pronunciation matters ! pronunciation matters · that teaching phonology ... rhythm & weak...

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pronunciation MATTers pronunCIAtion matters

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

1)  The impact on speaking

a)  poor intelligibility

b)  avoidance of vocabulary

c)  avoidance of structures

mirador

If I’d known, I’d’ve learned Italian

Grzegorz

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

2)  The impact on listening

a)  recognition

i.  phonemes

ii.  word stress

iii.  sentence stress

Yes, he’s very IMportant

Who HASN’T finished?

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

2)  The impact on listening

b)  overload

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

3)  The impact on writing

a)  invented spelling

b)  misspelling

Hake with crap sauce

Łódź

This suggests strongly that teaching phonology will help L2 learners to read better

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

4)  The impact on reading

Catherine Walter (Speak Out! 41, 2009)

This suggests strongly that teaching phonology will help L2 learners to read better

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

4)  The impact on reading

a)  the phonological loop (Catherine Walter)

If L2 phonemes are not well distinguished from one another, a small amount of decay in the phonological loop might make it difficult or impossible to link the phonological forms in the loop to the words in the L2 mental lexicon.

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

This doesn’t mean that the L2 reader has to have a native-like realisation of each L2 phoneme; …

… only that s/he has to have a distinctive …. representation for each phoneme, so that s/he can distinguish words from one another when they differ by a phoneme.

1) Why does pronunciation matter?

4)  The impact on reading

b)  phonics

2) Which model should we use?

1) Standard accents as goals

2) Which model should we use?

2) Other accents as goals

when we studied English in the high school . we had

teachers from New Zealand .

and they tried to show us a really British accent

2) Which model should we use?

One very robust finding in our work is that accent and intelligibility are not the same thing. A speaker can have a very strong accent, yet be perfectly understood.

Derwing & Munro 2008

A good accent

Intelligibility

2) Which model should we use?

2) Which model should we use?

•  most people have a non-standard accent

•  most accents will serve as good models

•  some accents will be more appropriate than others depending on the speaker’s needs & wants, and on the local context

•  accent and intelligibility are different

Summary

3) What are our goals and priorities?

Feature

Vowels (incl. schwa)

Consonants

Clusters

Word stress

Rhythm & weak forms

Connected speech

Intonation

3) What are our goals and priorities?

Feature Accent (RP)

Vowels (incl. schwa)

Consonants

Clusters

Word stress

Rhythm & weak forms

Connected speech

Intonation

3) What are our goals and priorities?

Feature Accent (RP)

Vowels (incl. schwa) VIP

Consonants VIP

Clusters VIP

Word stress VIP

Rhythm & weak forms VIP

Connected speech VIP

Intonation VIP

3) What are our goals and priorities?

Feature Accent (RP) Intelligibility

Vowels (incl. schwa) VIP

Consonants VIP

Clusters VIP

Word stress VIP

Rhythm & weak forms VIP

Connected speech VIP

Intonation VIP

3) What are our goals and priorities?

Feature Accent (RP) Intelligibility

Vowels (incl. schwa) VIP IP*

Consonants VIP VIP **

Clusters VIP IP ***

Word stress VIP NIP

Rhythm & weak forms VIP CCD

Connected speech VIP CCD

Intonation VIP VIP ****

3) What are our goals and priorities?

1.  DO work on individual sounds •  Don’t worry about the ‘th’ sounds •  Don’t worry about ‘BBC’ vowels

2.  DO work on consonant clusters •  Don’t worry about ‘inserted vowels’

3.  DO work on sentence stress •  Don’t worry about the different tones

For our learners

3) What are our goals and priorities?

1.  DO work on your own pronunciation •  Don’t worry about phonetics

2.  DO work on being intelligible •  Don’t worry about your accent

3.  DO work on how to teach pronunciation •  Don’t worry about making mistakes

For ourselves

4) Conclusions

•  Pronunciation matters

•  Most learners are interested in pronunciation

•  Learning goal ≠ standard NS accent

•  Accented pronunciation ≠ unintelligible

•  Intelligible accents share common ground

•  NS & NNS teachers can be good instructors

5) Handbooks

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Robin Walker robin@englishglobalcom.com