THE ROLE OF TEACHING PRONUNCIATION IN FLT
Коккузова Н.А. - Шетел тілі: екі шетел тілі магистранты
Ғылымижетекші: к.п.н.,Карабаева Л.К.
ОАИУ
Түйін. Мақалада стресс, кідірістер, интонацияның төмендеуі және жоғарылауы және жазбаша жазбадағы басқа фонетикалық құбылыстар мәселесі қарастырылады
Резюме. В статье рассматриваются обозначение ударения, пауз, понижающейся и повышающейся интонации и других фонетических явлений в письменной записи.
Teaching English pronunciation is an area of language teaching that many English teachers avoid. While there are many textbooks and instruction manuals available, as well as books on the theories and methodologies of language teaching there is comparatively little on learning pronunciation.
Certainly, we need to teach pronunciation. There is a big difference between a ship and a sheep and a pear and a bear! When teaching any language as a foreign or second language, our first goal for our students is basic communication, and that can't happen if no one can understand what they are saying.
When teachers decide to focus on pronunciation practise many of them make the mistake of trying to teach pronunciation along with introducing vocabulary. This can work with students who have a "good ear," or who perhaps speak a related language. However it can be hit and miss with students whose mother tongue has no relation to the target language.
This brings us back to the question of whether pronunciation can be effectively taught at all? The answer is yes, of course it can be taught, it's just that the way many textbooks tell us to teach it is actually one of the least effective.
Most textbooks will have you drill pronunciation with repetition of the vocabulary. Some of the better ones will have you work on it with spelling, which is an important skill, especially in English with its many irregularities and exceptions. Very few will start you and your students where you need to start, however, and that is at the level of the phoneme.
The dictionary defines "phoneme" as "any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pad, pat, bad, and bat." This definition highlights one of the key reasons that we must, as language teachers, start our pronunciation instruction at the level of the phoneme. If a phoneme is a "perceptually distinct unit of sound" then we have to realize that before students can consistently produce a given phoneme, they must be able to hear it. Thus the first lessons in pronunciation should involve your students listening and identifying, rather than speaking.
Introduce your phonemes in contrasting pairs like /t/ and /d/. Repeat the phonemes in words as well as in isolation and ask the students to identify them. In order to visually represent the differences they are listening for, you may want to draw pronunciation diagrams for each sound showing the placement of the tongue and lips.
You might also consider teaching your students the necessary symbols from the phonetic alphabet, because although T and D are written differently in English, the TH in "there" and the TH in "thanks" are written exactly the same, despite the difference in pronunciation. This isn't essential, and really works best with adults rather than children, but it is worth it for any students who are highly visual or analytical learners.
You can play all sorts of matching games with this material to make the drills more fun and less stressful. You can have students play with nonsense sounds and focus on the tiny differences between contrasted phonemic pairs, the key being to get them to hear the phoneme.
Once they can hear and identify a phoneme, it's time to practice accurate production of the sound. For this, pronunciation diagrams are useful. Your students need to be able to see where to put their lips and tongues in relation to their teeth. Most sounds are articulated inside your mouth and students have no idea what you are doing in order to produce that particular noise. If you have ever tried to teach a Japanese student how to say an American /r/, then you have experienced the frustration of trying to get a student to produce tongue movements they can't see. There are books out there with diagrams, and with a little practice you can probably produce sketches of them yourself. If you can't, get hold of a good reference book so that you can flip to the relevant pages. Your students will thank you for this insight into the mouth, especially since there is no danger of the embarrassment of bad breath with a drawing.
While this may sound time consuming and unnatural, you have to realize that you are in the process of reprogramming you students' brains, and it is going to take a while. New neural pathways have to be created to learn new facial movements and link them with meaning.
In the classroom, we are recreating an accelerated version of the infant's language learning experience. We are providing examples and stimulus through grammar and vocabulary lessons, but with pronunciation lessons we are also breaking down language to the point of babbling noises so that our students can play with the sounds, as infants do, and learn to distinguish meaningful sounds on an intuitive level while making use of more mature analytical skills that an infant doesn't have.
If you regularly take ten minutes of your lesson to do this kind of focused phonemic practice, your students articulation and perception of phonemes will see improvement after several weeks, and you will get them all to the point where you can practice pronunciation on a word or even a sentential level.
Pronunciation games for children can be found in this English Language Games for Children book: English Language Games for Children
The progress will be more pronounced with younger students, but even adults will begin to give up fossilized pronunciation errors when reciting vocabulary words in isolation. It's time to make the next leap – correct pronunciation in the context of natural conversation. Make no mistake; this is a leap, not because it is more physically challenging, but because you are about to address a completely different set of barriers.
When we teach on the phonemic level, we are struggling to expand physical and neurological limitations. We are taking irrelevant noises and making them significant to our students, while trying to teach them a greater range of articulation with their mouths, tongues, and lips. But when we work on pronunciation at a lexical or sentential level, we are dealing with complex emotional, psychological, and cultural motivations that require their own kind of re-education.
Anxiety, learned helplessness and cultural identity are the three biggest barriers to students' successful adoption of a second language. Not every student will have all of these problems, but it is a sure thing that all of them will have at least one of these problems to a greater or lesser extent. As English teachers we have to find ways to bring these problems to our students' attention in non-threatening ways, as well as suggest tools and strategies for dealing with them.
Anxiety is a fairly straightforward problem to discover. Students who feel a lot of anxiety in speaking are generally well aware of the situation and they know that it is impeding their progress. The impact on pronunciation specifically can be seen in their unwillingness to experiment with sounds, a general lack of fluency that makes it hard to blend sounds correctly, and poor control of the sentential elements of pronunciation, such as intonation and syllable stress. The best remedy for anxiety is highly structured, low- pressure practise. In other words – games.
Jazz chants, handclap rhymes, reader's theatre, and dialog practise from textbooks can all be helpful. Structure and repetition reduce the pressure on the students and allow them to focus on pronunciation and intonation. Classroom rituals, like starting the lesson with a set greeting and reading aloud a letter from the teacher are also excellent ways to integrate pronunciation practise into the rest of the lesson while reducing stress for the student. Rote phrases, drilled for correct pronunciation, will eventually be internalized and the correct pronunciation will improve overall pronunciation.
Learned helplessness is much harder to bring to a students attention, and may be difficult for the teacher to recognize. The term "learned helplessness" comes from psychology and refers to the reaction people and animals have to a hopeless situation. Basically, after trying something several times and consistently being unable to get a positive result, we shut down. We stop trying. If students are getting negative feedback on their English skills, especially pronunciation, and if they try to improve but feel they haven't, then they stop trying. You might think they are being lazy, but in fact they simply don't believe they can improve. They have already given up.
Luckily, once it is recognized, the fix is pretty easy: stay positive, praise frequently and specifically, and periodically tape students speaking so that they can hear the difference after a few months. If you can coax even a little progress out of a student, then tell the student exactly what they just did right (For example: The difference between your short /a/ and short /e/ were really clear that time! Let's do it again!). Tape the students reading or reciting a passage at the beginning of the year, then tape the same passage every couple of months. Play the tapes for you student and let them hear how much they have improved over the course of a few months. They will probably impress themselves, and you!
After the teacher sets the class to work he draws their attention to the words, phrases and sentences of the text which may present some difficulties in pronunciation, namely, stress in some words, stressed words in some phrases and word combinations, proper names, geographical names, terminology, international words, correct division into thought units, and intonation in some sentences which may influence the pupils' comprehension. Word cards, phrase and sentence cards are helpful because pupils should not only hear but see all these.
Teacher’s narration about the author should include some information additional to that given in the textbook or the reader.
In all cases, it must help pupils in comprehending the text by extending their knowledge of the subject.
When pupils are invited to read a text silently, they are to follow a certain sequence in their work at the text. They should read the title and accordingly try to make a guess at its contents. Then they look through the text and read the first paragraph to make sure whether their anticipation is correct. The teacher may interfere in pupils’ reading by asking a few questions arid, in this way, show them whether they are right or wrong in their anticipation. The teacher directs his questions to slow, average, and bright pupils, in the order mentioned to encourage all pupils in their work at the text. After pupils’ anticipation is reinforced they read the text while the teacher wanders around giving some help to those who need it, or he writes communicative tasks (if there are no such tasks in the textbook or the reader) on the blackboard to start a discussion.
If the teacher wants to individualize the classwork, he may use individual cards which he places in front of each pupil. In distributing the cards he, of course, proceeds from each pupil’s aptitude, intelligence and proficiency in reading and speaking so that everyone will be engaged in the discussion. Before the discussion, begins the teacher asks a few questions which cover the contents of the text to check his pupils’ comprehension, or he may use other techniques for the same purpose. Then the discussion follows. The teacher only directs the pupils’ participation.
Homework may include a short summary of the text in-writing, a written annotation of the text, etc.
Silent reading in the classroom is also used for developing pupils’ skills in reading a text which requires the use of a dictionary or a manual for comprehension. The teacher furnishes the class with dictionaries and manuals and instructs them how to utilize these while reading a difficult text. The teacher’s chief concern in this case is not his pupils’ understanding the text. His concern lies in imparting techniques to them which they should acquire to be able to overcome difficulties while reading a text containing unfamiliar words or phraseological units and grammar forms. For instance, pupils have learnt the Present and Past Indefinite Passive, the text contains the Future Indefinite Passive, they have to find the “generalized” table of the verb in the Passive Voice in the textbook or grammar and look up this form there to be able to understand the sentences with verbs in this tense form. In other words, pupils should be taught to work at a difficult text in the classroom under the teacher's supervision for them to be able to do similar work at home independently.
Reference
1. Robertson P. Teaching English pronunciation skills to the Asian learner. A cultural complexity or subsumed piece of cake? Asian EFL Journal, June, 2013. – p. 175
2. Thompson S., Taylor K., & Gray, H. Pronunciation with an Eye on Multiple Intelligences. WATESOL Convention Fall 2011. – p. 102
3. Terrell T. Teaching Spanish pronunciation in a Communicative Approach. American Spanish Pronunciation - Theoretical and Applied Perspectives, ed. Bjarkman, P. and Hammond, R. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018. – p. 146
УДК: 9,93;930.1
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