วันเสาร์ที่ 22 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2556

Pronunciation Teaching

Teaching Pronunciation
Pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds. Word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spoken English, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together in casual speech. 'What are you going to do?' becomes 'Whaddaya gonna do?' English pronunciation involves too many complexities for learners to strive for a complete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost self esteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better job or a least more respect in the workplace. Effective communication is of greatest importance, so choose first to work on problems that significantly hinder communication and let the rest go. Remember that your students also need to learn strategies for dealing with misunderstandings, since native pronunciation is for most an unrealistic goal.
A student's first language often interferes with English pronunciation. For example, /p/ is aspirated in English but not in Spanish, so when a Spanish speaker pronounces 'pig' without a puff of air on the /p/, an American may hear 'big' instead. Sometimes the students will be able to identify specific problem sounds and sometimes they won't. You can ask them for suggestions, but you will also need to observe them over time and make note of problem sounds. Another challenge resulting from differences in the first language is the inability to hear certain English sounds that the native language does not contain. Often these are vowels, as in 'ship' and 'sheep,' which many learners cannot distinguish. The Japanese are known for confusing /r/ and /l/, as their language contains neither of these but instead has one sound somewhere between the two. For problems such as these, listening is crucial because students can't produce a sound they can't hear. Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students increase their awareness of subtle sound differences.
Here are some ideas for focusing on specific pronunciation features.
  • Voicing
    Voiced sounds will make the throat vibrate. For example, /g/ is a voiced sound while /k/ is not, even though the mouth is in the same position for both sounds. Have your students touch their throats while pronouncing voiced and voiceless sounds. They should feel vibration with the voiced sounds only.
  • Aspiration
    Aspiration refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced. Many languages have far fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing the aspiration. The English /p/, /t/, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more commonly aspirated sounds. Although these are not always aspirated, at the beginning of a word they usually are. To illustrate aspiration, have your students hold up a piece of facial tissue a few inches away from their mouths and push it with a puff of air while pronouncing a word containing the target sound.
  • Mouth Position
    Draw simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions. Make sure all students can clearly see your mouth while you model sounds. Have students use a mirror to see their mouth, lips, and tongue while they imitate you.
  • Intonation
    Word or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by humming. This will take the students' attention off of the meaning of a word or sentence and help them focus on the intonation.
  • Linking
    We pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of a series of separate words. 'Will Amy go away,' is rendered 'Willaymeegowaway.' To help learners link words, try starting at the end of a sentence and have them repeat a phrase, adding more of the sentence as they can master it. For example, 'gowaway,' then 'aymeegowaway,' and finally 'Willaymeegowaway' without any pauses between words.
  • Vowel Length
    You can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones. Then let the students try it. For example, the word 'fifteen' would have the rubber band stretched for the 'ee' vowel, but the word 'fifty' would not have the band stretched because both of its vowels are spoken quickly.
  • Syllables
    • Have students count syllables in a word and hold up the correct number of fingers, or place objects on table to represent each syllable.
    • Illustrate syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the syllables of a word. For example, the word 'beautiful' would be loud-soft-soft. Practice with short lists of words with the same syllabic stress pattern ('beautiful,' 'telephone,' 'Florida') and then see if your learners can list other words with that pattern.
  • Specific Sounds
    • Minimal pairs, or words such as 'bit/bat' that differ by only one sound, are useful for helping students distinguish similar sounds. They can be used to illustrate voicing ('curl/girl') or commonly confused sounds ('play/pray'). Remember that it's the sound and not the spelling you are focusing on.
    • Tongue twisters are useful for practicing specific target sounds, plus they're fun. Make sure the vocabulary isn't too difficult.
    • The Sounds of English, American Accent Training, and EnglishClub.com websites below offer guidelines for describing how to produce various English sounds. You can find representative practice words for every English sound on the English is Soup site.
Here are some resources for teaching pronunciation.
Teaching EFL Pronunciation
http://teflbootcamp.com/Pronun1.jpg
Teaching Pronunciation in the EFL Classroom
We have created a podcast to complement this page.  You can download it from our podcast page.
Basic Concepts:
Pronunciation is an area of great difficulty for the untrained EFL teacher.  But, with a little training and practice you can facilitate the improvement of your student’s pronunciation almost as well as the seasoned professional.  For our purposes here, “Pronunciation” will include the instruction of Stress, Rhythm and Intonation.
Everyone is familiar with the old jokes about Asian students ordering “Flied Lice” and, in fact, such pronunciation problems persist today. To a large extent, EFL students have problems with pronunciation and stress primarily due to that fact that their native tongue may not have that particular sound (their native grammar may even prohibit making that sound) and the absence in many languages of “consonant clusters” (strings of consonants).
When studying and teaching pronunciation you will need to learn to use a respelling system to help students get the feel of the language.  Some people advocate the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), but a problem with that system is that few students know it and you will spend an inordinate amount of time teaching it to them only to have them move on to another teacher – who doesn’t use it.  Additionally, there are at least ten other major phonetic systems that appear in dictionaries and pronunciation and listening books.
A simple system is used in the listening book Sound Advice and in the pronunciation book Sound Advantage – both authored by Stacy A. Hagen.  You will see this system used in some of the downloads farther down this page.  A simple system that is intuitive and easy to use is critical to your success in helping your students succeed in speaking in a comprehensible way.
EFL teachers are all too familiar with students that approach them and speak clear complete sentences of something that is not even remotely understandable.  A student may well have a good understanding of English and an excellent vocabulary, but if their pronunciation is so poor that they can not communicate, all is lost.  That is, until you come on the scene!
Expanded Concepts:
Students NEED to hear natural fast relaxed pronunciation as we speak it every day – not a carefully over-articulated overly-pronounced  one-word-by-one-word phrasing of sentences.  Speaking too slowly and too emphatically is a common characteristic of the untrained teacher.
Speaking unnaturally hurts your students for two reasons.  One, they will imitate your speaking style and speak unnaturally too, and two, they will not recognize and understand natural rapid speech when they hear it.   This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t slow your speech down a bit to help your students get some basic ideas, but it does mean that you should speak naturally most of the time.  It also means that you need to TEACH them what natural speech sounds like.  There is some evidence that says that if students don’t speak naturally, they won’t recognize normal speech when they hear it.
Consider the following:
My name is Fred really sounds like Mi naeh miz Fred.
How much is it? really sounds like How muh chi zit?
The idea of the end of one word connecting to the beginning of the next word is called “Linking” and there is some information about it at the bottom of this page.
If you habitually speak slowly and over-enunciate your students will listen for How much is it? and won’t understand when they hear the normal speech sounds of How muh chi zit? The skilled EFL teacher instructs her students in these differences – how to pronounce them – and how to listen for them.
Consider:
Sue wants to get a better water heater – say it quickly in normal speech and see what it really sounds like.
It will sound more like:  Sue wuhnstuh gettuh bedder wadder heeder.
The idea of words sticking together and some sounds becoming smaller is called “Reduction”
and there is more information about reductions at the end of this page.
There is, of course, some variation by country and region in how we speak
- learn to use respelling to help your students get it right.
It is important that you get this concept.
Untrained teachers will say, “I don’t speak like that!”  But they do – you do – everyone does.
What about Respelling?
Should you memorize and use the International Phonetic Alphabet?
No, your students won’t usually know it. Look in a variety of books and adopt a simple method similar to the one used above.
Will your students confuse “respelling” with the correct spelling of words?
No, not if you just tell them, “It sounds like this” while pointing at the respelling.
Students intuitively “get it.”
Must you respell absolutely correctly?
No, but be as accurate as you can.
The way you respell will be different from someone else as we all have some minor variations in our pronunciation.
Word and Sentence Stress
Add to respelling the notion of word and sentence stress.
Many EFL students around the world will have different stress patterns in their language.
When you pronounce words with two or more syllables, one syllable will be stressed more than the others.  Until you practice a bit you may have trouble hearing stress because it is such a natural part of a native-speaker’s speech.  Here is what to listen for:  Tone, length of time, loudness.
For example:
Banana – sounds like buh NAEH nuh
If you listen carefully the middle syllable has a slightly higher tone, lasts longer, and is slightly louder.
Thai students, because of their different stress system, will say: buh naeh NUH
Sentences will have similar stress patterns that students need to learn, and respelling can help them with that too.  Some words are not so important to hear – and are reduced in time, loudness and tone.  Some are more important and are louder, longer, and have a higher tone. The important words are called “Content Words” – they are nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs.  Less important words are called “Function Words” and are pronouns, helping verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions.  These rules are not ALWAYS true, but are good general guidelines.
Example:  My name is Bob when written showing sentence stress sounds/looks more like: my NAME is BOB.
Don’t overdo word and sentence stress.
it is important to speak naturally when teaching your students stress.
You, after all, want your students to speak naturally too.
Think about sentence stress a bit like this:  When you talk on a mobile or cell phone, you often don’t hear every word and you don’t need to.  You get the “gist” of the sentence from hearing the important words.  Those are the words that are stressed in a sentence.  Those are the Content Words.
Word and sentence stress takes a lot of practice.  But the practice is well worthwhile as your students will benefit greatly from your efforts.  Don’t worry about getting it slightly wrong.  It is more important that you just try it and work with it and develop your skills with it.  It WILL make you a much better teacher in the long run.

ข้อคิดและข้อเสนอแนะในการสอนออกเสียง (Pronunciation)
1.  การสอนออกเสียง  ควรบูรณาการกับการสอนภาษา  ทุกทักษะ  เพราะการออกเสียงเป็นปัญหาใหญ่ที่สุดของนักเรียน
2.  ครูที่เชี่ยวชาญในการออกเสียง  ทำให้ชั้นเรียนมีชีวิตชีวาได้  ด้วยการใช้เสียงแสดงอารมณ์  ความรู้สึก  และปฏิกิริยาโต้ตอบในสภาพการณ์ต่างๆ  ทำให้นักเรียนเข้าใจ  การนำภาษาไปใช้ในสถานการณ์ที่แตกต่างกันออกไป  และ...ไม่เบื่อหน่ายที่จะ..ฝึกฝน  ซ้ำๆ  เพราะครูสามารถสร้างความหลากหลายได้
3.  การเรียนรู้และการฝึกฝน  Pronunciation  ช่วยทั้งการฟังและการพูด  ควบคู่กันไป  และยังช่วยเสริมการอ่าน การเขียนด้วย  ทุกทักษะเสริมกัน...ถ้าอย่างหนึ่งดี  ก็จะช่วยให้มีการพัฒนาอย่างอื่นได้เร็วยิ่งขึ้น
4.  Pronunciation  เป็นเรื่องเกี่ยวกับการออกเสียง  ซึ่งเป็นส่วนสำคัญ  ในการใช้ภาษาสื่อสาร  (Pronunciation is the soul of conversation) นักเรียนต้องเข้าใจการทำงานของอวัยวะต่างๆที่ใช้ในการผลิตเสียง  เข้าใจลักษณะเฉพาะ  และกฏเกณฑ์ของภาษา  รวมทั้งวิธีการปรับเปลี่ยน  พลิกแพลง  การออกเสียงตามวัตถุประสงค์และสถานการณ์
เสียง.....เป็นสิ่งที่..ไม่มีรูปร่าง  การสอนเสียงภาษาต่างประเทศ  ที่นักเรียนไม่ได้ใช้เป็นประจำ  เป็นเรื่องยาก  การสอนให้กระจ่างชัดจึงเป็นสิ่งที่จำเป็น  และควรใช้สื่อหลายประเภท  เช่น  ของจริง  รูปภาพ  แผนภาพ  แผนภูมิ  สัญลักษณ์ เครื่องหมายต่างๆ  เทป  วีดิโอ  มัลติมิเดีย  โปรแกรมคอมพิวเตอร์  กิจกรรมการเรียนการสอนก็ควร...ใช้หลายรูปแบบ  เช่น การสาธิต  การใช้แบบฝึก  การเล่นเกมส์  การร้องเพลง  การท่องโคลง Jazz chant , Tongue Twister  การจัดการแสดง การจัดการแข่งขันต่างๆ  และการให้โอกาสพูดคุยกับชาวต่างประเทศ  เป็นต้น 
5.  การเรียนการสอน Pronunciation ต้อง...ค่อยเป็น...ค่อยไป  พัฒนาให้ครบทุกจุด  และแทรกสอน  ซ้ำ  ย้ำ  ทวน ตามความเหมาะสม  โดยปรับเปลี่ยนสื่อ  และกิจกรรมการเรียนรู้  เพื่อให้นักเรียนทำซ้ำ  โดยไม่...เบื่อ
6.  การสอน  Pronunciation  ต้องบูรณาการไปกับการเรียนการสอนภาษาอังกฤษ  ทุกทักษะ  ตั้งแต่ชั้นเล็กๆ  โดยให้ฟังจากสื่อ  ที่เป็นเสียงของเจ้าของภาษา  แล้วพูดตามก่อน  เมื่อโตขึ้นอีกนิด..จึงค่อยๆให้หลักการ  และฝึกฝนทีละน้อย  โดยให้เนื้อหา  และแบบฝึกสัมพันธ์  กับเรื่องที่กำลังเรียน
7.  การสอนภาษาในการทักทาย  ควรบูรณาการไปกับการทักทายครู  เมื่อเข้าห้องสอน  การสอนทักทายในแบบต่างๆ  โดยเขียนเป็นบทสนทนาสั้นๆ  สำหรับใช้กับคู่สนทนาต่างสถานภาพกัน  แล้วให้นักเรียนฝึกพูดจนคล่องปาก  จากนั้นให้ใช้ทักทายกับครู  เมื่อเข้าชั้นเรียนในแต่ละครั้ง  ครูต้องสมมติตนเอง  เป็นบุคคลต่างๆ  แล้วเริ่มทักทายก่อน  เข่น  ถ้าครูทักทายอย่างสุภาพ  ถ้าครูใช้ภาษาอย่างเพื่อน  ก็พูดตอบอย่างเป็นกันเอง  เมื่อเห็นว่าพูดได้คล่องเป็นธรรมชาติดีแล้ว  ควรสลับกันพูดบ้าง  เช่น  ให้โอกาสนักเรียนเป็นฝ่ายทักก่อนบ้าง  ไม่ใช่ให้ครูพูดตามลำดับตลอดปี  และเมื่อเห็นว่านักเรียนพร้อมแล้ว  ครูควรปล่อยถ้อยคำที่พูด.....ให้มีความหลากหลาย  เพื่อให้นักเรียนคุ้นเคยกับการทักทายที่ใช้ในชีวิตจริง


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