Learner Centered Pronunciation Technique

“MEXTESOL”

NUEVO LEON CHAPTER

NOVEMBER 29TH 2014

Luis Antonio Balderas Ruíz

Learner-centered Pronunciation Teaching Techniques

LEARNER-CENTERED PRONUNCIATION TEACHING TECHNIQUES

THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF PRONUNCIATION TEACHING

LANGUAGE SKILLS ( The Big Four )

LISTENING

READING

WRITING

SPEAKING

LANGUAGE SUB-SKILLS

GRAMMAR

VOCABULARY

PRONUNCIATION

THE FIELD OF MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHING HAS DEVELOPED TWO GENERAL APPROACHES TO

THE TEACHING OF PRONUNCIATION:

INTUITIVE-IMITATIVE APPROACH: It depends on the learner´s ability to listen to and

imitate the rhythms and sounds of the target language without the intervention of

any explicit information.

ANALYTIC-LINGUISTIC APPROACH: It utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic

alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive

information and other aids to supplement listening, imitation, and production.


METHODS AND APPROACHES FOR WHICH THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF PRONUNCIATION IS A GENUINE CONCERN.

DIRECT METHOD: Foreign language instruction gained popularity in the late1800S

and 1900S, pronunciation is taught through intuition and imitation; students

imitate a model- the teacher or a recording – and do their best to approximate

the model through imitation and repetition.

THE REFORM MOVEMENT: The first analytic contribution to the teaching of

pronunciation emerged in the 1890S as part of the reform movement in language

teaching. This movement was influenced greatly by Phoneticians such as Henry

Sweet, Wilhelm Viëtor, and Paul Passy, who formed the International Phonetic

Alphabet ( IPA ).


http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-LANGUAGETEACHING.html

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-LANGUAGETEACHING.html

NOTIONS AND PRACTICES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

The spoken form of a language is primary and should be taught first.

The findings of Phonetics should be applied to language teaching.

Teachers must have solid training in Phonetics.

Learners should be given Phonetic training to establish good speech habits.


THE 1940s AND 1950s

Many historians of language teaching believe that the Reform Movement

played a role in the development of Audiolingualism in the United States

and of the Oral Approach in Britain during the 1940S and 1950S.

In both the Audiolingual and Oral Approach classrooms, pronunciation is

very important and is taught explicitly from the start. As in the Direct Method,

the teacher ( or recording ) models a sound, a word, or and utterance and

the students imitate or repeat.

ORAL APPROACH


http://www.ling.fju.edu.tw/tesl/oral%20approach%20&%20SLL.ppt

THE 1960s

In the 1960S the Cognitive Approach, influenced by Transformational –GenerativeGrammar ( Chomsky 1959, 1965 ) and Cognitive Psychology ( Neisser 1967 ), viewed language as rule governed behavior rather than habit formation. It deemphasizedpronunciation in favor of grammar and vocabulary because, its advocates argued,

( 1 ) Native-like pronunciation was an unrealistic objective and could not be achieved ( Scovel1969 )

( 2 ) Time would be better spent on teaching more learnable items, such as grammatical structures and words.


http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/COG/COG.HTML

http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/glow2002/aounsportiche.pdf



THE 1970s

INTEGRATING DIFFERENCES IN THE WAY THE SILENT WAY AND COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNIG

DEALT WITH PRONUNCIATION

THE SILENT WAY

Like Audiolingualism, the Silent Way ( Gattegno 1972, 1976 ) can be characterized

by the attention paid to accuracy of production of both the sounds and structures

of the target language from the very initial stage of instruction. Not only are

individual sounds stressed from the very first day of a Silent Way class, but learners

attention is focused on how words combine in phrases- on how blending, stress, and

intonation all shape the production of an utterance.


IN THE SILENT WAY the learner attention is focused on the sound system without

having to learn a phonetic alphabet or a body of explicit linguistic information.

THE SILENT WAY TEACHERS also use several indispensable tools of the trade such as

a Sound-color Chart, the Fidel Charts, word charts, and colored rods.

THE SOUND-COLOR CHART was created by Gattegno to bypass the ear ( Gattegno

1985 ).

SOUND COLOR CHART

FIDEL WALL CHARTS


http://www18.ocn.ne.jp/~swcharts/sound_color_charts.html

http://www18.ocn.ne.jp/~swcharts/css/fidel.html

COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING

The Teaching Approach is intuitive and imitative as in the Direct Method, but its

exact content and the extent to which practice takes place are controled by the

learner/client rather than the teacher or textbook.

If students wish to further practice the pronunciation of any of the new utterances

they have learned, they can ask the teacher who acts a Human Computer to help

students when they need some help.

HUMAN COMPUTER: The counselor/computer can be turned on or off at will by the

student, who can request the correct pronunciation of a given phrase or piece of a

phrase from the computer. This provides the raw data for the student to mimic and

repeat until he or she is satisfied with the pronunciation.


PRONUNCIATION TEACHING TODAY

THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

This approach took hold in the 1980s and is currently dominant in language

teaching, it holds that since the primary purpose of language is communication,

using language to communicate should be central in all classroom language

instruction. This focus on language instruction brings renewed urgency to the

teaching of pronunciation, since both empirical and anecdotal evidence

indicates that there is a threshold level of pronunciation for nonnative speakers of

English; if they fall below this threshold level, they will have oral communication

problems no matter how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar

and vocabulary might be.


According to Morley ( 1987 ) the goal of teaching pronunciation is

not to make learners sound like native speakers of English. With the

exception of a few highly gifted and motivated individuals, such goal is

unrealistic. A more modest and realistic goal is to enable learners to

surpass the threshold level so that their pronunciation will not detract

from their ability to communicate.


LISTEN AND IMITATE

PHONETIC TRAINING

MINIMAL PAIR DRILLS

CONTEXTUALIZED MINIMAL PAIRS

VISUAL AIDS

TONGUE TWISTERS

DEVELOPMENTAL APPROXIMATIONDRILLS

PRACTICE OF VOWEL SHIFTS AND STRESS RELATED BY AFFIXATION:

A. VOWEL SHIFTB. SENTENCE CONTEXTC. STRESS SHIFTD. SENTENCE CONTEXT

READING ALOUD/RECITATION

RECORDING OF LEARNERS’ PRODUCTION

KINDS OF TECHNIQUES AND TEACHING MATERIALS THAT HAVE TRADITIONALLY BEEN USED TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION COMMUNICATIVELY


Today we see signs that pronunciation instruction is moving away from the

segmental/suprasegmental debate and toward a more balanced view. This view

recognizes that both an inability to distinguish sounds that carry a high functional

load ( such as / I / in list and / i / in least ) and an inability to distinguish

suprasegmental features ( such as intonation and stress differences in yes/no and

alternative questions ) can have a negative impact on the oral communication –

and the listening comprehension abilities – of nonnative speakers of English.

The underlying philosophy of this text is simple: only through a thorough

knowledge of the English sound system and through familiarity with a variety of

pedagogical techniques, many of which should be communicatively oriented, can

teachers effectively address the pronunciation needs of their students.

LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS


http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/L2MethodsMMdl/sld001.htm

According to Christiane Dalton and Barbara Seidlhofer (1994), pronunciation

has become recently a topic of interest in language teaching, new ideas on how

to teach this aspect of language have been developed in order to provide

teachers with the necessary tools to help students overcome problems they might

have when trying to speak English.

In teaching pronunciation the main objective should be to help students

communicate appropriately. This is one of the goals that Dalton and Seidlhofer

had in mind when they first started to create their work.


The sound system is related with other skills and areas of language, such as listening, inflectional morphology, and orthography

According to Maya León, it is important to teach pronunciation from the very beginning to avoid bad habits that might be difficult to correct at later stages making use of remedial pronunciation classes.

Maya León also stated that it was much easier to learn English pronunciation the correct way from the first moments of exposure to the language.

The author recommended to start teaching a dedicated pronunciation class to beginning students. The instructions were written in Spanish to take the pressure off the students so they could concentrate more fully on the task at hand --learning correct pronunciation. If the instructions had been written in the target language, both teachers and students would have gotten frustrated in trying to understand, and would also have lost motivation for the learning process.


Christianne Dalton & Barbara Seidlhofer in their work they mentioned the use of two

approaches to the teaching of pronunciation, stress, and intonation:

Bottom-up approach: which begins with the articulation of vowel and consonant sounds and

working up towards intonation

Top-down approach: which begins with patterns of intonation and brings separate sounds

into shaper focus as and when required.

(Dalton, 1994, pp 69-70)


According to Celce-Murcia there was a problem for Communicative-Language

Teaching, proponents of this approach have not dealt adequately with the role of

pronunciation in language teaching, and they have not developed an agreed-

upon set of structures for teaching pronunciation communicatively. There were

different kinds of techniques and practice materials that have been used to teach

pronunciation.

“only through a thorough knowledge of the English sound system and through

familiarity with a variety of pedagogical techniques, many of which should be

communicatively oriented, can teachers effectively address the pronunciation

needs of their students (Celce-Murcia, 1996 ).


Material developers and teachers decided that the correct sequence to teach

the target language communicatively to non-native speakers was by first teaching

the suprasegmentals (i.e., rhythm, stress and intonation).

But some other material developers and teachers agreed that a balance in the

teaching of segmental and suprasegmental features of language could bring

excellent results and a positive impact on the oral communication and the listening

comprehension abilities of nonnative speakers of English, our main concern here

Spanish speakers (Celce-Murcia, 1996, p 10).


EXPLORING ENGLISH PHONETICS TEACHING TECHNIQUES

A Graduate Research Project

by

LUIS ANTONIO BALDERAS RUÍZ

Submitted to the College of Graduate StudiesTexas A&M University-Kingsville

in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of

MASTER OF EDUCATION IN ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

April 2002

Major Subject: English as a Second Language


Pronunciation teaching

objectivesPronunciation-

centered teaching

Meaning- centered teaching

Learner –centeredteaching

Agustin Iruela´s article. Translated by Antonio Balderas


Pronunciation teaching

objectivesPronunciation-

centered teaching

Meaning- centered teaching


Training activities

Communicative activities

Agustin Iruela´s article


Teaching objectives

Groups of activities

Focused on pronunciation

Focused on the meaning

Training activities


Knowledge or ability the learner acquires

Getting to know the sounds of the language.

Getting to be able to perceive and produce sounds of the language.

Making use of noncommunicative predetermined sounds activities

Communication making use of determined sounds of the language.

Communication making use of nondetermined sounds of the language.



Teaching objectives

Groups of activities

Focused on the learner

Motivationactivities

Regulating activities

Knowledge or ability the learner acquires

Getting to know the importance of pronunciation in communication

Getting to know and make use of planning, control and evaluation strategies

Getting to know and make use of strategies to progress on pronunciationcompetence

Getting to know and make use of strategies to facilitate language exposure and practice

Getting to know and make use ofstrategies to solve communciation problems



Pronunciationteaching

objectives

Pronunciation-centered teaching

Meaning centered teaching


Training activities


Regulating activities

Motivating

activities

Pre comunicative

Communicative

Structured communication

AuthenticCommunication



What are learning startegies?

Learning strategies are steps taken by students to enhance their own learning.

Strategies are especially important for language learning because they are tools

for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing

communicative competence.

I. Memory Strategies

Direct Strategies II. Cognitive Strategies

III. Compensation Strategies

LEARNING STRATEGIES

I. Metacognitive Strategies

Indirect Strategies II. Affective Strategies

III. Social StrategiesDiagram of the Strategy System : Overview. ( Source: Original ) by Oxford, 1990



Phonetics: The Sounds of American English

English Pronunciation & intonation Exercises

Minimal Pair Practice & Quizzes

Some other sites

Pronunciation lesson plan

REFERENCES

Celce-Murcia, Marianne. (1996 ),Teaching Pronunciation, Cambridge University Press,

New York, NY. USA.

León Meis, Maya. ( 1995 ), Kiss Your Accent Goodbye!, J&C Publishers, Inc.

Arvada, Colorado, USA.

Dale, Paulette.( 1985 ), English Pronunciation for Spanish Speakers:

Vowels, Prentice Hall Regents, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA.

Dale, Paulette. ( 1985 ), English Pronunciation for Spanish Speakers:

Consonants, Prentice Hall Regents, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA.

O’Connor, J.D. ( 1980 ) Better English Pronunciation. 2nd Ed. Cambridge,

New York, NY. USA.

Barrutia, R. Y A. Schwegler, ( 1997 ), Fonética y Fonología Española. 2nd

edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.

Silverstein; Bernard, Ph. D. ( 1997 ), Perfecting the Sounds of American

English, NTC., Lincolnwood ( Chicago ) Illinois.

Nash, Rose, (1977 ), Comparing English and Spanish Patterns in

Phonology and Orthography, Regents Publishing Co., New York.

Carr, Philip, ( 1993 ), Phonology, The Macmillan Press LTD., Houndmills,

Basingstoke, Hampshire and London.

Dalton Christiane, ( 1994 ) Pronunciation, Oxford University Press., Oxford, NY.

Martínes y Martínez, Amparo, ( 1978 ), Curso de Pronunciación del Español para Alumnos

Extranjeros, ITESM, Mty., N.L. 77-87.


Speech Organs. Retrieved on March 22, 2002 from http://wwwedu.nknu.edu.tw/~english/so.htmEnglish Speaking (Ohio ESL ). Retrieved on March 22, 2002 fromhttp://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/speaking.html#PronunciationActivitiesEaston, E.L.( 1998 ). English Speaking: Materials for teaching and learning. Retrieved on March 23, 2002 from http://eleaston.com/speaking.htmlThe ESL Pronunciation Page. Retrieved on March 23, 2002 from http://user.gru.net/richardx/pronounce1.htmlSUGGESTED WEB SITES:Hughes, A. ( 1995 ). Pronunciation of the English alphabet, complete with sound files. Retrieved on March 25, 2002 from http://www.edunet.com/english/grammar/alpha.html Stern, D.A. ( 1999 ). Information on the well-known accent reduction program. Retrieved on March, 25 2002 fromhttp://plainfield.bypass.com/~dasinc/ Stamper, S. ( 1998 ). Did the Cat Get Your Tongue? Retrieved on March 25, 2002 fromhttp://www.cuhk.hk/eltu/ELH/doc4.html Rhodes, B. ( 2001 ). English Pronunciation. Retrieved on March 26, 2002 fromhttp://www.faceweb.okanagan.bc.ca/pron/



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Learner Centered Pronunciation Technique

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