How to teach English Pronunciation to Non-native Speakers of English: Some Useful Techniques
by A. RAMESH BABU (Assistant Professor in English in Kamala Institute of Technology and Sciences, Huzurabad, Karimnagar. A.P. – India)
I would like to think about a few relevant questions to discuss some useful techniques of teaching English pronunciation. First, is it necessary to teach English pronunciation to non-native speakers of English, properly in countries where English is taught as a second or a foreign language like India or Africa? I think the answer is undoubtedly ‘yes’. Whatever language we speak, we should pay special attention to the sound system of that particular language. Every language has its own peculiar features different from others providing it language-specific uniqueness. In India, when we speak English, we should, as far as, like the English and not like the speakers of Hindi/Telugu/Bengali/Kashmir/Marathi or any other language.
My second question is that in which English do we speak? Should we aim at speaking R.P. (i.e. Received Pronunciation of English) or any other variety of English? I would suggest that we should aim at speaking R.P. as long as we do not have standard General Indian English or other English and our goal should be to speak an internationally intelligible and acceptable standard of English. In a county like India, we have as many varieties of English, Urdu English, Kashmiri English, Telugu English and Tamil English etc. It is therefore necessary to speak English which is free from regional influences and which is intelligible and acceptable at the national and international levels. That is, I think, England Pronunciation.
My third question is that who should teach English pronunciation? A teacher who is systematically trained in phonetics in a reputed institute like EFLU is an ideal teacher for the purpose. Those who are interested in English literature and have a sound knowledge of the sound system of English can also teach English pronunciation effectively. We can not say that the teachers who have many certificates and many years of experiences in teaching field can teach very well but it is depend on the teacher’s hard work. But those who have no interest in English language teaching of the sound system of English, they can’t teach English pronunciation effectively.
Teaching of English pronunciation lies outside the scope of English language or literature programmers or schedules in many universities in India. It is quite ironical in the sense that the moment a non-native English teacher utters a word of a sentence in the class; she/he teaches the pronunciation of that word or sentence without even knowing it. Most of the English teachers in India pronounce in General Indian English and this
insensible and unintentional teaching of English leads to the teaching of wrong pronunciation which is profusely injurious. Here are some myths about the English language:
1. English words are not pronounced as they written.
2. There are no rules to English pronunciation.
3. Good readers don’t “sound out” words.
4. Sounding out is incompatible with understanding.
5. People who learning to sound out don’t learn a “slight” vocabulary.
If a teacher teaches in R.P, the students may not understand the words because students are habituated to pronounce in Indian English. Teachers’ mispronunciation of words or sentences is thus reflected in the speech of their students. Most of the times, English teachers are the only models to imitate for many students in the class. How can students of literature appreciate the music of Shelley’s poems when they are not consciously aware of the stress, rhythm and intonation patterns of English? Knowledge of the sound system of English not only promotes better English pronunciation but also helps in understanding and explanation of a literary text. I think it is necessary to teach English pronunciation consciously and effectively. The fact is that Spoken English has inevitably a vital role to play in the teaching of English literature. Spoken English must be taught as a part of academic discipline in our colleges and universities. If it is not, the students do not try to pronounce in R.P. We know that the teaching of English pronunciation should not be neglected, whatever be the aim of our teaching English-language or literature. We cannot avoid teaching or learning English in our universities, colleges and schools because English is a library language, link language in our multilingual country. When we introduce new grammar or vocabulary, it is important to teach our students how to pronounce the word or grammatical structure. Not only does it help them become intelligible speakers of English, it also improves their own understanding of the language.
Now our main alarm is: How to teach English in the present scheme of the things in India? To answer this important question, following are a few suggestions:
There are several theories on how to teach English pronunciation.
Most of them involve rote memorization of the pronunciation of vocabulary words and drilling. These methods can work well for some students, particularly those with mother tongues similar to English, but may leave a large portion of other classes.
The correct method for teaching English pronunciation
To teach pronunciation, start at the beginning, and break the words down into their smallest components. These are called phonemes. Phonemes are the distinct sounds that
help us differentiate words; the /p/ in pat and pan versus the /c/ in cat and can. Begin by letting students listen to these differing sounds until they can identify the various ones in class exercises. Then they can start trying to articulate on a basic level.
It is like a child learning to speak, though at an accelerated speed; phonemes are combined into words, words are strung into sentences. The process is fine tuned over time, by hearing and vocalizing the varying sounds, and intonation and syllable stress will follow. You can find diagrams of the proper way to hold the lips and tongue to properly form more difficult sounds like ‘g’ and ‘r’. These can help reduce frustration among the students when you teach sounds that are articulated inside the mouth, and watching videos of English speakers will help them to start developing proper facial expressions.
A diagnostic test, in order to detect the pronunciation problems of the students, should be conducted before teaching pronunciation. This would help in pinpointing their areas of difficulty and concentration on specific remedial measures to eradicate those problems.
Students should be taught to articulate English sounds clearly. Hence the phonetic symbols of these sounds should be introduced to the students without going into the details of phonetic terminologies and descriptions in order to avoid confusion. This would help students consult English pronouncing dictionaries for difficult words, and avoid spelling pronunciation.
Word stress should be taught while teaching vocabulary. A change in word stress leads to a change or even loss in meaning of the word. Students should therefore be given practice, rather rigorous practice, in word stress. Since in English is both fixed and free, it is difficult for non-native speakers to decide which syllable to stress.
If you have a mixed ethnic class, have the students take turns teaching each other words and phrases from their varying languages; this will foster understanding and patience as they hear different languages spoken with foreign accents. Remember, Japanese spoken with an English or American accent will sound just as different to them as accented English does to a native English speaker. This will also help them improve their pronunciation skills.
Get tapes of English speakers from around the world. Have the class listen to them, then to you as you repeat the dialogue. They can impersonates you and the speakers on the tapes, and see the differences as well as the similarities. These can all be fun group activities to include in your daily curriculum.
Pronouncing every word correctly leads to poor pronunciation! Good pronunciation comes from stressing the right words – this is because English is a time-stressed language.
Here’s How:
English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length). English pronunciation focuses on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, non-stressed, words. Stressed words are considered content words:
Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
principal verbs e.g. visit, construct
Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
Adverbs e.g. often, carefully.
Non-stressed words are considered function words:
Determiners e.g. a, an, the
Auxiliary verbs e.g. am, is, are, was, were
Prepositions e.g. before, of, in, on
Conjunctions e.g. but, and, though
Pronouns e.g. they, she
Tips:
1. Remember that non-stressed words and syllables are often ‘swallowed’ in English.
2. Always focus on pronouncing stressed words well, non-stressed words can be glided over.
3. Don’t focus on pronouncing each word. Focus on the stressed words in each sentence.
English word stress is fixed in the sense that the primary stress always falls on a particular syllable (with a few exceptions which are determined by the rhythmic pattern of the sentence in which the words occur),e.g.
?money , ?father , a?cross a?bout ,
a?head a?go, ,millio?naire, ci?garatte, syste?matic,
In English, word stress is free in the sense that it is not associated with a particular syllable of a word since sometimes primary stress falls on the first syllable, e.g.
?danger, ?valid, ?normal, ?politics, ?photo, etc.
Sometimes on the second syllable, e.g.
restri’ction, par?ticular, a?way, etc.
Sometimes on the third syllable, e.g.
nume’ration, poli?tician, culti’vation
mecha’nician, distri’bution..etc.
Sometimes on the fourth syllable, e.g.
Assim’ilation, asso’ciation, intelli’gentsia, etc
Sometimes on the fifth syllable, e.g.
Intelligi’bility, systemati’zition, and so on.
Sometimes words of the same root have different stress patterns, e.g.
‘Photograph, pho´tographer, photo´graphic phot´ogenic,
´politics, pol´litical, ´politician,
´normal, ab´normal, abno´rmality.
Sometimes words of the same root have the same stress patterns e.g.
Pro´fession, pro´fessional, pro´fessionalism,
o´rigin, o´riginal,
re´vive, re´vival, re´vivalism,
revo´lution, revo´lutionary, revo´lutionize.
Sometimes a change in the stress changes the grammatical function of the same word e.g.
´object(noun) ob´ject(verb) ´record(noun) re´cord(verb)
Similarly in compound words, sometimes primary stress falls on the first element as in
´backboard, ´grandfather, etc.
Sometimes on the second element e.g.
how´ever, after´noon.
While teaching grammar, sentence stress and rhythm can be taught effectively. English has a stress-timed rhythm. In an English sentence, the stressed syllables occur at regular intervals of time irrespective of the number of unstressed syllables between any two stressed syllables, and the time taken between the two stressed syllables is roughly the same. Faulty stress patterns and broken rhythm normally disturb the characteristic English rhythm and distort the meaning of those sentences. This is an area which is most important as well as difficult for foreign learners of English. Hence sentence stress and rhythm should be taught carefully with sufficient practice in the articulation of contracted and weak forms in the class room; they should be trained to stress all content words (meaning bearing elements) and to leave all functional or grammatical words (non-meaning elements) unstressed in a sentence. The teacher should show the stress by making a decisive downward gesture with a closed fist to indicate the stressed syllables.
Intonation can also be taught along with the teaching of grammar. There are rising tones and falling tones in English. Rising tones can be effectively taught while teaching Yes/No questions and falling tones can be taught while teaching statements. Like phonetics, intonation is also practicable. Unless we practice intonation, we can not use the correct tones in sentences. Grammatical functions of intonation should be taught effectively and rigorously using gestures and hand movements. Foreign learners of English are normally misunderstood because of the use of faulty intonation patterns. Sufficient practice is therefore needed while teaching intonation. Same words spoken with rising tune can be polite request and with a falling tune can be an order or a command and may lead to confusion and serious misunderstanding. A sentence can be spoken definitely, hesitantly, angrily or kindly: it can also be uttered with or without interest. These distinctions are generally highlighted by the tunes one uses while speaking. These tunes add something to the words(even though the words remain the same in the meaning without any change) and what is added is the speaker’s feelings at a particular moment. This way of using tunes can be defined as intonation. Intonation can be shown by upward or downward movements of the hands. Teachers should not explain intonation: they should demonstrate it. Facial expressions can also be exploited while teaching various attitudinal functions of intonation. Such techniques although simple, are more effective and more fun for students than complex system of written transcription.
Students should also be provided with a certain amount of training in listening and understanding different varieties of Standard English so that they are able to follow these forms of English, particularly R.P. For this purpose, listening hours could be arranged periodically with proper organization and preparatory work outside the class hours when gramophone records/audio/video cassettes of R.P. speakers re easily available all over India.
These are some techniques of teaching pronunciation in the English classrooms. There could be many more suggestions in this direction. If the proposed techniques are used effectively with that our students will speak English more clearly and efficiently with an intelligible and acceptable accent at the national and international levels. Students are normally attracted towards good pronunciation. We, as teachers, have to make the students to speak in R.P. English so that they even try to speak in the accurate English. It is a general observation that they find it an interesting activity and love devoting time and energy to learning English pronunciation. This shows an earnest desire to improve their English pronunciation. Teachers of English should not disappoint them. In fact they should exploit the students’ enthusiasm for their own success as effective teachers and to produce better English speakers. Teaching pronunciation can be a rewarding experience for yourself as well as your students, and devoting just a fraction of the class time each day will yield great results.
** ELTWeekly team would like to thank A. RAMESH BABU for contributing this research paper.