teaching pronunciation

Teaching pronunciation involves a variety of challenges. To begin with, our sense of
self and community are bound up in the speech-rhythms of our first language
(L1). These rhythms were learned in the first year of life and are deeply rooted
in the minds of students. Therefore, it is common for students to feel uneasy
when they hear themselves speak with the rhythm of a second language (L2).
They find that they “sound foreign” to themselves, and this is troubling for
them. Although the uneasiness is usually unconscious, it can be a major barrier to improved intelligibility in the L2. A teacher can help overcome this psychological barrier and other challenges by thinking of the goal of pronunciation instruction not as helping students to sound like native speakers but as helping them to learn the core elements of spoken English so that they can be easily understood by others. In other words, teachers and students can overcome the frustrations, difficulties, and boredom often associated with pronunciation by focusing their attention on the development of pronunciation that is “listener friendly.” After all, English pronunciation does not amount to mastery of a list of sounds or isolated words. Instead, it amounts to learning and practicing the specifically English way of making a speaker’s thoughts easy to follow.

Communication in spoken English is organized by “musical signals.” There
are two aspects to these signals – rhythm and melody – and the combination of
these two aspects may be called prosody. Often, the term prosody is used to mean rhythm alone, while the term intonation is used to refer specifically to melody (or pitch patterns). The reason is that for the purposes of teaching
pronunciation, the teacher needs to understand that both these aspects of spoken English work together and are vitally linked. The term prosody provides us with a handy way to refer to the interconnected aspects of rhythm and melody with a single label. Any final sound can be practiced in a new way through linking words together. This kind of practice helps concentrate students’ minds on the particular sound.
numbers and sentences with more than one clause,
students should be given the opportunity to listen to (very) short lectures while
they read the script, marking with a slash (/) where they think they heard a
thought group ending. Pairs or small groups can mark dialogues this way. They can then read the dialogues aloud to the class, to see if others can recognize the thought group signals. The important thing is not where speakers divide the groups, but that they actively think about the need for grouping in order to help listeners follow. Practice helping listeners to follow is invaluable training for listening comprehension because it trains them to think in terms of chunks of thought, not just individual words.
Advanced students can learn a good deal by recording a conversation
of their own with somebody outside of a classroom setting, that is, in a live
context. When listening to the recording later, they can transcribe some of the
exchanges and then note where changing intonational emphasis and phrasing
could have improved communication. Traditional pronunciation training usually focuses on minimal-pair drilling of vowel and consonant sounds, concentrating on individual sounds that are hard for students to hear or produce, in the hopes of achieving “mastery of the English sound system.” Unfortunately, this kind of drilling often produces depressing results and tends to take up a great deal of available classroom time. Considering an approach to teaching individual English sounds that takes into consideration the larger prosodic framework of spoken English and sets some priorities for which sounds should be addressed first, and how. It is terribly inefficient to teach individual sounds without establishing some basic understanding of the English system of rhythm and melody. For one thing, without an understanding of English prosody, students will end up practicing English sounds in their L1 rhythm. This is a common problem in many ESL/ELT classrooms. The rhythmic structure of each language supplies a timing context that makes it easier to reach the target sound. So, learning about the L2’s rhythm will make it easier for students to pronounce L2 sounds. Conversely, not learning about the target L2 rhythm will make the task more difficult. It has been said, for instance, that it is hard to make clear Spanish consonants if you are speaking in a Portuguese rhythm. So rhythm training is a precondition to good, clear target sounds. Without a sufficient, threshold-level mastery of the English prosodic system, learners’ intelligibility and listening comprehension will not advance, no matter how much effort is made drilling individual sounds. That is why the highest priority must be given to rhythm and melody in whatever time is available for teaching pronunciation. If there is more time, then other lower priority topics can be addressed (e.g., the sound of the letters th, the difference between the sounds associated with r and l, etc.), but priority must be given to prosody.

Teachers are often hesitant to tackle rhythm and melody in class
because these topics are perceived as complicated and full of nuance. Textbooks on the subject tend to be intimidating because they present so many rules. However, while intonation analysis can get very complicated, teaching a threshold level of understanding of the core system is actually quite simple at its most basic level. If there is only time to teach awareness of the core system and practice these vital rhythmic and melodic cues, as well as certain critical sounds, students will have achieved a great deal of communicative competence. But if these prosodic cues are not taught, then efforts at achieving communicative competence by drilling individual sounds will prove frustrating. After all, practicing pronunciation by focusing only on individual sounds is like using only part of the language. As one teacher trainee put it after training course, “Practicing pronunciation without prosody is like teaching ballroom dancing, only the students must stand still, practice without a partner, and without music.” Second language learners do not hear intonation very well. When they listen to speech, they are powerfully distracted from paying attention to pitch changes because they are struggling to understand sounds, vocabulary, and grammar. Students need to use intonation interactively and not simply mimic melodic patterns. Therefore, an essential part of teaching the communicative value of intonation is to use exercises in which the listener’s answers depend on noticing the speaker’s choice of focus word. Such tasks give each student many opportunities to practice both speaking and listening. Pronunciation has traditionally been taught with a goal of “speaking like a native speaker,” but this is not practical. In fact, it is a recipe for discouragement both for teachers and for students. This has been referred to as “the perfection trap” . A more practical approach is to aim for “listener-friendly pronunciation”. This aim makes sense to a student who hopes to achieve something through conversations with native speakers, whether in the social or business sense. If the listener finds that it takes too much effort to understand, the speaker loses out. So mastering the basics of English communication is sensible. Refinements can come later if the student wants to put more effort and time into learning nuances of spoken English.
Unfortunately, the word pronunciation tends to make people think exclusively
of sounds that get confused, which has traditionally led to dependence on
minimal pair drills. Both because this is inherently an unengaging activity, and
because the results tend to be discouraging, it takes enormous effort on the
part of the teacher to keep a class enthusiastic. Also, teachers tend to think the
subject is very technical, since it is often presented that way in teacher training
courses. Some teachers try hard to teach pronunciation as if it was a course in
phonetics, and this also tends to discourage both teachers and students. Some
course books present impractical stress and intonation rules, further burdening
the teacher. Actually, the core prosodic structure of spoken English is quite
simple and requires little technical terminology. If teachers become aware of the importance of discourse intonation as a simple foundation system, pronunciation becomes much more rewarding for both teachers and students.