Teaching Pronunciation to Non-Native Speakers of English

The best way to teach pronunciation to non-native speakers of English and a lesson design on how you can teach pronunciation to elementary or secondary school students using the approaches.

INTRODUCTION

Pronunciation has not received enough attention to non native speakers of English. As a result, there is no systematic clear guideline of pronunciation teaching. Many non native speakers of English especially Indonesian teachers of English do not know what aspects of English pronunciation to teach and how to teach them. They are fundamentally not sure which English variety they should introduce to students in their classrooms because several English varieties (e.g., American English, British English, and Australian English) exist throughout Indonesia.

Jenkins (2000) pays more attention to interaction between nonnative speakers of English by formulating Lingua Franca Core (LFC)— which is crucial to intelligible pronunciation in EIL context—on the basis of her empirical research. Jenkins argues that the core features of pronunciation should be (1) consonant inventory with the provisos such as some substitutions of /θ/ and /ð/ and rhotic ‘r’; (2) additional phonetic requirements such as aspiration of word-initial voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/, and shortening of vowel sounds before fortis consonants and maintaining the length before lenis consonants; (3) consonants clusters with consideration of omission and addition; (4) vowel sounds; and (5) production and placement of nuclear stress. Jenkins is also concerned with certain holistic factors involved in the production of sounds because “problems in all these articulatory areas have the potential to lead to pronunciation errors at both segmental and suprasegmental levels, and thus to affect intelligibility” (p. 157).

Like the priorities of pronunciation, how to teach pronunciation is also one of the debatable areas in pronunciation teaching f to non-native speakers of English. It is accepted as axiomatic by language teachers that good pronunciation is necessary for the mastery of a new language. However, exactly how they translate this idea into the methodologies and techniques for teaching pronunciation is a question which admits much less clarity and consensus. This situation makes teachers and researchers investigate better techniques for teaching pronunciation. Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (1996), for example, recommend numerous techniques for teaching English pronunciation such as (1) listen and imitate, (2) phonetic training,(3) minimal pair drills, (4) ontextualised minimal pairs, (5) visual aids, (6)tongue twister, (7) practice of vowels shifts and stress shifts related to affixation, (8) developmental approximation drills, (9) reading aloud/recitation, and (10) recordings of learners’ production. These techniques, of course, have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Using songs, games, and tongue twisters can increase students’ motivation in a pronunciation class: motivation is a highly significant factor in pronunciation. The more motivated the student is to im­prove his speech, the more rewarding the teaching will be. The teaching procedures include: 1) read the words containing /ei/ sounds: 2) mark out the stress: 3) sing the song to the students: 4) repeat the words chorally, tapping on the desk to establish the rhythm: 5) put the words into the tune. Eventually, the song helps the students pronounce the phoneme /eö/ and allows the weaker ones to feel a real sense of achievement when they are able to sing it.

Using games in a pronunciation class can also increase students’ motivation. Pro­nunciation and sound-discrimination games can make practice in this area lively and entertaining. MINI-BINGO is a good game for discriminating sounds and WILD GUESS is suitable for practicing the uses of intonation. The teacher can also design the games himself, as far as the games are appropriate to the level and interests of the students. Since they are designed in order to meet the students needs and conditions, they might be very stimulating.

Tongue twisters are particularly useful for the students who have unique pronun­ciation problems. Before teaching the stu­dents the English /s/ and /x/, for instance, the teacher can first ask the students to make a clear distinction between the both phonemes. Then he can let them pronouncing the tongue twister like “She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore” repeatedly.

A certain technique may be worthwhile in a specific situation but cannot be implemented in other situations. It is nquestionably the teacher is the one who decides which techniques are more appropriate to learners because he/she is the only person who knows what is happening in his/her language classroom.

BODY

Among some aprroaches presented in the handout, I would like to design a pronounciation lesson for secondary students using minimal pairs technique. The design is as follow:

1.      Time 

Around 40 - 50 minutes depending on how long youwant to spend on each activity.

2.      Materials

• Minimal pairs flashcards

• Whiteboard/blackboard

• Board erasers or other pointing devices

3.      Objective

Practice minimal pairs pronunciation. Students listen and communicate using the minimal pairs sounds – this activity also teaches them the importance of looking and listening in order to speak. If you teach just one nationality, the minimal pairs you use can be adapted to their specific ‘problem sounds’. However, even if you teach mixed nationalities, there are some minimal pairs that are common problems for many different nationalities.

4.      Procedure

·         Introduce the minimal pairs flashcards and explain that listening to the correct pronunciation is an important part of being able to pronounce difficult sounds.

·         As you go through the flashcards, ask the students to concentrate on looking at the shape of your mouth and listening to the sounds you make before trying to mimic the sounds you make. You could explain how amusing situations might arise from the confusion of words such as rice/lice or coffee/copy.

·         Play minimal pairs bingo to give the students further listening practice.

·         Write the minimal pairs on the board and ask the students to draw a 3x3 grid and randomly fill in the squares with the 9 of the minimal pairs. If you want to speed this exercise up, then allow them to call ‘bingo’ when they have a line of three in a row rather than a full grid. Remember to check the winner’s boards to make sure that they have markedoff the correct words. If not, continue the game.

5.      Main lesson

·         Write the numbers 0 to 9 on the board and write a single minimal pair word next to each question.

·         Read out a telephone number to the students using the minimal pair words. The students must then tell you what number they think they heard.

·         Review the minimal pair cards again and ask a student to read out his/her telephone number to the class. The class then tell the student what number they heard until somebody says the right number.

·         Repeat this a couple of times. Then ask the students to do the activity in pairs or groups of 4.

·         Write the minimal-pairs words on the board in random order. Divide the class into 2 or 3 teams and call a volunteer from each team out to face the board. Give each volunteer a board eraser or ‘pointing device’.

·         Show the flashcards to the rest of the class, who then call out the word or sound. The volunteers must compete to be the first person to touch the correct sound or word displayed on the board and in doing so win a point for their team. Each set of volunteers has 3 turns.

6.      Extension Activity

Practice some tongue twisters using the minimal pair sounds. For example, ‘She sells seashells on the seashore. The shells that she sells are seashells

I’m sure’, or they repeat ‘red lorry, yellow lorry’ as many times as they can.

CONLUSION

It is undoubtfully say that there is no best methods in teaching pronunciation, and to teach pnonunciation teachers should consider some aspects and basic component of it to give a good result in designing a good model for pronunciation teaching.

REFERENCES

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McKay, S. L. (2002). Teaching English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.