Friday 29 August 2014
Views on teaching Grammar
This is not my own production but it reflects my own views on teaching grammar:
http://www.eslbase.com/articles/grammar#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=-&at_pos=0&at_tot=5&at_si=53ff20745645e23a
Article and/or ideas can be expanded by discussing how the teaching or de-learning grammar affects adults with lots of prior exposure and familiarisation - but not acquisition - of grammar structures.
Mistaking had been for was/were, or have been for was/were as well,
or the estuve hablando - talked, for estaba hablando - was/were talking.
The list is long.
http://www.eslbase.com/articles/grammar#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=-&at_pos=0&at_tot=5&at_si=53ff20745645e23a
Article and/or ideas can be expanded by discussing how the teaching or de-learning grammar affects adults with lots of prior exposure and familiarisation - but not acquisition - of grammar structures.
Mistaking had been for was/were, or have been for was/were as well,
or the estuve hablando - talked, for estaba hablando - was/were talking.
The list is long.
Wednesday 27 August 2014
How adults learn...pronunciation
I wrote this a couple of year ago
Things i've noticed
Ensure, entirely, encounter... en- words, one students says she's
always pronounced an, like in French, she was surprised it was /in-/ or
with a schwa sound.
Fail to do.... she heard fair cos she knew fair but not fail. You hear what you know. (She found it hard to understand the concept of fail to ...)
-ure words are all troublesome to many many Spaniards, and it gets really annoying. What works best is to find syllable-equivalents in their language. For Catalan and French speakers it is much easier as they have the same sounds.
measure, pleasure, treasure -sure like genètica, je
Fail to do.... she heard fair cos she knew fair but not fail. You hear what you know. (She found it hard to understand the concept of fail to ...)
-ure words are all troublesome to many many Spaniards, and it gets really annoying. What works best is to find syllable-equivalents in their language. For Catalan and French speakers it is much easier as they have the same sounds.
measure, pleasure, treasure -sure like genètica, je
As for -ture, it's pronounced as tchetchenia in Catalan
future, structure, literature, nature
procedure
decision, television, intrusion... sound like genètica, something that even advanced students have trouble with!
but -ssion, with double s is a different sound, is like shhhhh! the sound you make when you want silence.
s when the first sound of sugar,
usually, sugar, usual, sounds like Joan, the name in Catalan. decision,
issue sounds like mixu in Catalan without the initial m. It works.
busy like business, after all they have the same root!
contrast with bus, boss, biz..busy
In Spanish:
Another question sometimes students is have is the unstressed an stressed sounds involving short i sound and the schwa, and how different the strong vowels sounds sound in different accents and varieties in English. This is a reply I gave to a user of el blog del inglés:
Como probablemente sabrás los sonidos están influenciados por los sonidos precedentes y siguientes, o si estas vocales aparecen en sílabas tónicas o átonas.
Otros ejemplos del problema que nos planteas son minute and chicken or kitchen. Las primeras vocales son i corta, mientras que las segunda vocal que pronunciamos a veces suena un poco más como i y muhcas otras un poco más como schwa verdad?
La sílaba tónica, la fuerte, tiene un sonido muy claro y bien definido. Si hay un diptongo en la palabra, lo más probable es que el diptongo sea la tónica. La pronunciación de estas vocales de sílabas tónicas varía ligeramente entre los diferentes acentos y variedades del inglés. Es normal. Yo creo que es cuestión de acostumbrarse. Por otro lado la/s sílabas átonas, sin acentuar, a menudo tienen la schwa, esta vocal tan común en el idioma inglés que tu dices. Mónica la llama la vocal tonta y la describo como el sonido que emitirías si produjeras un sonido cuando estas durmiendo con la boca ligeramente abierta, una apertura natural, sin hacer ningún esfuerzo con la boca, labios, lengua. Como embobados!
Esta schwa puede ser letras a, una e, una o, una i , u, ou de country , terminaciones como -ure (en inglés británico: future, /fiutcha/ inglés americano fiutchar/, etc. En la misma palabra puede haber tres vocales iguales, letras a, con tres pronunciaciones distintas, siendo la átona, una schwa lo más probale. Manhattan.
En escocés por ejemplo la i corta de fish, sit, bitch, suena muy neutra sin llegar a serlo.
O sea, es normal que suene distinta según los acentos, según los dialectos. Si consultas varias transcripciones fonéticas quizas veas diferentes transcripciones. Además yo a todo esto añadiría que en inglés los sonidos se han tendido a relajar a lo largo de los años, antes las palabras, no solo verbos, se conjugaban y esta conjugación (declinación, como en latin), se fue transformando en una schwa hasta desaparecer. Pues, esto, es como que los sonidos se relajan a veces!
Final sounds, they don't hear them, they don't say them! then you have things like tall for told, fine for find, chain for change (particular obvious in Spanish-only speakers as opposed to catalan-speakers), call for cold. As said, they drop teh final sound and often are not aware of the vowel sound, either! No need to mention the -ed past tense marker! Solution: Liaise, link words noting that the final sounds is pronounced.
I have this French girl whose English doesn't sound too bad to me, but it's more familiarity with her accent than it being truly good: lack of awareness of sounds, she does not speak clearly, she mumbles, which prevents understanding. It's interesting to see how much familiarity with an accent can hide true problems in communication. I have searched for videos of other french people speaking English and when it wasn't all all that clear to me she did understand. Found it funny and saw herself in them.
Another question is that Catalan language has a few more sounds than Spanish which makes it easier for them to pronounce slightly better.
Lack of awareness of o and ou=neutral vowel u (like hope).
That's been an eye-opener and she'll concentrate on:
vocalising, stop mumbling, and fake an accent.
pausing where due and practising good intonation patterns
pronouncing the final sounds of words
liasing when possible, learning the sound of chunk of words, apaatfromthis, wierol(we are all), ...thèalotzev..there are lots of...
learning the different sounds so that she can distinguish words
look at how meaning changes with one sound or another, position of stress, etc
We will look at:
weak forms, when she has gained an understanding of different similar sounds (vowels particularly)
minimal pairs
vowel distinction and homophones
reading phonetically transcribed texts
The experiment continues. Just the mere fact of concentrating on slow reading has made her become aware of sounds and seem a lot clearer. First step is to do it well in class, and next, little by little extend this to real-life situations like the meetings she has to attend, phone calls. This should lead to increased confidence in producing but also in understanding (providing she is familiar with topic, no need to say, which you would expect if work meetings)
I am going to be using stuff from the pronunciation tips link from the bbc learning english website. Great! thanks bbc for all the very useful material you provide us with!
Books, websites and work-related news articles to be found on the net to read out to expand vocab, style and pausing/pronunciation
procedure
decision, television, intrusion... sound like genètica, something that even advanced students have trouble with!
but -ssion, with double s is a different sound, is like shhhhh! the sound you make when you want silence.
s when the first sound of sugar,
usually, sugar, usual, sounds like Joan, the name in Catalan. decision,
issue sounds like mixu in Catalan without the initial m. It works.
busy like business, after all they have the same root!
contrast with bus, boss, biz..busy
In Spanish:
Another question sometimes students is have is the unstressed an stressed sounds involving short i sound and the schwa, and how different the strong vowels sounds sound in different accents and varieties in English. This is a reply I gave to a user of el blog del inglés:
Como probablemente sabrás los sonidos están influenciados por los sonidos precedentes y siguientes, o si estas vocales aparecen en sílabas tónicas o átonas.
Otros ejemplos del problema que nos planteas son minute and chicken or kitchen. Las primeras vocales son i corta, mientras que las segunda vocal que pronunciamos a veces suena un poco más como i y muhcas otras un poco más como schwa verdad?
La sílaba tónica, la fuerte, tiene un sonido muy claro y bien definido. Si hay un diptongo en la palabra, lo más probable es que el diptongo sea la tónica. La pronunciación de estas vocales de sílabas tónicas varía ligeramente entre los diferentes acentos y variedades del inglés. Es normal. Yo creo que es cuestión de acostumbrarse. Por otro lado la/s sílabas átonas, sin acentuar, a menudo tienen la schwa, esta vocal tan común en el idioma inglés que tu dices. Mónica la llama la vocal tonta y la describo como el sonido que emitirías si produjeras un sonido cuando estas durmiendo con la boca ligeramente abierta, una apertura natural, sin hacer ningún esfuerzo con la boca, labios, lengua. Como embobados!
Esta schwa puede ser letras a, una e, una o, una i , u, ou de country , terminaciones como -ure (en inglés británico: future, /fiutcha/ inglés americano fiutchar/, etc. En la misma palabra puede haber tres vocales iguales, letras a, con tres pronunciaciones distintas, siendo la átona, una schwa lo más probale. Manhattan.
En escocés por ejemplo la i corta de fish, sit, bitch, suena muy neutra sin llegar a serlo.
O sea, es normal que suene distinta según los acentos, según los dialectos. Si consultas varias transcripciones fonéticas quizas veas diferentes transcripciones. Además yo a todo esto añadiría que en inglés los sonidos se han tendido a relajar a lo largo de los años, antes las palabras, no solo verbos, se conjugaban y esta conjugación (declinación, como en latin), se fue transformando en una schwa hasta desaparecer. Pues, esto, es como que los sonidos se relajan a veces!
Final sounds, they don't hear them, they don't say them! then you have things like tall for told, fine for find, chain for change (particular obvious in Spanish-only speakers as opposed to catalan-speakers), call for cold. As said, they drop teh final sound and often are not aware of the vowel sound, either! No need to mention the -ed past tense marker! Solution: Liaise, link words noting that the final sounds is pronounced.
I have this French girl whose English doesn't sound too bad to me, but it's more familiarity with her accent than it being truly good: lack of awareness of sounds, she does not speak clearly, she mumbles, which prevents understanding. It's interesting to see how much familiarity with an accent can hide true problems in communication. I have searched for videos of other french people speaking English and when it wasn't all all that clear to me she did understand. Found it funny and saw herself in them.
Another question is that Catalan language has a few more sounds than Spanish which makes it easier for them to pronounce slightly better.
Lack of awareness of o and ou=neutral vowel u (like hope).
That's been an eye-opener and she'll concentrate on:
vocalising, stop mumbling, and fake an accent.
pausing where due and practising good intonation patterns
pronouncing the final sounds of words
liasing when possible, learning the sound of chunk of words, apaatfromthis, wierol(we are all), ...thèalotzev..there are lots of...
learning the different sounds so that she can distinguish words
look at how meaning changes with one sound or another, position of stress, etc
We will look at:
weak forms, when she has gained an understanding of different similar sounds (vowels particularly)
minimal pairs
vowel distinction and homophones
reading phonetically transcribed texts
The experiment continues. Just the mere fact of concentrating on slow reading has made her become aware of sounds and seem a lot clearer. First step is to do it well in class, and next, little by little extend this to real-life situations like the meetings she has to attend, phone calls. This should lead to increased confidence in producing but also in understanding (providing she is familiar with topic, no need to say, which you would expect if work meetings)
I am going to be using stuff from the pronunciation tips link from the bbc learning english website. Great! thanks bbc for all the very useful material you provide us with!
Books, websites and work-related news articles to be found on the net to read out to expand vocab, style and pausing/pronunciation
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When is the right moment to teach pronunciation?
Is there "a" right moment to teach it?
written in August 2011My piece of advice is open up to the little sounds, the -t/d of the past tense, the neutral, almost unnoticeale sound of I am a little bit.../amalitelbit/
get someone to help you identify these little sounds and not only will you pronounce better but you will also understand a lot more
and read read read to gain vocabulary
and try to understand grammar and discourse markers and how it all sounds and comes together
Proven! They like pronunciation, even if they think they don't.
I was discussing with Ester, a student who has drawn up the "essential grammar" wiki around in my wikis, that I think that teaching pronunciation can not be done until they are ready for and open to it, which when they have gained fluency enough to use English and they themselves realise that yes! pronunciation matters. A lot. My statement of "can not be done until they are ready" is possible a bit of an understatement and is wrong as a matter of fact but that's how i have experienced it with my current students.
This reluctancy to do pronunciation, specifically, may be due to their previous experience at school, where hardly any emphasis was given on how important it was so as to be understood and to understand, in other words, for effective communication. The teachers themselves had sometimes poor master of intonation and pronunciation. On how many occasions have i heard my students say their teachers had always pronounced x in a given way, incorrect and sometimes ununderstandable to uncooperative native speakers!
My adults were not open to learning (about) pronunciation when they started English with me, it was and is not until a couple of years have elapsed that now they truly understand and see for themselves the need for improving this "scary" area of the language learning process. Now that they have gained confidence, have a better command of the language and actively use it in their day to day that they see how important pronunciation is. But then again, it's worth "playing with" it early enough to raise a consciousness of the different sounds, so dominoes and quizzes and words-with-the-same-sound competitions may be the way to go with the unacquainted students!
By pronuciation I mean knowing how a word or a phrase or a sentence is pronounced, the sounds. Gaining an awareness of the different sounds of English, the distinction about the number of vowel sounds in particular and how using a different vowel sound or dropping the final consonant can affect the message when speaking to an uncooperative native speaker as some can be (or at least that's the students' perception!). You may add and argue to this, that pronunciation is pitch, intonation and all this hard-to-change aspects. Of course it is, but I am going to delve into this now, as i give it fairly little focus in class myself, much as it can hinder understanding or lead to misinterpretations of the message passed on! on how many occasions have I been told that Spanish sound as though they were angry and shouting at each there when speaking!
Often I find that they know every single word of is said to them but still can not understand. They don't understand because in their heads there's "their" pronunciation of the words, which often doesn't match with the correct pronunciation. That's why they don't understand. It's obviously not as simple as that but I can vouch this is a very important part of their lack of understanding skills. In addition, there's some kind of mental blockage that prevents them from understanding, plus the sound simplification, the so-weak forms, of auxiliaries, prepositions, etc. To help them gain an understanding of these issues and to "train their ears to catch these little sounds" the teacher comes into play. It's hard for many to reach this goal overnight. Awareness of how slow this can be can be discouraging for some but it works. I can vouch for that.
And, to go one step further, it's not only their understanding oral input skills but also their ability to produce understandable output.
Before, they lacked to knowledge, they didn't use English. Now they use it, with native and non-native speakers. So it's now it's the right moment to go more in depth.
I use a lot material from the bbc.co.uk learning english, as i said in How Adults Learn, plus books and plus brainstorming and providing examples for them to discover some kind of rule.
Another issue that often surprises them is that spelling things out in English is so common between native speakers because pronunciation doesn't always correspond to what it may appear from spelling and the other way round. We teach them the alphabet and to spell when they start learning but again, we never put enough emphasis on how an essential and active part of the use of English in English-speaking countries this is. Eureka, now they understand!
NO need to say that the -ed is a very tricky area indeed. I find that with the quizzes from the bbc and other material and by raising an awareness of transitive verbs with -ed in the past and a clear emphasis on the need for an Od, I decided it, I decided (what?) I decide it you'll surprise them and a bit of a surprise makes things more memorable! Not only will you be dealing with -ed pronunciation but the often forgotten Od when it's a pronoun. I think they don't say the -ed past mark because they don't hear it. They don't hear it because we teachers have not trained them enough to catch this little -d/-t/-id sound in speech. There you go, that's some work for us to put a lot of emphasis on.
All those homophones which can be so confusing if they are different word categories!
so and sew
rite and right
pear and pair
The above takes to what i said in an earlier piece of writing of how helpful it can be to learn what other words the word goes with .. the rite of , it is right , our rights, you are right,
a pair of.. the pear, I sew sth, etc. or the baffling pronunciation of -ough, our the different spellings for the sound of earn, and the different pronunciatins of the letters ea/ear, etc. No wonder our students get mixed up and mispronounce words! who wouldn't?! (will expand)
Their own mis pronunciation of words they own -----------------> they don't understand the word when pronounced correctly (and fast and within connected speech)
correct pronunciation= easier to be understood
easier to understand
Spelling is important in English because pronunciation is sometimes arbitrary and unreliable to pronunciation patterns.
I find that using dominoes, the quizzes, and right away exposing them to phonetic symbols and matching transcribed words to pictures, for example, works really well! start with monosyllable words, with a mixture of different-from-letters symbols and the-same-as-letters symbols. It fun and they like it. Where i work the word of mouth makes more and more students do pronunciation. It's so rewarding! Some of them are even transcribing and their pronunciation is certainly improving.Spanish speakers tend to have problems pronouncing:
CONSONANTS
the -sion , decision, sounds
the -sia , Asia, sound
the -ked sounds, looked
the voiced s sound
pronouncing certain final consonants
they find it hard to believe how words with radically different spellings can be homophones.
like so and sew, when sew looks like new (and then you have threw) and new in certain situations sounds almost like the vowels sound of through. Here is my argument when saying the spelling is of high importance in English, anglophones spell words out because pronunciation or spelling are arbitrary in many occasions. They find this bit of information good to know, it makes them feel relieved! As when i tell them that English sometimes struggle to understand Welsh or Scots English! and trust me, no wonder.
Update weeks after the main body of the text: Now I want to introduce pronunciation at earlier stages and see how it goes down.
VOWELS
Yes, something that looks or sounds as easy as a vowel can be one of the hardest things for Spaniards to learn to discriminate. All of the vowels are tricky.