1. Bringing Pronunciation Into Every Class
(Revised 2010) Brock Brady
WITH THANKS AND APPRECIATION TO
KAREN TAYLOR AND SHIRLEY THOMPSON.

2. Please, Activate Your Background Knowledge
1. When you've learned/used additional language as an adult, howimportant has pronunciation been to you and your confidence inusing the language?
2. What kind of pronunciation instruction did you have?
3. Generally, when someone is teaching pronunciation what activities do they carry out?
4. In your classes, when you address pronunciation, what do you address and how?
5. How confident do you feel about teaching pronunciation?Why?
6. If a Peruvian student says "River Amazon" is the cause grammaror pronunciation?Then--if you address the error "River Amazon," does it make more sense to address it as a grammar or a
pronunciation problem?
3. What pronunciation features would you address with this student?
4. 5. Basic Understandings about Pronunciation for Students
Intelligibility:I can understand okay, but it takes effort
Comprehensibility:I can understand you easily, you are fluent and it is not hard to understand you.
Please note though, that comprehensibility is a construct that depends on both the speaker and the listener.
NB:IM TORN ON THIS.
6. Everyone Has An Accent
You dont need to fix your accent.Your accent is fine, but you may need to work on being understood.
Accent is often as much a factor of grammar, world choice, and cultural assumptions as it is pronunciation.
Many find accents charming!
I dont have aFrench accent, but the French rarely make a fuss about not understanding me.
7. We need to understand a variety of accents, but only to produce one
So look for opportunities to introduce a variety of different accents for in class listening.
Remember, in some ways, listening is part of pronunciation.As with missing phonemes, if you cant hear it, you probably cant produce it
(at least without some instructional assistance).
8. Accommodation Theory
If I want to be accepted by you, if I want to be seen as a member of the group/community, I will try to make my communication CONVERGE to your norm.
If I find aspect of your community (or language) unpleasant, I will make little effort to converge, in fact I may intentionally DIVERGE from your norm.
9. So what if you dont like the way that other language users sound?
First, you might not be consciously aware of it.
However you may resist sounding like them generally
Americans may find French sounds effeminate,German (or Arabic) sounds harsh and guttural, or that Korean women sound whiny,but Korean women may feel American women seem loud and vulgar.
We areobliged to alert students to such biases.
10. THE MOST BANG FOR THE BUCK
Focusing First on Suprasegmentals
11. Question of Focus and PriorityEsp. in classes NOT dedicated to pronunciation.
vowels
consonants
Segmentals
intonation
linking
stress
reductions
rhythm
pausing
Suprasegmental skills
Social conventions
Non-verbal communication
L1/ L2 identities
Social-affective factors
12. Most unstressed vowels go to .
( has the sound of uh.)
____ __ ___ ____
Most nstressed vowls g t schwa.
It's mport'nt!
13. Know how
syllable-timed and streeess-timed
languages are different.
14. 15. 16. What should L2 users do (and not do) when they arent understood? What could be more important?
Pause more
Use gestures
Enunciate carefully
Literally spell out the phrase
Confirmed that theyve been understood.
Remind themselves that--
often its not you but the context
better to be understood than not embarrassed but also not understood
17. Suprasegmentals
On the Fly
18. Paying Attention to Word and Sentence Stress
19. One of the easiest ways to get students to feel the lengthening of stress syllables is to use (thick) rubber bands
You stretch the rubber band on the stressed syllables and relax it on unstressed syllables.
20. Stress problems produce much incomprehensibility.
Even when learners have acquired the awareness of stress-timing,they may try to produce stress primarily through
or
VOLUME.
intonation
21. Techniques for marking stressed and unstressed syllables and intontation
Dots = unstressed syllables and lines = stressed syllables
22. Look for Chunks!
It is useful, especially for beginners, to teach useful conventional expressions; e.g.,
Id like to
Could you tell me..
Thank you for
On the other hand
As chunks of language which learners can pronounce correctly as chunks and which they can preform when they are speaking.
AND,stress patterns change in chunks:
20, 25,8:25
23. If youre unsure about an intonation pattern, especially if youre a man, fall in intonation at the end of an idea.

If you dont go down in intonation when expected, you may sound weak, indecisive, incompetent, or.

stupid
24. Unless you have a pause, always try to link words together--
especially if a word begins or ends with a vowel sound.
Get
it?
MARKING LINKINGACTIVITY SHOWN NEXT
25. Failure to link or blend results in
If students fail to blend speech they will sound choppy.In fact, if they do not blend they put a little glottal stop(a little burp of air made in the very back of your throat) between each word.
26. 27. Thinking ahead for pronunciation
What pronunciation elements could you highlight in the following lesson?
28. SomeSample Pronunciation Elements to Highlight (from English: No Problem, Level 3 (2004) New Readers Press, p. 82)
29. General Classroom Techniques for Dealing with PronunciationOn the Fly.
30. For all learners, try tohave them listen first before seeing the text.
Need to deTEXTualize learners
X
31. Convince students that written language isnt oral language.
Just because oral language sounds different from written language doesnt make it sloppy
32. Pausing well makes anyone more comprehensible
33. 34. Correcting Pronunciation Errors On the Fly.
35. A WARNING ABOUT LISTEN AND REPEAT
If a learner is having trouble pronouncing a word or phrase, you can kindly model it and have the learner try to repeat up to three times. If they havent got it in three tries, they wont get it at that time.So stop, tell the learner that its okay, s/hell get it later, and move on
36. Remember, if you dont hear a phonemic distinction like /l/ vs. /r/ and youre an adult, you likely never will.
NOTE: You canlearn how to articulate these unhearable
distinctions and memorize what articulation goes with what
word, but that still doesnt mean (in most of these cases) that you
will really hear the difference!
What are some ways we can model articulation of sounds our students cant hear?
37. Exaggeration is Good
When we need to change how we pronounce something, because it is hard to change pronunciation habits,we many times have to exaggerate the change we are trying to make. Exaggeration helps us make sure we are doing it right. Then typically with time, once we control the feature better, we are able to dial back little by little until we can produce the feature without exaggeration
38. BACKBUILDING
If someone is having trouble pronouncing a multisyllabic word or a phrase, they can sometimes manage to produce it by starting with the final syllable and backbuilding to the front, roughly syllable by syllable, until they have the entire utterance.
For example, listen to me backbuild, Id like to order a bottle of wine.
39. BackbuildingPracticeExpressions
Academic WordsDiscourse Markers
ApplicationBe that as it may
UnsophisticatedStudies have shown that
AdvocacyAs we saw previously
Cylindrical
IndustriousnessCommon Expressions
Fluctuation What have you been up to lately?
ColleagiallyDont mention it.
Its nice to meet you.
40. 4. Pair difficult words with words (or spellings) they CAN pronounce
Delivery (dEE liv (as in it) vr EE
Awry sounds like
Question(Kwestion)
A use (youce);to use (youz)
(See handoutalso other representational methods)
41. Make sure students have solid pronunciation skills for the basics
Alphabet
Numbers
Common first and last names
42. Thaaannks!