Long time, no post! It has been a busy few weeks, and then I contracted the Cold of Doom that made me wish I had some HiberNol. I've finally managed to get over it, but my voice is still not 100%.
Anyway...
A few recent conversations have made me think more about the teaching of pronunciation. I read an Arteaga (2000) article back in grad school that claims pronunciation instruction has been relegated to "stepchild status" (p. 340; this is actually my all-time favorite scholarly quotation regarding pronunciation teaching). There are a lot of theories as to why pronunciation instruction sort of takes a back seat, but I think multilingual classrooms make pronunciation instruction difficult to tackle. For example, why teach the p/b distinction when only half your class has trouble discriminating between those sounds? In this regard, I prefer teaching a class of students that are all from the same language group--sure, I might have more difficulty keeping them from using their first language, but I know any pronunciation lessons won't be irrelevant to a large cross section of the class. Still, my classes are usually very linguistically diverse, so I have to focus on things like word stress and other suprasegmentals that usually pose problems to many language groups coming to English.
But pronunciation teaching of individual sounds is still important as I will illustrate in the following situations I have encountered, some recent and some not so recent. How can the errors in following dialogues be explained? (Hint: phonotactics or Best's (1995) Perceptual Assimilation Model).
Dialogue 1
"I like playing board games."
"Oh, me, too. I really like Mona Bowly."
"Mona Bowly? What game is that?"
"You don't know Mona Bowly? It's an American game. It's very bobular. Everybody knows it."
Dialogue 2
"My motto is, 'It's my life.' Do you know 'It's my life'? Actually, it is from a famous American musician called Joan Bone Jobi. Do you know Joan Bone Jobi?"
Dialogue 3
"People will understand you if you say, 'He don't know,' but it isn't correct."
"How they understand me if it not correct?"
"It has more to do with status. Do you know the word 'status'?"
"Yes. Uh huh." (nodding from the whole class).
"Okay, what is it?"
"You walk up and down them."
Dialogue 4
"Mecca, it's an important city for Muslims. Do you know the Hajj?"
"Of course. I know about the Hajj."
"As you know, Billy Graham goes to Mecca. If you are Muslim, you must go to Mecca one time in your life."
(click Read More at the bottom to see the answer)
Anyway...
A few recent conversations have made me think more about the teaching of pronunciation. I read an Arteaga (2000) article back in grad school that claims pronunciation instruction has been relegated to "stepchild status" (p. 340; this is actually my all-time favorite scholarly quotation regarding pronunciation teaching). There are a lot of theories as to why pronunciation instruction sort of takes a back seat, but I think multilingual classrooms make pronunciation instruction difficult to tackle. For example, why teach the p/b distinction when only half your class has trouble discriminating between those sounds? In this regard, I prefer teaching a class of students that are all from the same language group--sure, I might have more difficulty keeping them from using their first language, but I know any pronunciation lessons won't be irrelevant to a large cross section of the class. Still, my classes are usually very linguistically diverse, so I have to focus on things like word stress and other suprasegmentals that usually pose problems to many language groups coming to English.
But pronunciation teaching of individual sounds is still important as I will illustrate in the following situations I have encountered, some recent and some not so recent. How can the errors in following dialogues be explained? (Hint: phonotactics or Best's (1995) Perceptual Assimilation Model).
Dialogue 1
"I like playing board games."
"Oh, me, too. I really like Mona Bowly."
"Mona Bowly? What game is that?"
"You don't know Mona Bowly? It's an American game. It's very bobular. Everybody knows it."
Dialogue 2
"My motto is, 'It's my life.' Do you know 'It's my life'? Actually, it is from a famous American musician called Joan Bone Jobi. Do you know Joan Bone Jobi?"
Dialogue 3
"People will understand you if you say, 'He don't know,' but it isn't correct."
"How they understand me if it not correct?"
"It has more to do with status. Do you know the word 'status'?"
"Yes. Uh huh." (nodding from the whole class).
"Okay, what is it?"
"You walk up and down them."
Dialogue 4
"Mecca, it's an important city for Muslims. Do you know the Hajj?"
"Of course. I know about the Hajj."
"As you know, Billy Graham goes to Mecca. If you are Muslim, you must go to Mecca one time in your life."
(click Read More at the bottom to see the answer)
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