"Teaching Pronunciation"
методическая разработка по английскому языку

                 Anna Dzekan

      MBEI “Chernomorskaya                            Secondary school #3”

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

 The importance of Correct Pronunciation in Learning language

The first impact of any language comes from the spoken word. The basis of all languages is sound. Words are merely combinations of sounds. Therefore teaching pronunciation is of great importance in the developing of pupils’ hearing (listening) and speaking habits and skills. Teaching pronunciation is of no less importance in the developing of reading and writing habits and skills, since writing is a graphic representation of sound sequences. Wrong pronunciation often leads to misunderstanding. For example, when a speaker or a reader replaces one phoneme with another, he uses quite a different word, in this way altering the sense of what he wanted to say. For example, ‘white’ instead of ‘wide’; ‘it’ instead of ‘eat’; ‘pot’ instead of ‘port’ etc.

Every teacher must understand how important the teaching of correct pronunciation is. The difficulties in English Pronunciation usually experienced by Russian-speaking pupils. Any language has its specific phonic system. This is true for English as well. The sounds of English are not the same as the sounds of Russian, though there are, of course, some sounds which occur both in English and in Russian.

There are many difficult sounds in English for Russian learners, [w], [δ], [θ], [r], [ə:], [ou], [ɛə] for example. To Russian- speaking pupils the combination of sounds [θs], [δz] which occurs in English at the end of a word (months, clothes) is strange and they find great difficulty in pronouncing the word with this sound combination.

The same may be said about the sound [η]. In English it comes in the middle or at the end of many words: ‘English, think, song, sitting, longer’ and presents a lot of trouble to pupils to produce it correctly as there is no sound like this in the Russian language.

The Content of Teaching Pronunciation.

Pupils should study English literary pronunciation which constitutes received pronunciation. This is the language of radio, TV, Theatres, universities and schools. Only when pronunciation is correct, which all main phonic rules are strictly followed, can one understand what one hears and clearly express one’s thoughts in English. The teacher, therefore, faces the following problems in teaching pupils English pronunciation:

• the problem of discrimination; i.e. hearing the differences between phonemes which are not distinguished or used in the Russian language and between falling, using, and level tones;
• the problem of articulation, i.e. learning to make the motor movements adequate to proper production of English sounds;
• the problem of intonation, i.e. learning to make right stresses, pauses and use appropriate patterns etc.

Of course absolute correctness is impossible.

How to teach pronunciation.

In teaching pronunciation there are at least two methodological problems the teacher faces: 1) to determine the cases where conscious manipulation of the speech organs is required, and the cases where simple imitation can or must be used; 2) to decide on types of exercises and the techniques of using them.

Each sound is also contrasted with the foreign phonemes which come close to it and with which it is often confused.

The contrast is brought out through such minimal pairs as: it –eat; spot- sport; wide- white; cut- cart; full- Fool; boat- bought.

The experience of the sound contrast is reinforced audio- visually:

-  by showing the objects which the contrasting words represent. For example: ship-sheep. The teacher makes quick simple drawings of a ship and a sheep on the blackboard or shows pictures of these objects.

- by showing actions. For example, He is riding.- He is writing. Situational pictures may be helpful if the teacher cannot make a stretch on the blackboard.

  - by using sound symbols [ᴂ]-[e]; [δ]-[θ]. Phonetic symbols do not teach the foreign sounds. In learning pronunciation great use should also be made of imitation. Pupils learn to pronounce a new language by imitating the pronunciation of the teacher.

As to intonation if should be taught mainly through imitation, though some explanations and gestures in particular are helpful. For example, the teacher can show the use of the voice by moving his hand up and fall by moving it down.

He can also use the following symbols:

• for stress;
• for pause;
• for using tone, and teach pupils how to use them while listening to a text and reading it.

The secret of success is neither in theory (explanation) nor in practice alone, but in practice informed by theory. Exercises used for developing pronouncing skills may be of two groups: recognition exercises and reproduction exercises.

Recognition exercises are designed for developing pupils’ ability to discriminate sounds and sound sequences. The following techniques may be recommended to check pupils’ ability to discriminate sounds, stress and melody. The teacher pronounces a number of English words and asks his pupils to recognize the new sound. For example, the new sound is [ᴂ]. The teacher pronounces the words: a desk, a nest, a pan, a bed, bad. When a pupil hears the new sound he raises his hand and in this way the teacher sees whether the pupil can recognize the new sound among other sounds already learned or not.

The teacher pronounces the sentence: They left for Kiev yesterday. He asks his pupils to say which words are stresses. If they say left, Kiev, yesterday (or the second, the fourth and the fifth) they hear the stresses words.

Reproduction exercises are designed for developing pupils’ pronunciation habits, i.e. their ability to articulate English sounds correctly and to combine sounds into words, phrases and sentences easily enough to be able to speak English and to read aloud in this language. A few minutes at each lesson must be devoted to drilling the sounds which are most difficult for Russian- speaking pupils. In studying English pupils usually make mistakes in pronunciation, often repeating the same mistakes again and again.The material used for pronunciation drill should be connected with the lesson pupils study. These may be sounds, words, word- combinations, phrases, sentences, rhymes, poems and dialogues.

The material for a particular lesson depends on the stage of teaching, pupils’ progress in the language, their age, the objectives of the lesson, and other factors. For example, pupils mispronounce words with [ou]. The teacher selects words with the sound and includes them in pronunciation drill: no, go, home, alone, don’t.

Pronunciation is a skill that should be developed and perfected throughout the whole course of learning the language, that is why the teacher should use pronunciation drill during the lesson. No matter how pronunciation is taught, pupils will make mistakes in pronunciation of sounds, stress, and tones in the target language.

In the junior stage the teacher corrects pupils’ mistakes in pronunciation because pupils’ ability to hear is not developed yet; besides they need good examples to follow which can be given either by the teacher or by the speaker.

At the intermediate and senior stages pronunciation errors must be corrected both by the teacher and by the pupils themselves, though it becomes possible provided that sound producing aids are widely used since listening to tape- recordings and records develops the pupils’ ability to hear erroneous pronunciation when comparing the pattern pronunciation of the speaker with that of his own.

REFERENCES

1. Baker, J. and Westrup, H. (2003). The English Language Teacher’s Handbook. London: Continuum.
2. Baylis, Lucy. (2002) Teaching English: Pronunciation. BBC  , British Council, BBC world service, Bush House, strand, LondonWC28 4PH, UK.
3. Gallacher, L. (2002) Teaching English: Pronunciation.  British Council, BBC world service, Bush House, strand, LondonWC28 4PH, UK. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1986). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.