth in a relatively unobstructed manner. Lrw Retroflex: the tongue tip is curl back into the mouth behind the alveolar ridge and the lips are slightly round. Flap: t and d can sound as r when it is between vowels, example data, city
ENTRY 4
Non-Release of Final Stop Consonants Activity Using authentical material, a newspaper in this case, students will find the final stop consonants on an article and pronounce the word to check that there is not release. Secondly, students will need to write a list of the words with onrelease final stops to keep record of them.
ENTRY 5 Project 1: Consonants Activity
Memory Game Activity name: Memorize the Consonants Population: Teenagers, young adults, adults. English Level: B1 Time: 30 min Objective: Students will be able to: • Identify the phonemes used on the words presented. • Match the phoneme and the corresponding word in which the phoneme is used. • Reproduce the sounds taught in class. Description of the activity: Activity is a memory game in which students will need to flip cards and try to match the phoneme and the word that have that phoneme. Materials: • Cards with the phonemes • Cards with the words that match the phonemes • Smartphones with Internet access • Download the app Dictionary.com (optional)
Procedure: 1. Students will make groups of three. 2. Students will take turns to flip 2 cards each turn, trying to remember where they placed them. 3. They need to match the phoneme and the word in which the phoneme is used. 4. Every time they turn a card, they need to reproduce the sound, or read out loud the word. 5. When a student matched correctly the phoneme and the word, s/he needs to say another word with the same phoneme. 6. In case they are wrong with the additional word, they need to return the cards and the next student can take advantage by turning them and try with the word. 7. To check if the word they say is correct, the other students can use their smartphones to look it up. 8. The one with more pairs will be the winner.
ENTRY 6 Vowels Crossword
Answers
ENTRY 7 Vowel activities analysis
Activity #1 It was about classifying the words according to the phonemes, students needed to complete the charts with the words. I really like this activity, I actually used it for a quiz we needed to do in Phonetics and Phonology course but it was about consonants instead of vowels. It is an activity that takes too much time and it is tiring for the students, but worth the try because at the end they will have a lot of vocabulary. Activity #2 It was about the vowel domino. I could have never thought about it, it was fun, short but the students will absolutely like it. I would use it for teenagers that would probably know the rules to play domino. Activity #3 It was about finding differences between two pictures. At first it was complicated to understand what we had to do. I did not get that the objects were related to the same phonemes, but it made sense after finding different objects and seeing they have the sound in common. It was a nice practice, something refreshing to the brain and eyes. I will absolutely apply this activity in my class with kids with different ages, maybe the words have to be less complicated for the younger ones.
ENTRY 8 Project 2: Vowel activity
Treasure Map Population: Teenagers, young adults, adults. English Level: B1 Time: 20 min Objective: Students will be able to: • Recognize the vowel and diphthongs’ phonemes used on the words presented. • Guess the words according to the vowel specified and the hint. Description of the activity: Activity is a treasure map in which the students will be given hints to guess the words that will complete a phrase. Part I. Students will be given a list of words, they will need to look for the words on the treasure map and complete the blanks with the vowels used on those words. Part 2. Students will be given a list hints to help them guess the words needed to create the phrase. Part 3. Students will write in the same order of appearance, all the words that came out from the hints to finally discover the hidden phrase. “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been” Henry Kissinger Materials: • A treasure map. • The list of the words with the blanks. • The list with the hints.
Part 1. List of the words 1. Look for the objects in the treasure map and fill the blanks with the vowels and diphthongs used on the words. • Dragon _______________ • Sword _______________ • Boots _______________ • Palm tree _______________ • Bear _______________ • Chest _______________ • Boat _______________ • Shark _______________ • Volcano _______________ • Dog _______________ • Island _______________ • Monster _______________ • Castle _______________ • Wood _______________ • Float _______________ • Oar _______________ • Man _______________ • Dinosaur _______________ • Bone _______________ • Ocean _______________ • Skeleton _______________ • Raft _______________ • Land _______________ • Beach _______________ Part 2. Hints Read carefully the following hints and try to guess the word. Write in the blank space the word you think the hint refers to. 1. It has the vowel / ə/ Determiner (article) used preceding a noun that has been previously specified. ____________ 2. It has the vowel / æ/ Synonym of chore, assignment. ____________ 3. It has the vowel /ʌ / Preposition used to indicate origin, reason, materials, etc. ____________ 4. It has the vowel / ə/ Determiner (article) used preceding a noun that has been previously specified. ____________ 5. It has the vowel / i/ and / ə/ Noun: a person or thing that leads. ____________ 6. It has the vowel / ɪ /. Verb to be conjugation for 3rd person. ____________ 7. It has the vowel /u/ Preposition used for expressing motion or direction toward a point. ____________ 8. It has the vowel / ɛ /. It is a verb, it is a synonym of fetch. ____________ 9. It has the vowel / ɪ /. Possessive pronoun for He. ____________ 10. It has the vowel / i/ and / ə/. It is a plural noun for a group of persons. ____________ 11. It has the vowel /u/ Preposition used to specify a starting point in spatial movement. ____________ 12. They. It has the diphthong /eɪ/. Plural pronoun in third person. ____________ 13. It has the vowel /ɑ/. Verb to be conjugation for third person in plural. ____________ 14. It has the vowel /u/ Preposition used for expressing motion or direction toward a point. ____________ 15. It has the vowel / ɛ / and the phoneme /ər/. W/h question to ask for a place. ____________ 16. It has the diphthong /eɪ/. Plural pronoun in third person. ____________ 17. It has the vowel / æ/. Verb that indicates possession. ____________ 18. It has the vowel / ɒ/. Adverb of negation. ____________ 19. It has the vowel / ɪ /. Past participle of be. ____________
ENTRY 9
For second language learners, it is really difficult to manage the grammatical rules and pronunciation to a proficiency level, unfortunately there are some other important aspects that will make their English proficiency even better and the learning process more difficult; the stress and the rhythm. These two aspects have been neglected by teachers during the lessons they give, maybe because the current English curricula in Costa Rica is emphasized on teaching only the rules and vocabulary. Most of these two aspects is acquired by direct contact with the language, it can be by watching movies, tv shows, news and other tv programs in English. Even better it would be the direct interact with native speakers, this will make easier to pick up the rhythm and stress native speakers use while speaking. It is very important to pronounce correctly the word and the sentences by putting the stress on the correct syllable or word to make both intelligible. There are words that can become unintelligible if we mispronounce them, as for example “category�, in which the stress falls in the first syllable and not in the second as most of the Spanish speakers might think. In regards of the sentences, if the stress is not place in the right spot, it can change the meaning of the sentence, for example when it is a question the stress should always be at the end of the sentence.
As per the intonation and the stress on a word it will mostly depend on the accent or the place English is spoken, this is because the English from UK can have different pronunciation in US or even New Zealand. It is for that reason that Maria-Josep Solé Sabater (1991) from the University of Barcelona advises “[ …] assigning the right stress pattern—at the word and phrase level— and learning to produce unstressed syllables is the most productive single device for achieving an adequate pronunciation of English.” Learning vocabulary can be tricky, if the teacher pronounces correctly the words and the students write a mark in the syllable with more stress, those students will most likely remember how the word is pronounce and remember it for the rest of their life. What happens in the classroom is sometimes different form the ideal scenario, teacher might give a huge list of vocabulary and ask the students which words they don’t know the meaning, leaving behind the important part that pronunciation represents on the English learning process. The reality is that IPA is only studied and deeply used by advanced students when they are going to graduate from college in English education, besides that IPA contact, the other situation in which students will have contact with IPA will most frequently be with the dictionary at early stages of the learning process. As future improvement, what we can do as teacher is explain how the stress is marked in IPA language for the students to understand from the beginning how the word is pronounced avoiding in that way fossilization of incorrect pronunciation.
Solé, Maria-Josep. (1991). Stress and Rhythm in English. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain. Retrieved from: https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/5496/1/RAEI_04_13.pdf
ENTRY 10
10 TIPS for
beginner
teachers
1. Make yourself an expert: teaching pronunciation requires a high level of mastery. Before jumping on teaching pronunciation, you have to make sure you are an expert on the topic, besides you got to understand very well IPA alphabet to teach phonetics and phonology. 2. IPA introduction: IPA is a whole new language during the phonetics course and it becomes harder when studying phonology. For that reason it is important to introduce IPA to students and make them understand the important and how useful it can be for them. 3. Break down in small groups: the number of vowels, diphthongs and consonants is overwhelming for beginner and advance students, for that reason it is advisable to divide the vowels in small groups, and show the vowel sounds in different lesson giving time to student to digest the amount of theory. The same can be done with the rest of the sounds. 4. Explain how sound are produced: it is important that we explain the manner of articulation and the place of articulation, in that way students can check if they are producing the sound correctly. Also, the stressed and unstressed sounds should be mentioned. 5. Use minimal pairs: they will make obvious the difference between two sounds, it will also help student to use those words are future reference.
6. Use innovative activities: Always try to apply different activities and not stick to the same worksheets. Students like to challenge themselves when the activity is engaging and fun. 7. Use videos: there are hundreds of videos on the WWW that will help you make the class less boring. Some videos use advance software that reproduces the movement from the inner part of the mouth for better comprehension. 8. Use technology: besides videos, you can also find apps or websites that will make students practice their pronunciation while having some fun. 9. Explain difficult sound for Spanish speakers: it is always important to explain the difficulties the students will confront. Setting the expectation from the first moment will make them work hard trying to perfectionate the sound. 10. Use repetition technique for stress and rhythm: The best way to pick up a rhythm and stress of the words is by repetitively listening to the words and try to repeat them.
the end
THANK YOU
Katherine Arburola S.