phonolgy assignment - elt-resourceful

CAMBRIDGE DELTA COURSE
October 2010
Language Systems Essay for Assignment - Phonology
"Adapting phonology issues to the learners' goals."
Multilingual, Intermediate Classes in a Non-English speaking Environment.
Candidate's name: Sharon Noseley Centre Number: GR108 Candidate Number: Number of words: 2414 Index: 1.
Introduction..................................................................
.................3 2. The Intermediate, Multilingual Class in a Non-English speaking
Environment - its needs and
goals........................................................................
..........3 2.1 What aspects of pronunciation should be addressed first?
...................4 3. Phonology and focusing on the learners'
needs...........................................4 4. Pronunciation issues for a Multilingual
Class.............................................5 5. Approaches and Methods to achieve our
goals............................................6 6. Remedies and Materials to enhance receptive and productive
skills...................6 6.1 Suggested Recognition Activities
................................................7 6.2 Suggested Productive
Activities..................................................8 6.3 Encourage Learner
Autonomy....................................................9 7.
Conclusion..................................................................
....................9
Bibliography..................................................................
...................10
..............................................................................
.......................11
Appendices..................................................................
....................12 My English and I
Questionnaire.............................................13
1.Introduction Teaching pronunciation could be argued to be one of the most important yet
difficult aspects of EFL/ESL teaching. According to Thanasoulas (2009)
these are the underlying reasons it has been called the "Cinderella" of
language teaching (Kelly, 1969, Dalton, 1997).
In the process of communication, pronunciation is of utmost importance.
Poorly pronounced segmentals (the sounds of the language for
intelligibility) and suprasegmentals (stress, rhythm and intonation) can
lead to misunderstanding.
Gower et al (2005, p.153) inform us work on pronunciation is important for
two main reasons: 1) To help the students understand the spoken English they hear.
2) To help them make their own speech more comprehensible and meaningful
to others.
Personally, I decided to research phonology on the basis of discussions
held in the class, in which the students repeatedly felt their speaking
and listening comprehension skills were poor in relation to their writing
or reading skills. The result of this discussion was the production of a
questionnaire for the class, asking them about their pronunciation and
comprehension abilities when listening to the spoken word in a natural
environment.[1] I concluded the class needed to work on phonological
issues. Therefore, based on the feedback of the questionnaire, and
bearing in mind the goals of the class to reach "comfortable
intelligibility" by improving their speaking and listening skills for
work and social goals, I researched this area to help them to achieve
these goals.
2. The intermediate, Multilingual class in a non-English speaking community
- its needs and goals. The teacher's role when considering which aspects of phonology are to be
implemented into lessons, depends on the goals of the learners. Harmer
(2007) advises us to consider the adult learner. He observes they often
have a clear understanding of why they are learning things. Research
indicates the majority of adult learners state their goals for acquiring
English as a second language as, to improve communication through social
networks, and most importantly, in the pursuit of improved career
opportunities. Only twenty five per cent of the world's English speakers are actually
native speakers. The term English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has now crept
into our vocabulary. This research leads one to consider the accent the
learner desires. It is of utmost important our learners have a
comprehensible accent to improve their opportunities in the workplace,
education and other areas of life. Jenkins (1998) argued the aim to ensure our learners have no trace of a
foreign accent is 'unrealistic'. In 2002, she introduced the 'Lingua Franca
Core'. This is a pronunciation core for teaching learners for lingua franca
interactions, not interactions between a native and non-native speaker. According to the Lingua Franca Core, the items which are not important
include, the /?/ and /?/ sounds, vowel quality, (the difference in vowel
sounds when length is not involved), weak forms such as 'to', 'of' and
'from', assimilation in connected speech (e.g. red paint - / rebpeit/),
word stress, pitch movement and stress timing. However, recent studies show support for the superiority of suprasegmental
instruction. From classroom experience, and living in a non- English
speaking environment, Jenkins has a point with regard to word stress, even
within RP (Received Pronunciation) there are optional stress patterns and
the rules are highly complex for an Intermediate class. However, regarding
features of connected speech (weak forms, elision and linking) mistakes
lead to unintelligibility for the native speaker and amongst the learners
themselves (NNSs to NNSs). Adult classes are hoping to improve their career
prospects; they should be introduced to these areas for receptive as well
as productive understanding. As for rhythm, the multilingual class is
usually a class that has mother tongue issues, as most of the world's
languages tend to be syllable-timed. As English is relatively a stress-
timed language, this can lead to the learners sounding' foreign'; a point
that most of the learners implied was a hindrance when communicating in
English.
2.1 What aspects of pronunciation should be addressed first? Crawford (2008, p.1) implies the following aspects of pronunciation are
highly significant in meeting the needs of learners from varied linguistic
backgrounds:
. Syllable stress in two, three and polysyllabic words.
. Syllable and word reduction..
. Sentence stress and reduced words. To understand the distinction
between content words and function words.e.g. The important or new
information in a sentence is stressed and not the pronouns, auxiliary
verbs, articles, conjunctions and prepositions. As in the sentence
'dogs can swim'. The 'can' becomes /c?n/ and is not stressed.
. Word endings. Especially those with consonant clusters at the end of
words. They should be introduced at this point to the linguistic
rules underlying these patterns, including the concepts of voiced and
voiceless sounds.
. According to the linguistic make up of the class, selected
phonemes.[2]
Research shows that learners need to gain pronunciation awareness from the
early stages - to learn significant features, rules and guidelines of the
English Phonetic system. To improve the learners' fluency, the basic facts
of English prosody - the intonation, rhythm and timing of speech should be
introduced early on.
.
To sum up, research, evaluation, and the selection of appropriate materials
to aid students of multilingual classes (students have different mother
tongues and therefore different production and perception problems) should
be dealt with.
3. Phonology and focusing on the learners needs. Kenworthy(1987) encourages us to think about the limitations and abilities
of our learners. She suggests part of our role is to help learners
understand and be aware of the different sounds of English. She compares
this to our perception of visual images, for instance, if you have never
seen a lime, you would consider it to be an unripe lemon because that is
the nearest equivalent you are aware of. Sounds aren't like fruit - sound
images are different to visual images - but the process of establishing
categories is basically the same and each language has its own set of
categories.
Learners will have a strong tendency to hear the sounds of English in terms
of the sounds of their native language.
Furthermore, research conducted by the Department of Education and Training
and Youth Affairs (2001) in Australia concluded the belief that
pronunciation problems are caused by difficulty with articulation are not
entirely true. The research states that the majority of problems stem not
from physical, articulatory causes, but from cognitive causes. In other
words, the problem is not that the person cannot physically produce the
individual sounds, but they do not conceptualise the sounds appropriately -
discriminate them, organise them in their minds, and manipulate them as
required for the sound system of English. This type of conceptual
difficulty could be behind other difficulties such as vowel problems,
prosodic or segmental issues.
4.Pronounciation issues for a multi-lingual class . The classes focused on include Russian, Greek and Bulgarian speakers. Thus,
there are a variety of mother tongue issues. Papaefthymiou-Lytra (2001) states the Greek and English phonological
systems are so different that English is a difficult language for the Greek
speaker .The sounds and the English vowel system(which makes far more
distinctions than the Greek system ) are common problems. In connected
speech, stress, intonation, the contrast between weak and strong forms all
cause problems for the Greek speaker. One of the major problems is the lack
of assimilations and elisions in the Greek language, this ca