Post on 27-Mar-2015
transcript
Accent Snobbism
The Proclaimers 'Throw the R away‘
“I've been so sadSince you said my accent was bad”
Sounding Like a Native Speaker
Kenworthy says: ‘Learners must be able to cope with linkage,deletions, the ‘blurrings’ at the edges ofwords…But they do not need to use allthese features in their own speech’. Thereis a risk of learners sounding ‘false’ or‘affected’ if they try to incorporate suchsimplifications in to their speech (79).
Cockney rhyming slang
Listen to the recording and see how many examples of rhyming slang you can hear.
What ‘patterns’ can you identify in the transcript?
Understanding native speakers
Brown says:
‘We must prepare a student to do without a
number of segmental clues in some parts of
the utterance and we need to be able to
show him what clues will go and what clues
he can rely on finding’, (60).
Favourite Words
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Favourite words
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
• How would you read this aloud?
• How would you read it backwards aloud?
Listener intolerance
Tench saysThere is a level of ‘listener tolerance’ (19)and the ‘threshold of intelligibility’ which ourlearners must remain within to beunderstood. ‘A native speaker of English ismore likely to tolerate mistakes inconsonants, vowels and word accent than inintonation’ (96).
How can you bring this into your curriculum?
Look for ‘patterns’ within contextualised content tasks to raise awareness
Time to Think
Dalton and Seidlhofer refer to:
Ss ‘getting into gear’ p.144 and this car
metaphor is a useful one when we think of
how we drive as a learner
Mirror – Signal - Manoeuvre
Kelly (unpublished)
mirror
signal
manoeuvre produce
prepare
check
Country NamesGermanyFinlandHungaryItalyIcelandNorwayPortugalIrelandSwitzerlandRussiaJordanAfghanistanLebanonAustralia
New ZealandSolomon IslandsPapua New GuineaAlgeriaEgyptTunisiaSenegalDominican RepublicHaitiPanamaBarbadosBrazilParaguayUruguay
Country names
Prep class word stress problems
The Elements
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, seleniumand hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rheniumand nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germaniumand iron, americium, ruthenium, uraniumeuropium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadiumand lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radiumand gold and protactinium and indium and galliumand iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium
Making sounds visual
Kenworthy saysp. 43 ‘One advantage of using drama (KK note - visual, video, gestural) activitieslike these is that there is a cleardemonstration of the way intonationinteracts with gestural and lexical features,which is often lost when only audio-tapedmaterial is used.’
World of English
How appropriate is this
kind of recording for
teaching pronunciation?
Keep sounds in chunks
Kenworthy says:
that we should avoid asking
learners to produce sounds in isolation
because ‘sounds occur in syllables,
surrounded by other syllables’ … ‘it’s
actually impossible to pronounce some
sounds in isolation’ (70).
From brain to mouth
Working with chunks
• I would like to buy a hamburger.
How would teach this pronunciation?
Working with chunks
• I would like to buy a hamburger.
Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau
Working backwards
gerburgerhamburgera hamburgerbuy a hamburgerto buy a hamburgerlike to buy a hamburgerwould like to buy a hamburgerI would like to buy a hamburger(I'd like to buy a hamburger / like to buy a hamburger)
Points to remember
- Try to be understood, not like the Queen!
- Try to understand!
- No sound is an island!
- Present sounds together in chunks!
- Make pronunciation visible (see it)!
- Make pronunciation physical (feel it)!
- Give students thinking time!
What can go wrong …
Biblio