Post 101: Teaching Pronunciation Learning View

Post 101: Teaching Pronunciation Learning View

 Phonetics--Learn to position the sound using the body

With Learning view, it is all about book learning, teacher centered classroom, tests and memorization. When I teach French pronunciation or English pronunciation using the Learning View, I teach IPA or Phonetics--Study of sounds across languages. I give the students the phonetic chart of English which describes how you can make sounds nasal or not nasalized (breathing through the nose)/vocal chords (voiced--sound causes vocal chords to vibrate vs. voiceless--sound causes vocal chords not to vibrate/ mouth--open mouth wide or not/ lips--lips open wide/lips closed/lips puckered/tongue--position of the tongue in the mouth). When you teach pronunciation the Learning Way, students learn pronunciation by learning how to breathe or not breathe through the nose, vibrate or not vibrate with their vocal chords, the position of the tongue in the mouth and the position of lips and mouth itself.

Phonetic Alphabet--IPA

Students learn the phonetic alphabet (this is the alphabet that teaches people how a word sounds). When you go to a dictionary, the phonetic alphabet is that funny looking alphabet next to the word that tells you how to pronounce the word. The phonetic sounds of each language differs from language to language. And in some languages like Chinese, you need IPA to teach Americans how the Chinese symbols are pronounced.  Students learning Chinese have to learn the Chinese character and its phonetic equivalent to know how words are pronounced in Chinese.

Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive Analysis is the comparison of 2 language system sounds. Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies.  I use Contrastive Analysis to help students learn the target language.

For instance for American students of French, I contrast the French R with the American R. I tell students that the French R does not exist in English and that the American R is not the same as the French R. I go on to tell American students that the French R is much more similar to the sound k or g in English.  

Also, the vowel sound in the French word, tu/vu/pu does not exist in English. In order to produce this sound, an American needs to say the vowel sound eee in 'feel' and at the same time  pucker up his/her lips to produce the u sound in tu./vu/pu.

Phonetic Sound test

I have my ESL/ELL students read a list of phonetic sounds--both consonant sounds and vowel sounds from an English Pronunciation book, then let's say the student cannot tell the difference between the sounds 'l' and 'r' and says Lonald Leagan instead of Ronald Reagan, then I would teach the student how to say the American R by teaching them how to say the American R by telling them where to place their tongue in their mouth, whether to breathe or not breathe on that sound etc...Many Chinese students have trouble distinguishing the 'L' sound from the R sound in English because the American R sound does not exist in Chinese. 

Once I find out what sounds the student mispronounces, then I teach them how to produce the sound and then have the student practice that R sound by saying Tongue Twisters with the R sound. In this way, repeating and practicing the sound helps the student to memorize how this sound is produced thus helping the student sound more American in his English.