Is it time to teach pronunciation to adults?

When to teach pronunciation to adults

When is the right moment to teach pronunciation?

Is there "a" right moment to teach it?

written in August 2011

My 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

gaining vocabulary and a command of grammar helps you understand 

it all fits in together, each skill contributes to the others.

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.

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.

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

 

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

What's about -ough?

through, though, thought, although
cough enough, through through, though, thought, although
cough enough, through
threw,  rough, bough, thorough, wrought, fought, thought, bought, brought,
taught, caught, ought, drought
threw,  rough, bough, thorough, wrought, fought, thought, bought, brought,
taught, caught, ought, drought

random notes to elaborate on

Tot i no ser molt partidaria de la tecnologia (=estar enganxats a electriciat = contaminem amb emissions), llegeixo amb el mobil llibres en pd, tinc agenda al mobil i mail al mobil, prenc notes amb el mobil quan abans tenia llibreta- M'agrada tenir access a informació i tenir-lo a mà. M'agrada molt la sensació de paper i boli i m'encanta escriure en paper (per feina com per coses personal) pero el mòbil i totes les seves funcions és una gran eina.
Quan vaig de viatge no miro gaire el mail, dos cops en tres setmanes. Desconnecto bastant.
En fi, que no em contestis i així no escriuré! jajajajaja.


april 2014
Aprender idiomas a partir de cierta edad no es facil pero no imposible.
esfuerzo,sin verlo como un "`palo". ver la parte positiva de hacer ejercicios, de jugar y leer, de oir con un proposito
atencion, intereés
repetición

steduent brazilina
research portuguese problmes with english


feb 2014

1. Think about how you learn new words and how you remember things. Do you make lists? do you read texts and underline words and expressions? do you watch television and write down the words and expressions you don't know? do you write them on a piece of paper and look them up/ask someone what they mean?
2. My number one piece of advice is READ READ READ VERY CAREFULLY AND UNDERLINE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS as a way to improve vocabulary and consolidate spelling.

people don't know how to study
how to maximise their learning
they want and need guidance
i may be too independence-oriented in their proces

january 2014
people late or cancel at the last minute --> improvise
groups of 4 ,... only 1 shows up


more general english, less customised, mixed abilities, needs
more dynamic, learning from others
forced talking about topics not really interesting
as a negative; group dynamics

you can't relax..
not have the teacher to myself

jumping from one thing to another without having time to settle knowledge


a lot more work for the teacher
more efficient use of resources, more people same time

more spontaneous, more real

Resources and webs and podcasts and screencasts, and blogs and ...argh. There's no single week that I don't find out about at least one single website worth checking for my teaching. It is becoming overwhelming and a pretty daunting task to even attempt to catch up.

As a teacher, I find myself unable to catch up with the amount of links and resources online nowadays. It's not till now, August, that I can scratch up a bit of time to do the looking into them and
All the talks from publishers this year: Macmillan, Oxford and the Tesol regional event have had the issue of technology and the moving image as their main topic.

This got me thinking. We do all the research, well, teacher trainers and some of us instructors, we put in time learning to use these tools that in theory, and surely would, will help our students enhance their learning and motivate them. Because... they love technology their hands are glued to hand-held devices like tablets and smartphones and communicate using these, don't they? And we just take for granted that they are into technology. Guess what? We are not entirely sure.
Age may be a factor here, my adults get overwhelmed when I email them their homework. When I provide video lessons and online exercises to support our lesson, either in class or some sort of flipped one. One, they struggle to find time to learn how to use them, how to exploit them, most last the autonomy to go back to them "outside" their homework and assignments, most don't know what to do with them.
Still the transition between using technolody and learning, much as it is a fact now, is slow for some.

I've also explored the idea that...I may be doing something wrong. Too many, too many different sources instead of focussing on the ones tried and tested?

Lessons in Ted Ed

My first Ted ed lesson
http://ed.ted.com/on/n4LVpfnj

Ted ed allows you create lessons using any video from youtube and their own Ted Talks.
It's not super intuitive but you'll get there eventually.

When the lesson is ready, and you are in the Think section, move to other questions with very tiny thin grey arrows on the sides of the questions box. Hard to see.
If you want to edit it, again, the Edit button is not easy to find. I'd expect it to be somewhere in the body of the lesson but it's on top of the screen, towards the left, next to the TedEd logo.

Vocabulary with audio

August is a fairly quiet month for most teachers and I am spending some time compiling material I've been using for some time and maybe doing a quick review about it.

https://www.inglespodcast.com/ fantastic for B1+ learner of English, Spanish as a mother tongue.

Vocabulary

http://www.languageguide.org/english-uk/vocabulary/
Good quality pictures covering basic topics
Just place the cursor on top of each picture and hear it pronounced. Place over the red circles for related words.
Topics are basic but language provided can be high.
American pronunciation

www.learningchocolate.com
Lots of topics and very detailed words, high level.
There are also exercises with the vocabulary (matching, filling-in under picture, dragging, dictation, etc). Very good.


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Tag clouds: wordle is the easiest to use

Improving your speaking

Assessing speaking ability is often difficulty as it always runs the risk of becoming very subjective and it somehow depends on objectives, levels and needs and often on one’s expectations. “

“How can I improve my spoken English?”  

Let’s get what I think a few facts straight :

Adult learners aim at speaking English the way they do in their own language. It’s important to point out that this is a fairly unrealistic goal in many cases for a number of factors: age and cultural aspects of languages being two of them.

Age is a limiting factor because it’s been proven that the older we get, the harder it gets to learn grammar and syntax of foreign languages. It does not mean that we lose the ability to learn, it’s just we’ll never speak as native speaker. Most of what we produced is influenced by our L1 mental patterns. 

 Plus as I said above, there are cultural differences in the way we communicate and express ideas. Your culture too influences the way you speak a foreign language, how you understand the world. And thirdly, there is also the fact that if learners struggle to perform well in English is often down to the way they  express ideas in their mother tongue sometimes failing to give a coherent, and a clear line of thought. In an over simplistic statement, I’d say hat if you are too shy, as a personality trait, this shows in how you speak English (or any foreign language for that matter).  

Needless to say, that this varies from languge to language depending on their origin and similarity to the target language, and also on how many languages the learner can speak and a number of other factors. 

These ideas are meant to encourge people to really put it time and effort and be realistic about their learning. I often see people who lose heart because they have unrealistic views on the speed learning takes place. Improving one’s speaking skills in a foreign language as an adult takes commitment and effort. It just doesn’t happen only by speaking for the sake of speaking AND it is mainly when there’s a very real need for the language that our brains and abilities switch to real-learning-and-processing mode. Therefore, not until your mind and body are aligned with the idea that you really need to learn, will you do it.  

Views? Ideas?

Robin Walker 's material.
http://englishglobalcom.wordpress.com/downloads/
lots on pronunciation, which for me is a basic part of my teaching as I understand learning a language as a two way thing: producing but also understanding.
Thanks Robin

For those who like art and the history of Great Britain, The Seven Ages of Britain offers a cool insight in fairly clear English for a good upper-intermediate student and advanced. You can find it on youtube.
Happy learning

slang words

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27405988

New challenge:
A Brazilian student. A doctor who specialises in Developing countries diseases.
I've done a bit of reseach to see what may be the problems Portuguese face when learning English as a foreign language and the truth be told, they are pretty much the same as those of Spanish, both language being of Romance origin.
So, I'll find out whether she aims at fluency over accuracy and proceed accordingly.
Yet, as one of my main concerns with my learners is about pronunciation as a two-way thing: better awareness of sounds means better undersdanding as well as production- I'll have to explore this in this Brazilian L1 context and find out how aware she is of that and what her previous experience is.
http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/pronunciation.html

past simple or past continuous? estuve o estaba?

Muchos de vosotros confundís estuve con estaba cuando habláis en inglés. Vamos a verlo: “Ayer estuvimos hablando de ella.” Vale, el verbo es una perífrasis de dos palabras. Una “estar” y el verbo en gerundio. I was talking/speaking. Qué fácil! Claro como el agua. Pues no. Yo os pongo otra pregunta: decidme como decir en inglés “ayer estábamos hablando de ella (cuando apareció)”. También tenemos el “estar” y el verbo en gerundio. Pero es lo mismo “estuvimos” que “estábamos”? No exactamente, ¿verdad? Y para más inri, hay el “ayer, hablamos con ella” y el "hablábamos mucho con ella".

Pues la explicación es fácil pero no necesariamente lo es el entenderlo para nosotros. No nos podemos fiar siempre de traducir palabra por palabra. Vuestros cerebros procesan el be y el ing. Perfecto. Pero no se tiene interiorizada la idea que el past continuous (was/were+Ving) hace referencia a un momento concreto en el tiempo, especificado más o menos explícitamente en algún momento de la conversación. De ahí la famosa frase que se da siempre “I was having a bath when the phone rang”. Hay la idea de cuando una acción quedo interrumpida, de algún modo, por otra que indica este “momento concreto. Es como “ qué estabas haciendo ayer a las 7 de la tarde? V. que hiciste ayer? El “estuve hablando se refiere a un momento super concreto o no? No verdad? Pues no va con “be+ing” sino como un simple past simple. Yesterday I spoke to her. Como el “Ayer hable con ella”. ¿Por qué los dos iguales?, porqué en inglés no se diferencia este matiz que en castellano sí. El “estuve hablando” como más relajado, menos al grano. Si se quiere indicar esta cualidad pondríamos el “away” detrás del verbo pero esto merece otra entrada.

Todos los verbos “past” ya sea simple o continuous indican una acción acabada en un momento del tiempo ya acabado. Todos. Es igual si es past simple o continuous or perfect for that matter. Esto hay que tenerlo claro. Luego, disgintuismos entre la idea de en un momento concreto o en general. Si es general, si nada interrumpe a nada o al menos no lo mencionamos... usamos el past simple que tal como indica...es simple porque solo tienen una sola palabra. También podríamos hablar del hábito.. antes hablaba mucho con ella. Pero aquí pasamos un poco al “used to” porque puede referirse al hecho que ya no. I used to speak to her often. Si no es el caso, este “hablaba” también es un simple past simple. O sea que para el past simple inglés tenemos: estuve hablando, hablé y hablaba. Vaya tela, no?

En catalán la cosa se complica más porque el equivalente del past simple inglés tiene dos palabras: vaig parlar (hablé / I spoke), vaig estar parlarnt (estuve hablando/ I spoke), estava parlant (quan va arribar) ( estaba hablando / I was talking ), abans parlava amb ella... O sea, a veces se puede confiar en traducir palabra por palabra y otras no. Hay que saber cuándo, y creo que es importante ser consciente de las similitudes y diferencias respecto a nuestros idiomas.

Se podría continuar hablando del present perfect pero hay otra entrada (en inglés) sobre éste, y ya nos salimos del tema.

ps.el talk y el speak los vamos a dar por muy parecidos, o sea que el uso el verbo es sí que se use es lo de menos. Como si cambiamos el talk por go, eat or read.

holistic approach to understand better spoken English

Some ideas to improve your overall comprehension of oral English, and little by little, your own production:

Learn in a holistic way, the best way I can think of is to:

-          Learn in chunks and train your ear to identify how these chunks sound as a sequence of sounds as opposed of just a group of words

-          Study collocations

-          Be aware of how your brain will work out the little grammar words almost unnoticeable to the untrained ear by familiarising yourself with the sequence of sounds.

-          Become aware of things, identify them and then little by little you’ll produce them yourself (hopefully :-))

-          Learn the pronunciation of each sound but remain flexible, open-minded as different varieties pronounce vowels differently.

-          Be aware that sounds are influenced by what’s next to them, notice the position of your tongue when you pronounce n in thin and think and thing.

-          Identify the different parts of the language learning help you understand language as a whole. ?

-          Learn to identify sounds that you mispronounce, how a native speaker pronounced certain words / phrases and learn to accept that it may difficult for you to actually speak like a native at an adult age. But we can train the ear to identify sounds. It’s not easy but not as hard as it may appear.

-          Listen, transcribe and repeat with supervision at first, repeat on your own, read and repeat. Identify sounds and minimal pairs.

-          Be aware that, just like in Spanish, if you change a sound, you change the word. You change the stress of a word and you may potentially change the word too. Unlike Spanish, you change the stress of a sentence or on a word within a sentence and you give the sentence a different meaning/emphasis.

-          In some cases, just one sound and we have the past or the present of a tense/sentence. Learn to identify it and pronounce it. (-ed is often pronounced as t or d)

-          Identify patterns of letters and their most common pronunciation but never take this for granted. Spelling is so common in English because pronunciation is so unreliable. Homophones, minimal pairs... if you know if the word is a noun, adj, verb, etc , your brain will make a quicker connection to the right meaning, provided you know the word.

-          Learn as much vocabulary as you can. You won’t necessarily understand something if you don’t know the word or expression. You’ll brain may make a connection to something it has stored.

-          Get rid of the idea of one word=one meaning. Words are concepts and can be translated in different ways into different languages depending on their understanding of the world. In how many translations can you think of “meet” into Spanish, and German and French?  And of the word dejar in Spanish into English? For an example of what i mean, go on www.visuwords.com