Pronunciation

Macmillan Workshop

Keith Kelly

keithpkelly@yahoo.co.uk

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Kelly (unpublished)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