Teaching English Pronunciation -JOANNE KENWORTHY

Longman Handbooti k turguage Teachers

Teaching Pronunciation Joanne Kenworthy

Longman is

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London and New York

Longman Group UK Limited Longman House, Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex CM20 ZJE, England and Associated Companies throughout the world Published in the United States of America by Longman Inc., New York

0 Longman Group UK Limited 1987 AN rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers. First pubiished 1987 Reprinted 1988 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Kenworthy, Joanne Teaching English pronunciation. - (Longman handbooks for language teachers) 1. English language - Pronunciation Study and teaching I. Title PE1137 428.1

I S B N 0-582-7qb23-3 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Kenworthy, Joanne. Teaching English pronunciation. (Longman handbooks for language teachers) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. English language - Pronunciation - Study and teaching. 2. English language - Study and teaching - Foreign speakers. 3. English language Pronunciation by foreign speakers. I. Title. 11. Series. PE1137.K36 1987 428.3'4'07 86-10496 ISBN 0-582-74631-3 Set in 10112 pt Linotron Times Produced by Longman Group (Far East) Ltd. Printed in Hong Kong

Contents Introduction Sounds and symbols Using the cassette

Part one

1 Teaching and learning pronunciation

1.1 The teacher's role 1.2 The learner's role 1.3 Pronunciation goals 1.4 Factors that affect pronunciation learning 1.5 Aspects of pronunciation 1.6 Speaking with a foreign accent 2 Intelligibility

2.1 What is intelligibility? 2.2 Sources of intelligibility problems 2.3 Assessing intelligibility 3 Building awareness and concern for pronunciation 3.1 Word stress 3.2 Rhythm 3.3 Sentence stress 3.4 Weak forms 3.5 Intonation 3.6 The sounds 3.7 Linkage and speech simplifications 3.8 General awareness-building activities 4

Extending and consolidating

4.1 Word stress A summary of English word stress rules 4.2 Using stress in sentences 4.3 Making sounds 4.4 Aspects of connected speech Rules for linkage Common simplz~cationsof sounds List of weak forms 4.5 Intonation

vii

TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

5

Sounds and spellings

work? 5.1 How does the English spelling 5.2 English spelling and learning p~mmmciation 5.3 The causes of spelling problem Spelling and pronunciation e m 5.4 Rules and regularities of E n g W spelling Rules for consonants Rules for vowels 5.5 Teaching suggestions 6

Integrated pronunciation t e d i h g

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Part two

Prollunciation and vocabulary work Exploiting transcriptions of recorded material Integrating intonation Tbie role of self-evaluation and monitoring 0 pportunities to excel

Using 'Part Two

Arabir:

French German Greek Italian . Japanese Spanish Turkish Suggestions for further reading Bibliography Index

llf

Introduction This book is intended to h-lp teachers with an aspect of English which many view as full of perplexities - pronunciation. Teachers observe their learners trying to pronounce English and realize that something is wrong. But exactly what is wrong and why? How does one account for the fact that learners seem to vary so much? Some learners seem to have few pronunciation problems, others have a great many; some individuals progress well, others seem stranded on the proverbial plateau. And why is an individual's performance so variable? Sometimes a learner can make a sound perfectly and then, in the next instant, their perform.>--- X L ~ C seems to deteriorate. Why all this instability? Sometimes it seems that it is not making a sound which is difz?:!!; but knowing when and where to use it. There are some aspects of pronunciation that seem especially elusive, such as intonation. And lastly, the question that is most important for teachers how can the teacher help? What should be taught and how? We will explore the answers to these questions in the two parts of this book. In Part O n e we will examine the basic problems and principles of teaching pronunciation. In the design of any teaching programme it is essential that the process of learning is taken into account, so we begin in Chapter 1 by looking at some basic assumptions about pronunciation !elminom. We a!sc crjiisidsi the goals of pronunciation teaching and the roles of teacher and learner. The notion o i iii:c!!i_pibility is crucial to pronunciation teaching. This notion and its relevance to e,:gblishing priorities in teaching pronunciation will be explored in Chapter 2. !:I Ciapiers 3 and 4 we address the question of how. The suggestions given for classroom activities will be presented under two headings: first, activities for building awareness and concern for pronunciation in learners: second, ways to extend and consolidate their developing skills. In teaching pronunciation we must take account of the written form of English. There is a complex relationship between sounds and spellings and many aspects of pronunciation are not represented in the writing system, or only minimally. Chapter 5 is concerned with this facet of the learning and teaching tasks. Finally, in Chapter 6, we examine the issue of integration and how teachers can achieve 'integrated pronunciation teaching'. Part Two focuses on the specific problems encountered by speakers of particular languages. We examine these areas of difficulty in terms of lemning strategies and teaching strategies. A set of priorities will be indicated for each native language group.

vii

Acknowledgements I owe a great debt of gratitude to all my fellow-teachers and colleagues with whom I have had the opportunity to discuss pronunciation. I would particularly like to mention Helen Oatey, and, especially in the area of intonation, Gillian Brown, Karen Currie de Carvalho, and Vivian Cook. My sincerest thanks are due to those who read the manuscript for their extremely helpful and insightful comments on versions of the book. Finally, I wish to thank my husband, David, for all his help and encouragement. Joanne Kenworthy

Sounds and symbols When a symbol appears between oblique lines / /, this shows that it is a signijicant sound in English. If one of the significant sounds of English is substituted for another, we get a completely different word. For example, two of the significant sounds in English are In/ as in 'no' and /m/ as in 'me': if we take the word 'met' and substitute /n/ for /m/ we get a completely different word - 'net'. The technical term for a significant sound is 'phoneme'. Most of the symbols that appear between oblique lines are similar to English letter symbols (as in the two examples above), but some are specially devised symbols, such as /g/ which represents the sound at the end of the words, 'sing', 'ring', etc. Whenever symbols are used in the text, they will always be accompanied by a 'key word' with the relevant letter(s) italicized, for example /m/ as in 'mean'. Below is a list of the phonemes of English. (The symbols are those used by the International Phonetic Alphabet, but see the note on equivalent symbols on page xii.)

a

Consonants

. /P/ people top

./b/ about big knob

. /t/ television fast

/d/ and read do /k/ car action Id go dog /tf/ watch church /d3/ enjoy joke fudge /$/fast rough fun /v/ television have live /6/theatre /6/ the that these Vowels

/i,/ read meet watching bit written /e/ television bet /a/ act 14 fun /D/ watching /u/ book put /a/ television about /I/

/s/ fast story mess /2/ zoo stories lives /J/ action shoe /3/ television /h/ who have hat /I/live lunch /r/ drive read /m/ me came /n/ enjoy and ran /g/ watching doing /j/ yoga yes /w/ watch /a/ father hard /3/

story caught

/u/ who doing

lei/ play /ai/ I excite /3i/ enjoy /ou/ going yoga /au/ about now

TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

Note on the /r/ sound English speakers use many different kinds of /r/. Scottish speakers use an/r/ made by striking the tongue against the roof of the mouth several times very quickly; this is like the /r/ in Italian or Spanish. Some speakers in the north of England use an /r/ produced with the back of the tongue, very like the French or German type of /r/. Many speakers use a gliding, quite vowel-like/r/, which is produced with the tongue in the middle of the mouth. This is the /r/ used in British RP. (RP stands for Received Pronunciation and is the accent of Standard British English. It shows no regional variation.) In some accents of English (notably RP and some American accents) /r/ is not pronounced after a vowel. So words like 'car', 'far', or 'beer' have a vowel sound at the end, and a word like 'hurt' has three sounds, four. This i j I