Artículo de Interés/Article of Interest

When I was preparing this article, I asked several teachers what they thought on the subject. Several gave me very valid replies, but I think these two teachers , both of whom have been teaching for longer than we usually like to admit, were particularly helpful: 

THE VOICE OF THE NATIVE EFL TEACHER
1. The American
2. The Brit.

1. "The whole question of teaching pronunciation is complex. The objectives that one sets for oneself and the students of a language classroom are usually somehow predetermined either by the studentsī own agenda, ie. "I want to be able to understand a business meeting carried out in English" or by the present curriculum of the organization or academy in which one is working (level Interm. 3: units 5-10 Headway Int). Pronunciation is usually not treated as a top priority in ether case. Students rarely think of it as important as vocabulary or grammar, and textbook tend to throw it in now and again to be able to fall into the "well rounded textbook" domain.

It seems to me that teachers themselves donīt know where to put pronunciation on their personal list of priorities. I tend to forget about it all too often, as do many of my fellow teachers. I once believed it was the last thing a student would deal with and could be left for when the student already achieved a more advanced level of English. I was very mistaken, and now begin to work on it with total beginners.

The easiest, and perhaps most useful thing for students at all levels is the pronunciation of single words. I am a vocabulary freak, and I have included pronunciation of the word as part of the total assimilation/learning of the word. Nothing new under the sun, I know…. Nevertheless it may be understood that that is important, but I think many of us forget to do it. The syllable stress is not difficult to teach (in comparison, intonation, I feel is a much more complex and abstract musical idea of the language.). Teaching the students a very concrete system to record and pronounce a word with the correct stress is not at all impossible. The circle representation is something I use a lot (Mathematician- ooOo) and I have students add this to their vocabulary notes that they have (endless and unstudied list). This is an easy way to help students with pronunciation from the very first time they use a new vocabulary item. No biggie, I know, but if this information is recycled (THE KEY) than is can be easily mastered by the student. Other words have their own specific difficulties which I also have student note (Island no /s/, does /z/ not /s/ - that /z/ pronunciation is important for students who of course see an s written and pronounce it as an /s/ when it is a voiced /z/, Character the /k/ sound, etc) These little things are important, take no major understanding of phonology and can be easily (/i:zIly/!!!!) assimilated by even the most beginning level students. 

The past tense ""ed" pronunciation is another fairly easy and yet extremely important idea that many advanced learners haven't mastered, for they think it is not important. The idea of adding an extra syllable or not to the word is more important than if they pronounce /t/ or /d/. I have a young woman in a company class who is quite advanced. She speaks on the phone in English a lot and after working with the ed pronunciation for 15 mins every class for about three weeks (2 days a week) she came into class and was delighted to announce that she found that she was much better understood on the phone. Her enthusiastic discovery was contagious and the other students began to take pronunciation more seriously. They have improved a lot in their pronunciation of ed past tense verbs and think twice now before spitting out work-ed. Small point, but important, and NOT OVERWHELMING for the teacher to present.

Maybe that hinders us as teachers. I think WE see pronunciation as overwhelming. I do. I canīt begin to deal with all the jargon and different complex aspects of pronunciation, so I donīt communicate it to my students. We have to believe it is important before they will. I teach what I feel comfortable with. I could learn more, and do try, but it falls by the wayside as I wrestle with clarifying modal auxiliaries.
I have begun to give all students a photocopy of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used in dictionaries and I choose a few of the most problematic sound to go over. Students donīt buy it at first, but with time they do begin to see itīs use. I am no master at the symbols, and donīt pretend to be, but I do find that by writing even the most basic words in phonetic script, the students begin to get an understanding of how totally non-phonetic English is when written. This is a basic fact, and I feel teacher need to make students aware of it by spending a bit of time on principles of English pronunciation and how different it is from Spanish (for us monolingual classroom teachers here in Spain). 

We canīt go for perfection. Nor should we expect it from students. Intelligibility is my goal (as in the case with the woman and the ed pronunciation.) Awareness is the key. We have to help students become aware of very basic ideas. I have a stupid speech that I generally give all my classes when talking about intonation. My "speech" is intended to just show students that English does have a much wider range of pitch than Spanish. I put a chart/graph on the board and show the range of Spanish pitch which is very limited and compare it to American English, British English (wider than American) and Arabic (more limited than Spanish). I point out that when we say "You're kidding!" with surprise, we cover a very wide range in one phrase. Spanish tend to feel ridiculous (Arabic speakers even more) if they were to copy this exactly. The men may feel effeminate, and all feel like they are being total clowns. Nevertheless, it is a phenomenon of the English language. Monotone speaking communicates boredom to the listener. 

It is this type of general information that must be given to beginning students so that they can start to concentrate on pronunciation from an early stage and incorporate it in their own objectives. If grammatically X does not equal Y when translating from one language to another, than this is also true when translating the idea of intonation, rhythm, etc. I think we as teachers hardly ever make a point to explain this to our students.

Jazz Chants and Small Talk (Carolyn Graham) are two books which I still use. They are the products of someone who is both an English teacher and Jazz musician. Music and songs are based on rhyme and rhythm and pitch and all that good stuff that makes up the communicative possibilities of intonation, stress, etc in a language. Songs and Jazz chants can be used with learners of any age. I have used Jazz Chants with executives of large companies, teenagers and college students. I get into it, present it as a game type activity, and the executives, although they feel childish at first, do feel the power of the chant- for they are full of the power of the language. Teenagers like the repetition and possibility of mastering the chant in a short time. The hardest part is the presentation and acceptance on the part of the learner that it is, in fact "worth it" to embrace as a valid activity. It is not for all (but) I believe in it, feel comfortable with it and can therefore "sell it" to the students. There is a power in music which parallels the power of the music of a Language.

I guess I would have to stress that we as teachers need to become more comfortable presenting and teaching pronunciation. I took a course in teaching pronunciation many years ago…oh God!…at IH. It opened my head to possibilities. I have forgotten much. Possibly we need to incorporate pronunciation more as part of our personal agenda. In order to do that though, we must feel it is important. I thing that as a general rule teachers play "hit and miss" and incorporate an aspect of pronunciation in our lesson plans when it comes up in the book, or when a question is asked. We quickly go over the pronunciation exercise in the book or answer the question as best we can and move on to grammar. We do not (at least most of the teachers I know) place the importance that we possibly should on pronunciation. That is nothing new. Why then is it still an issue? Is it lacking really? Do students need more work on it? How do we know that? 

A couple of weeks ago I had students read a passage aloud. They took turns. I decided not to read along in the book with them, just to see if I could understand what they were reading by listening. I suprised myself and them. I had to stop them for clarification so much that it became embarrassing to the students reading. Since I didnīt want to embarrass the hell out of them, I decided to stop, and follow along in the book. I took advantage of the situation to point out that we had some major work to do on pronunciation. They agreed. I've done little work since. Why? Well the overwhelming feeling of "where to begin". I started on ed pronunciation, and have begun to look for new stuff to cover. I am also trying to RECYCLE pronunciation activities just as we do grammar activities. Itīs a beginning."

2. "As for the pronunciation....mmmm....well, visitors from IH London used to be horror-stricken or struck by the amount (very little) that teachers at IH Barcelona used to do on this subject with their students. They always used to tell us how the Spanish speakers were amongst the worst pronouncers in mixed nationality classes and we should be doing our five penn'orth to improve things. But it wasn't easy. What I used to do on a very regular basis was work on word stress and schwa because it was so manageable, intonation in questions and question tags and a bit of work on sounds, and trying to eradicate the loCH sound that some students had, trying to get them to pronounce would with a /w/ and not a /g/ at the beginning...little bits and pieces, and the easier ones (eg: /b/ vs: /v/, not rolling the rrrrrrrr) The main problem was that they couldn't see the point and thought it was ridiculous /hopeless. I remember Scott (Thornbury)having a thing about getting people to imagine they were English or American - "Say this as though you were John Wayne, or Brad Pitt, or Hugh Grant" or female equivalents - this worked well with teenagers, they loved mimicking. Play them a tape and ask them what it sounds like and can they make themselves sound like that. Pure imitation, of tapes, videos......Also using different emotions.. 
   
        Of course, I could tell you masses of pron. exercises that students will amuse themselves doing, but how much rubs off.....I did a pronunciation course in London a couple of years ago and used Mark Hancock's "Pronunciation Games" a lot, they really enjoyed it. I'm sure you know it. At IH London they had a language lab so students could listen to themselves, this is really useful I think. So much of pronunciation work is the ability or otherwise to mimic, and submersion in the target language culture - I remember after my first year in Bilbao going back to the UK and realising that when I spoke, my tongue was automatically positioning itself further back and flattening (as in making a /d/ rather than a /t/) even when I spoke English, as I'd been working so hard to learn Spanish in the previous twelve months and spent most of my time with Spanish speakers."

"Fiona"