Many ESL/EFL teachers struggle with teaching pronunciation. The textbook may have pronunciation exercises or the syllabus may require them. However, few teachers have any real idea how to convey this important information besides using the standard practice of listening and repeating sounds and words in isolation, whether the students are successful or not. Teachers are sometimes unequipped to deal with difficulties, besides asking for even more repetition. Students are disheartened because, no matter how hard they might try, they just cannot hear and produce the correct sound. Rather than teachers and students frustrating themselves and each other, why not give teachers the skills to guide their students into achieving an intelligible pronunciation …show more content…
Pronunciation may not seem as important as reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It may not rank as high as vocabulary and grammar. Nevertheless, speakers of English as a second language (L2) are often evaluated on their pronunciation ability (Li, 2016). Unfortunately, native speakers and advanced L2 speakers alike often judge others based on their pronunciation. A speaker with poor pronunciation may be judged as less intelligent and with little to contribute, regardless of the size of vocabulary or the depth of grammar knowledge. Although pronunciation makes a huge difference in communicative ability and intelligibility, it is usually given the least amount of attention in the classroom (Yang, 2017). Improving pronunciation has tangible benefits which include having others understand the L2 speakers and value their contributions. The L2 speaker gains confidence and makes a good impression while the listener is relieved from having to struggle to understand (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016). Equally important, Hu (2017) suggests that learning correct pronunciation is not just about repairing errors; it is about hearing the beauty of the English language. Unfortunately, much of the research is excellent at pinpointing pronunciation problems while only giving vague suggestions for solving the indicated problems. …show more content…
Learners must study the sounds of L2 speech in their minimal units and understand how those sounds are produced within the mouth anatomy. Chinese and English have considerable phonetic differences. While some of the phones are similar, each language has sounds missing from the other. Chinese and English have a similar number of sounds, with Chinese having 40 sounds of which 15 are vowels and 25 are consonants while English has 42 sounds, 15 of which are vowels and 27 are consonants. As many as 14 of the consonants and 8 of the vowels can be considered knotty for English learners of Chinese. On the other hand, English has at least 7 vowels and 9 consonants which are often problematic. Furthermore, Chinese is composed of syllables made up of initials, which are usually consonants, and finals which are vowels. While English syllables commonly end with consonants, most Chinese syllables do not. The exception is some syllables that end with the alveolar and velar nasals, [n] and [ŋ]. Accordingly, this causes some Chinese learners of English to add an extra final vowel sound to English words that end in consonants (Ao & Low, 2016). Even sounds which are similar between the two languages do not always have the same mouth positions. For example, most Chinese vowels are formed further back and lower in the mouth than their English counterparts. English vowels tend to be longer in duration than Chinese
Next, there are consonants: among them are
From this perfromance, I learned that eventhough songs should be sung on vowels, the consonants that one chooses to use can help to create a deeper meaning in a piece of
Moreover, children’s phonological awareness skills can be strengthened and used as a tool to mediate the differences between their language system and SAE. For example, Connor and Craig (2006) evaluated the language
Lynsie and I went to Washington Irving Elementary School every Thursday this semester from 8:45 until 9:45 in the mornings. While at the school, we worked with a first-grade student named Reid. The first two weeks at the school, we spent time getting to know Reid and testing him using the Informal Reading Inventory. We used this test to see what we needed to work on with him to help him master each area.
According to The California Common Core Standards, “students who are at a first grade level should know the difference between long and short vowels and know the understanding of spoken words, syllables and sounds” (citation). They should
Between early 1900’s until 1940’s phonics in education, lack need, however by the 1960’s research on phonics picked up and once again, phonics became a hot topic on(Sears, 2006). Phonics examined by Rodriguez and Denti (2011) gives precise reading instruction to battling readers. In addition, numerous instructors would guarantee for the majority of students some deliberate educating of phonics ought to frame a piece of their direction (Clark, 2015). Do you agree with this statement? (I will take a brief moment to gather the teachers thoughts).
The sound system is more complex and inconsistent in English than in other languages. There are more than 40 different phonemes in spoken English, and there can be a number of different phonemes to represent the same sound (for example, f and ph'). Phonics helps us to look at the different letter patterns together, along with their sounds. Synthetic phonics puts the teaching of letters and sounds into an orderly framework. It requires the reader to learn simpler individual sounds first, then start to put them together to form words, and finally progress to the most complex combinations.
“No Comprendo” (“I Don’t Understand”) is a newspaper article by Barbara Mujica, a professor of Spanish at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In this article, which was published in the New York Times, Mujica argues against bilingual education (teaching students in their native language as well as in English). No Comprendo Last spring, my niece phoned me in tears. She was graduating from high school and had to make a decision.
In English language the same letter can represent a multiplicity of sounds, and different letters can represent exactly the same sound. Because of all this misunderstandings all English language learners use International Phonetic Association where each symbol mean only one sound in an accurate manner When we are studying other languages almost in every of them, including English language, the order of the words in the sentence is really important and
This research study article “Dialect Awareness and Lexical Comprehension of Mainstream American English in African American English-Speaking Children” written and conducted by Jan Edwards, Megan Gross, Jianshen Chen, Maryellen C. MacDonald, David Kaplan, Megan Brown, and Mark S. Seidenberg examines the sociocultural conditions of AAE. The writers hypothesize that children who speak AAE have trouble comprehending words that are not commonly present in the dialect. The purpose of the study is to promote dialectal awareness and dialectal comprehension. The article’s research team is from the University of Wisconsin Madison, which holds one off the nations top Speech Language Pathology programs.
As is evident, English is not my native language, and I did not study any English before I came to America. For this reason, when I learned that I would come to America to study, I was really worried. Also, English pronunciation is very different from Vietnamese pronunciation. For example, Vietnamese does not have any sound, such as “t, d, s, and z”, at the end of each word, and each word only has one syllable. By contrast, in English, we have to pronounce exactly every sound at the end, and one English word may have one, two, three, four, or even five syllables.
During the two day observations, I had the opportunity to experience how Mrs. Carbone teaches listening, speaking, & pronunciation by incorporating different approaches. During my first observation, the class was a follow up class designed to promote listening skills and oral language development. Mrs. Carbone explained that the class
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics As a ESL student, I learned a lot information to teach young students to read, pronounce letters and words. “English is an alphabetic language, and children learn crack this code as they learn about phonemes (sound), graphemes (letters), and graph phonemic (letter-sound) relationship (Tompkins, p.103). My first language`s letters sounds never changed, but in English it changes when different letters come together for example “sh”, “ch” and words are cat and cent. When you read these word, sound is changing first letter of words even same letter.
Some one to ones may be required to support learners with speech, language and communication needs but it is important they spend the majority of their time in the classroom, so they are exposed to the skills they need to develop. The teacher may use some of the following techniques to enable progress when teaching a pupil with communication or language need; reducing background noise, do not finish their sentences also provide opportunities for collaborative group work and discussion (Glazzard, Stokoe & Hughes,
The Aural-Oral Approach in English Language Teaching In English language teaching there are several approaches that can be applied in a classroom. Each one has purpose and gives concern to certain skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) development. One of these approaches is Aural-Oral Approach. The Aural-Oral Approach is based on developing two language skills: listening and after that speaking which is the earlier stage of learning a language (Geri, 1990).