The Problem of Practice and Setting

TechQuest Stephanie Peterson The Problem of Practice and Setting There are many aspects to learning a foreign language. Acquisition of
vocabulary, knowledge of grammatical rules and structures, and learning
about cultural norms and traditions are all important parts of the process.
However, there is another aspect that teachers often neglect and leave on
the backburner, and that is pronunciation of the target language and oral
proficiency. Why is pronunciation and oral proficiency important? Students often begin
learning a foreign language with their peers (most of whom are also lacking
in experience with the FL), and regardless of mispronunciation, they are
usually understandable to the teacher and class. However, at some point, a
student may find himself or herself in a face-to-face interaction with a
native speaker. If the student has not learned proper pronunciation and is
not orally proficient, he or she could be incomprehensible to the speaker.
Communication cannot happen. And quite frankly, that would negate the whole
purpose of speaking in the first place. We all want to be understood when
we speak, and proper pronunciation allows for that. It is important to discuss to what level of oral proficiency a student
should have realistically achieved after completing a high school study of
French. In a study by Isabelle Drewelow and Anne Theobald of the University
of Wisconsin - Madison, they found that the previously held belief that
native French speakers had low tolerance for an American accent in French
was false. They argued that it is therefore necessary for language
instructor to "refrain from misinforming their students that a perfect
native-like pronunciation is vital to successful communication with native
speakers." [i] I find this argument to be slightly ironic. Achieving
perfect, native-like pronunciation is nearly impossible for a non-native
speaker after a certain age. In fact, I would argue that in most schools,
there is not enough focus on correct pronunciation in general, much less on
"perfect, native-like pronunciation." However, the important thing to
remember is that the goal is not perfect pronunciation, but comprehensible
pronunciation. After studying French in high school, for whatever length of
time, but increasingly so in the more advanced levels, a student should be
speaking French in such a way that he or she would be comprehensible to a
native speaker. We must also discuss why a teacher might neglect teaching students about
proper pronunciation. For this project, I will focus specifically on
learning French, for some reasons I must explain. Most Spanish teachers do
spend quite a bit of time teaching students about Spanish's 5 vowels, which
are always consistent and are always pronounced. The orthography matches
the pronunciation nearly 100% of the time. However, French has over 16
vowels, many of which do not exist in the English language. In French,
orthography does not match pronunciation, for example the letters "eau"
make one single vowel sound "oh". There are many pronunciation rules and
also many exceptions to the rules. It can be confusing for students and
teachers alike. A teacher cannot teach proper French pronunciation unless
his or her own pronunciation is strong, which is often not the case. Many
teachers write off teaching pronunciation due to this confusion and
difficulty, and instead justify it with the explanation that the student
will learn proper pronunciation in college or when the student visits the
country or completes a study abroad program. In this project, I will explore how a teacher might use technology such as
podcasting to teach pronunciation and oral proficiency. The goal is for
students to be able to make French sounds correctly, to connect orthography
to those sounds, and speak with a comprehensible pronunciation and accent.
Technology-Integrated Solution In order to improve pronunciation and accent, students must also have a
phonetic reference point, i.e. the students must listen to examples of good
pronunciation and attempt to analyze and mimic that. This explains why
students with weak pronunciation tend to have been taught by teachers with
weak pronunciation. However, although a non-native teacher with strong
pronunciation is a good place to begin, students must also hear examples of
native speech. The audio exercises that accompany most French language
textbooks are out of date, scripted, and boring. They often do not reflect
authentic speech, and students are not motivated to listen to them.
Therefore, the first step in improving a student's pronunciation must be to
provide the students with authentic, engaging speech. The technology that
can greatly help this first step would be podcasts. In the fall of 2004, Duke University gave each incoming freshman an iPod.
Although they reported a number of benefits in general from this program,
what is most interesting for this study is how the foreign language classes
took advantage of the iPod technology, and what they did with podcasts.
They would listen to authentic materials in the target languages such as
news, song, music and poems. The instructors would create podcasts in the
target language of vocabulary, lectures, and to give oral feedback to the
students. Students could also create their own podcasts to respond to
verbal quizzes, submit audio assignments, and record audio journals. Among
the general benefits, Duke reported a greater student engagement and
interest, and enhanced support for individual learning preferences and
needs. [ii] If one should go into iTunes and search for French language podcasts, a
plethora of options would be available, created by everyone from teachers
to students to native speakers, in every level and on every topic
imaginable. Many of these podcasts are educational, and the some creators
even provide lesson plans and worksheets that go along with their podcast.
Podcasting allows students to listen to authentic, engaging audio that is
likely more relevant and therefore more able to hold their interest than
any audiotape a book publisher can come up with. And downloading podcasts
is EASY. You can set up iTunes to automatically subscribe to a podcast and
download the newest episodes as they become available. A teacher can then
play the files straight from the computer, or burn them onto a CD to use on
a player in the classroom. The same thing is true for students. iPods have truly infiltrated our
culture, and it's hard to find a teenager without one, or some version of
one. The students can download the files on their iPods at home and listen
to them for homework or just for fun. As Steve McCarty from the Osaka
Jogakuin College in Japan (which was actually the first school to provide
iPods to students, even before Duke) explains, "podcasting takes the next
step of pushing sound files to subscribers with portable MP3 players such
as the iPod for listening on the go. This opens up new educational
potential in terms of using hitherto unproductive time for learning."[iii]
Once a student has acclimated their ear to the French language, and can
hear the different sounds, intonation, and accent, they will be better able
to pronounce the language correctly themselves. After sound acclimation, students can begin to reproduce the sounds
themselves. Repetition is necessary, but CORRECT repetition is key. If the
students do not learn the correct pronunciation of a word in the beginning,
they can create a bad habit of always mispronouncing it, and habits are
difficult to change. It is important that the teacher not let the student
continuously mispronounce words, but in a sensitive manner, so that the
student does not feel discouraged from speaking. A difficulty in teaching oral proficiency is the fact that speaking takes
time, which is difficult to find during the regular school day. A teacher
cannot conceivably work with each individual student on his or her
pronunciation during the regular class period. However, with the right
technology, each student can create his or her own brief audio file or
podcast to which the teacher can listen and provide commentary and
correction. A student can save each of these files and witness their
improvement from each podcast to the next. In order to do this, a teacher
and student would need access to a computer, a headset with microphone, and
audio recording software such as Apple's Garage Band or the free open-
source application Audacity. Those without access to a home computer or
headset can use Gcast.com, a website which allows people to create podcasts
using a telephone.
Implementation and Findings *link to worksheets* This project is about increasing oral proficiency, and learning and using
proper French pronunciation. The thing to remember about this project is
that the desired end result cannot be accomplished in one lesson or unit.
This sort of thing is a process that would take place over a duration of
time. For my classroom, I would hope to lay the groundwork of listening
skills, pronunciation, and phonetics over the course of a year or more, in
levels one and two. Later levels would build upon those skills and increase
oral proficiency, but again, this is a process. Listening activities would
be consistent throughout. Phonetics would be taught and practiced symbol by
symbol. Speaking in French would expand from short, simple sentences to
full paragraphs and conversations, but again, this takes time and practice.
Often times students are daunted by French; they are intimidated by the
seemingly nonsensical spelling of the words and the many sounds that are
unlike those they know in English. This intimidation prevents them from
feeling comfortable speaking in French. They worry so much that they might
be saying a word incorrectly instead of focusing on the meaning of what
they're saying. To increase oral proficiency, we must first improve
pronunciation, and to impr