how best can pronunciation best be integrated into existing curricula
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How best can pronunciation best be integrated into existing curricula?
Keren Stead
Centre for English Teaching, Sydney University
Abstract
Having good pronunciation skills is an important part of every ESL student’s
ability to communicate in English. However, there is currently no systematic
approach towards the teaching of pronunciation at CET. This paper explores
ways in which pronunciation could be integrated better into current CET
curricula, with a particular focus on Academic English/IELTS preparation
courses. It also describes a short study in which naturalistic IELTS Speaking
part 2 recordings and podcast material were used to introduce and practise
the key features of pronunciation and encourage self‐study outside the
classroom. The results of this study show that the majority of participating
students responded positively to the project material and felt their knowledge
of pronunciation features and their confidence in speaking English had
improved to some extent during the research period.
Introduction
Good pronunciation skills are a key element to every ESL student’s ability to
communicate in English. However, being able to produce intelligible language is a
complicated matter involving the accurate production of phonemes, word stress,
connected speech, rhythm, intonation and chunking amongst other factors. Despite
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this complexity, there is currently no systematic approach towards the teaching of
pronunciation at CET. Pronunciation activities are included in most curricula in an ad
hoc and infrequent way and teachers are given the flexibility to include as little or as
much of these or their own pronunciation materials into their lessons, resulting in
inconsistency across the curricula.
It is clear that a much more consistent strategy is needed with regards the teaching
of pronunciation at CET. This project explores different methods and materials that
CET could use to do this and implements a study to test out one of these methods.
Literature Review
In her review of developments in teaching pronunciation & intonation, Jennifer
Jenkins (2004) describes the two key trends in current pronunciation research. The
first of these is concerned with issues of discourse and socio‐linguistic context. The
second explores how technology could be used to test earlier research findings and
develop new teaching pedagogies. Given the possibilities that the latter opens up
for practical application, the following literature review will describe different ways
in which this is being carried out.
Over the last decade, there have been a number of research projects using aspects
of technology to try to improve pronunciation. Several studies (Walker 2005 & Chen
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2005) have used student recordings to try to do this. Such recordings may have a
number of benefits. Firstly, they can improve student motivation, particularly in the
monolingual environment. Secondly, they can increase learner autonomy and allow
for self‐assessment. Using speech analysis software to analyse student recordings
can further aid the improvement of pronunciation. For example, in Dolores Ramirez
Verdugo’s study (2006), this software was used to provide comparative auditory and
visual displays of pitch contours of both native‐speakers and individual ESL students.
With this, participating students were able to understand and better address their
own intonation problems.
Technology has also provided better resources for students to practise and improve
their pronunciation outside of the classroom. For example, a number of CD‐roms
that teach different features of connected speech are on the market (Cauldwell
2002, Protea Textware 2009). Pronunciation dictionaries have also been developed
(e.g. Jones 2003). Most recently, podcasts have been the focus of several ESL journal
articles. In ‘top of the pods’ (2007), Fernando Rosell‐Aguilar reviews a range podcast
resources available and calls for further academic research into how podcasts can
best be used to teach languages. He argues that their are many benefits to using
podcasts and quotes Gardner Campbell as saying,
Those of us in higher education owe it to our students to bring
podcasting and other rich media into our courses so that they can lift
their learning to a whole new level (Campbell, cited in Rosell‐Aguilar
2007)
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Two recent studies that focus on using podcasts to improve pronunciation are
‘podcasting: an effective tool for honing language students’ pronunciation?’ by Lara
Ducate and Lara Lomicka at the university of South Carolina and ‘Podcasting
Communities and Second Language Pronunciation’ by Gillian Lord from the
University of Florida. In the former, the 22 participants used 5 scripted recordings of
a native‐speaker to practice pronunciation and they produced 3 extemporaneous
podcasts themselves over the period of a semester. Although the results of this
study found no significant improvements in pronunciation the project itself was
viewed positively by the participating students. In the latter study, individual
participating students were required to produce six podcasts on the free podcasting
service Odeo focusing on the different aspects of pronunciation that were being
covered in class over the period of a semester. The participants were also required
to listen to and provide online feedback to their peers’ recordings. The study found
that both the students’ attitudes and pronunciation abilities improved during the
course of the study. However, the participants commented that they would have
liked to have had the opportunity to listen to recordings of native speakers
completing the same tasks so that they could have compared them to their own.
Taking into account the current literature, it is very clear that the use of podcasts for
pronunciation training and language learning has a number of advantages. By far the
most important of these is that they provide access to a huge number and variety of
authentic and ESL‐specific materials. Secondly, the features of podcasts make them
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perfect for self‐study and self‐assessment. They can be listened to wherever and
whenever the student wishes, the recordings can be started and stopped to allow for
listening and repeating, and sometimes transcripts are made available with the
recordings. Finally, not only are podcasts a great resource for practising
pronunciation, but they can also improve listening skills, vocabulary and cultural
awareness.
Research Design
This piece of research was designed with a number of factors in mind. These were
the benefits of podcasts and other authentic audio recordings, the types of classes
currently being taught at CET and, finally, the limitations set by the timeframe of this
project.
Four Academic English classes and two teachers were chosen to participate in the
project. Classes AE5A1 and AE6A received some pronunciation instruction as part of
their normal classes on two consecutive Monday‐Wednesday periods, whilst classes
AE4A1 and AE5A2 received pronunciation instruction under the same circumstances
on three consecutive Wednesday‐Friday periods. A survey of 50 participating
students conducted towards the beginning of the study period revealed that the first
languages of these students were as follows: 44% Chinese, 18% Arabic, 16% Korean,
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6% Japanese, 10% European Languages and 6% Other Asian Languages. Their most
recent IELTS speaking scores are shown in the chart below.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of students
Not Done
IELTS 4
IELTS 4.5
IELTS 5
IELTS 5.5
IELTS 6
IELTS 6.5
What was your IELTS speaking score at your last test?
As material for this project, audio recordings, which can be used in a similar way to
podcasts, were made. More precisely, two native‐speaker IELTS speaking part II
recordings with transcripts (see appendix 1) were made using an audio recording
and editing software program called audacity. Unlike most textbook recordings,
these were done under naturalistic conditions without scripts and with only one‐
minute preparation time. For both samples, the recording was also edited to add
pauses that would allow for easy listen and repeat practice. In the case of the second
sample, further editing was done to create three more recordings to accompany
student exercises. This type of audio recording was chosen for a number of reasons.
The content of IELTS speaking part II lends itself to pronunciation analysis, because it
consists of a two‐minute unscripted monologue. Moreover, at CET IELTS preparation
is a relatively new addition to Academic English curricula and, as yet, few materials
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have been developed for it. Such recordings could also be used to teach the other
IELTS Speaking skills: coherency, vocabulary and grammatical range.
Some materials to practise different features of pronunciation were also developed
to go with the IELTS sample recordings (see appendix 2). These included
information and exercises on the International Phonemic Chart, weak & strong
sounds, sentence stress, pauses, pitch, rhythm and sound changes and omission.
Even though these materials were provided, the two participating teachers were
given the flexibility to teach pronunciation using the audio material as they wished.
They were also able to choose how much time they spent teaching pronunciation,
but around 30 minutes a day was recommended. To make these recordings
accessible to the students outside the classroom, they were placed on the CET
website and self‐study was encouraged. With the recordings, students were able to
listen and repeat, shadow and listen for different features of pronunciation.
Towards the end of the project, students were given a list of useful podcasts (see
appendix 3) they could use in the future for self‐study and it was hoped that they
would have gained enough knowledge of the different features of pronunciation
during the course of the project to be able to study on their own after it had
finished. Some pronunciation work was also done on a few of these podcasts in
class time.
To collect data from students, two surveys were conducted during the period of the
research project; the first at the beginning of the project and the second at the end.
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A student focus group, attended by 8 students, was held at the end of the project.
Students were also encouraged to complete student logs in which they would record
the self‐study they had completed each day. Data was also collected from the two
participating teachers in the form of a teacher’s log and an end of project interview.
Furthermore, two class observations were held.
Student Survey Findings
As part of the first student survey, completed by 50 students, students were asked
how important it was for them that pronunciation be included in their English
classes. The results show that every student believes it is at least quite important.
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How important is it for you that your English classes include work on
pronunciation?
36%
38%
26%0%0%
Very important
Important
Quite Important
Not veryimportantNot important
In the same survey, students were asked how confident they felt about their English
pronunciation. The results show that 48% of the students feel either not very
confident or not confident at all about their pronunciation in English.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Number of
Students
very confident confident quiteconfident
not veryconfident
not confidentat all
How Confident do you Feel about your English Pronunciation?
10
By way of comparison, the results of the end‐of‐project survey, completed by 46
students, show that 85% of participants felt their confidence levels had improved
and almost 96% of students felt that their actual pronunciation had improved.
a lotimproved
improveda little not
improved
0
5
10
15
20
25
Improvements in Spoken Pronunciation and Confidence Levels Since the Project Began
Confidence level
Speaking level
One of the key goals of the project was to give students the tools to be able to
practise different features of pronunciation on their own outside the classroom. The
results of the end‐of‐project survey show that despite the fact that over 91% of
students felt that they were ready to study alone, 61% of them also wanted more
practice in the classroom.
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Do you now feel able to complete self-study to improve your pronunciation
in your own time?
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Yes, definitely. I am completelyready.
Yes, I know enough to studyalone.
Yes, but I would like more classpractice.
Not quite. I need more practice.
Definitely not. I need more classpractice.
Number of students
In terms of what features of pronunciation the students found most useful, no clear
differences emerged. However, looking at the data in detail, the results show some
variation across different classes. This suggests that both the quantity and content
of work done and individual/L1 language variations in each class may have affected
these results.
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What do you think have been the most useful aspects of pronunciation?
0
5
10
15
20
25
Conn
ected Sp
eech
Paus
ing
Phon
emic
Char
t
Schw
a
Sent
ence
Stre
ss
Stro
ng &
wea
k so
unds
Pitch
Rhythm
Chan
ging
Sou
nds
very useful
useful
quite useful
not very useful
not useful at all
Not done
Finally, the students were asked how much pronunciation work they would like to do
in their classes. The chart below shows that 20 minutes everyday or 20 minutes
every other day is preferred by 75% of students.
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In your normal lessons, how much time would you like to spend on
pronunciation?
37%
38%
11%
7%7% 20 mins every class
20 mins everyother class30 mins twice aweek1 hr twice a week
Other
Discussion
The first thing to note is that both students and teachers recognise the importance
of having regular pronunciation activities in the classroom. This is highlighted by the
fact that at the start of the project almost half of the participants didn’t feel
confident about their pronunciation. Further evidence for this is that, on the whole,
both teachers and students reacted very positively to this project. 96% of the
students involved said that the experience had been either quite useful (48%), useful
(37%) or very useful (11%) and the majority of students said that they would like to
spend 20 minutes a day or every other day doing pronunciation work in class. It
would seem that this ‘little and often’ approach has the support of both students
and teachers involved in this project. Furthermore, the students recognised that
problems with pronunciation are different depending on the individual, so during
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the focus group they asked that pronunciation workshops be held outside class
hours to help students who have problems in particular areas.
Another key conclusion that can be made is that students would like the teaching of
a variety of features of pronunciation to be included into CET curricula. Anecdotal
evidence provided by the student focus group suggested the majority of current
classroom instruction on pronunciation is on individual phonemes, word stress and
sometimes sentence level features. In other words, a variety of suprasegmental
features that occur over longer stretches of speech, such as rhythm, intonation
pitch, pausing and chunking, take a back seat. In this study, the use of authentic
recordings to teach pronunciation enabled a variety of both these micro and
suprasegmental features to be taught. This was another aspect of this study that
was welcomed by the participating students.
The results of the study also confirmed that the use of authentic materials to teach
pronunciation has positive outcomes both in terms of students’ confidence levels
and the students’ perception of their own pronunciation skills. Although in the
majority of cases, these were seen to only improve a little, this is still noteworthy
given that the research period was so short. Post‐project interviews with the
teachers confirmed this change, with one teacher saying that the improvements in
the confidence levels and speaking abilities of their students by the end of the
project were significant. It is important to note that these positive results were
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partly achieved because these students’ other teacher also did regular work on
pronunciation with them. This adds support to the ‘little and often’ approach.
In terms of the materials used during the project, the use of IELTS Speaking part III
samples was welcomed by the students. During the focus group, they asked that
more recordings be made, including IELTS Speaking part II and part III recordings.
Other requests included the adding of phonetic transcriptions to the tapescripts, the
audio recording of newspaper articles to be used for self‐study purposes, and
information about how sounds most commonly change in connected speech.
It seems that there are a number of advantages to using self‐made recordings over
podcasts in Academic English classes. First, besides being useful to teach
pronunciation, they can also improve the students’ IELTS skills by providing
comparisons with their own responses and being available for grammatical and
lexical analysis. In addition, unlike many podcasts and other such recordings, they
can be edited by the teacher. In fact, the making of these recordings demonstrates
just how easy it is for an individual teacher to produce their own recordings using
modern computer technology and software, such as GarageBand (Apple Macintosh)
& Audacity. These software packages are free and very user‐friendly. Finally,
recordings made by a teacher can be used as good models for student recordings,
and these in themselves are good for identifying and addressing pronunciation
problems.
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Although using naturalistic teacher‐made IELTS recordings has its advantages, this
study found that recordings of this type do not necessarily need to be added to the
CET curricula. In fact, the most important finding is that a variety of relevant
materials should be used and that these must be both authentic and easily
accessible to students outside of the classroom. The production of such materials is
made easier by the fact that on some websites, such TED & ABC Radio National,
transcripts are provided. Furthermore, in order to teach pronunciation, the majority
of the time only very small pieces of text are required. One sentence may be enough
to fill a 20‐minutes class or longer. The students participating in the focus group
stated that they enjoyed using podcasts, radio and video recordings in class. From
the list of podcasts provided at the end of this project to provide material for self‐
study, they said they had particularly found the following useful: ABC, Q&A, English
Bites & Passport to English.
Recommendations
Taking into consideration the discussion above, the following recommendations are
to be made:
1. The inclusion of around 20 minutes of pronunciation work everyday or every
other day into CET curricula.
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2. A variety of authentic and accessible materials, such as podcasts, radio & TV
broadcasts and TED lectures found on the Internet should be used to teach
pronunciation.
3. Teaching materials should be used to teach a variety of features of
pronunciation, including suprasegmental features. Building the students’
knowledge of these features should provide the students with the tools for self‐
study.
4. More IELTS speaking & listening samples should be recorded to enrich CET’s bank
of IELTS resources. These should be made accessible to students via the CET website
so that they can be used for self‐study. Audio‐recordings of newspaper articles
could also be recorded and placed on the same site.
5. Students should be encouraged to use multi‐media outside the classroom to
practise their pronunciation.
6. It would be beneficial to introduce pronunciation workshops to support learners
who have problems in particular areas of pronunciation.
7. Providing the opportunity for students to make recordings of themselves would
be very useful. This could involve students practising mimicking authentic listening
materials and then producing their own recordings/podcasts of the same material or
their own material on a similar theme. Feedback could be provided by the teacher
or by peers via the Blackboard system or other means.
8. The introduction of a CET podcast would be a great resource for students to
practise their listening and speaking skills. Furthermore, it has enormous potential
as a marketing tool.
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References
Cauldwell, R. 2002, Streaming Speech: Listening & Pronunciation for advanced learners of English, speech in action, Birmingham. Chen, Y.M. 2008, ‘Learning to self‐assess oral performance in English: A longitudinal case study’, Language Teaching Research, vol.12, no.2, pp.235‐ 262 Ducate, L. & Lomicka, L. 2009, ‘Podcasting: an effective tool for honing language students pronunciation?’, Language Learning &Technology, vol.13, no.3, pp.66‐86. Jenkins, J. 2004, ‘Research in teaching pronunciation and intonation’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol.24, pp. 109‐125. Jones, D. 2003, English Pronouncing Dictionary, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Levis, J. 2007, ‘Computer technology in teaching and researching pronunciation’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 27, pp.184‐202. Lord, G. 2008, ‘Podcasting communities and second language pronunciation’, Foreign Language Annals, vol.41, no.2, pp.364‐379. Protea Textware, 2009, Connected Speech Australian English, Protea Textware, Hurstbridge Vic. Ramirez Verdugo, D. 2006, ‘A study of intonation awareness and learning in non‐ native speakers of English’, Language Awareness, vol.15, no.3, pp.141‐159. Rosell‐Aguilar, F. 2007, ‘Top of the pods – in search of a podcasting “podagogy” for Language Learning’, Computer Assisted Language Learning, vol.20, no.5, pp.471‐492. Walker, R. 2005, ‘Using student‐produced recordings with monolingual groups to provide effective individualised pronunciation practice’, TESOL Quarterly, vol.39, no.3, pp.550‐558.
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Appendix 1
Full Transcript of Sample 1
Describe a tourist trip that you have been on which you particularly
enjoyed.
Well, I’ve been on lots of trips, but the one I’m gonna describe took place
about four years ago I think…and…I was living in Japan at the time, in Tokyo,
and my parents came out to visit me. So, we went on a trip…ermm….for
about…10 days. And we ..errr…took a shinkansen train, which is the the bullet
train in Japan, which is really really exciting to travel on….and the first place
we went to was Hiroshima, where we visited the museum dedicated to
nuclear bombs. That was really emotional, coz there’s a lot of heavy content
in the museum and obviously there’s a lot of history surrounding that. The
second place we went was Miyajima, which is a beautiful island just off the
coast of Honshu…and…erm…we visited a couple of really nice shrines there
and we also took a cable car up to the top of the island, which was also really
interesting…erm… The final place we went to was Kyoto, which is a traditional
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city in Japan….and it’s full of lots of temples and shrines and you can eat really
nice traditional Japanese food. Erm..I think the thing I remember most about
the trip was…erm…or the most interesting thing was staying in a Ryokan,
which is a traditional erm Japanese hotel and…er..yeh, that was a really great
experience.
Full Transcript of Sample 2
Describe a job that you would like to do in the future.
A job I would like to do in the future would be to work as a foreign
correspondent journalist. I’m somebody who loves to travel and loves to
learn about other cultures and the way they work, and also the history of
other countries and places around the world. So this is a job that..err... really
is attractive to me. I also really enjoy writing. It’s something I get a lot of
pleasure from, so that job would allow me to combine my interests in travel,
learning about the world and also writing. Now to become a journalist, you
need to study a communications degree and that’s something which takes
three to four years and can be done at a variety of universities both around
Australia and around the world. Ermmm....now there are some particular
qualities I think someone would need to do this job. I think being inquisitive is
probably the most important. You need to be curious about the way things
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work and why they work in a particular way. So curiosity’s probably the most
important factor. I also think confidence is important. You need to be
confident, talking to people and asking sometimes quite difficult challenging
questions of people. So I think having the confidence to do that, to be able to
approach people, and ask them things that they may or may not be
comfortable answering, is an important factor. I also think you need some
level of intelligence. You need to be able to understand the real reason why
things happen and to be able to analyse things in some detail.
And are any of your friends foreign correspondents?
A friend of mine’s brother actually is a foreign correspondent working for the
ABC in China.
OK, and do you think you will become a foreign correspondent in the future?
It’s a very competitive field and there are very few opportunities, so I hope so,
but I can’t guarantee it.
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Appendix 2
Pronunciation Sound changes in English Spoken English is not simply a series of single sounds broken into words. In fact, we do not speak in single sounds or single words, but in groups of words. These groups are continuous and are sometimes broken up by pauses. As a result of this flow of sounds and words, changes can often occur. Some sounds become softer or may even disappear entirely. Other sounds may blend together or new sounds may even be added. The International Phonetic Alphabet In order to understand about the sounds made in the English language, it is useful to be familiar with the phonetic alphabet. Some of you may be familiar with this already. You can find interactive charts and related activities on the following websites: http://www.englishonline.org.cn/en/listen‐watch/sounds‐interesting/phonemic‐chart http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/ Word Stress: Weak & Strong sounds Within words, stressed syllables are long and have full vowel sounds, whilst unstressed syllables are short and often have a reduced vowel sound. Often this results in the schwa /ə/, which is the most common sound in the English language.
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Exercise 1 Point out the stress and write the phonetic transcriptions for the following words taken from sample 1. Use this example to help you or follow your teacher’s instructions. e.g. nuclear /′nukliər/ 1. beautiful 2. traditional 3. experience 4. history
Connected Speech Sentence Stress Beyond words, sentences also contain stress, which involves a change in pitch with increased vowel duration and increased intensity. In English, the most important words for communication are called content words. These are nouns, verbs, adjectives & adverbs and they are normally stressed in connected speech. On the other hand, function words, such as pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners, are unstressed. Furthermore, new information is often stressed, but old information is unstressed. The following words are typically weak, unless they are being said in isolation or being emphasised. Strong form Weak form them /ðɛm/ /əm, m/ was /wɒz/ /wəz/ to /tu/ /tə/ and /ænd/ /ən, n/ the /ði/ /ðə/ must /mʌst/ /məs, ms/ taken from Burridge, K. & Mulder, J. 2005, English in Australia & New Zealand: an introduction to its history, structure and use, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.
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Exercise 1 Add the sentence stress and pick out the connected speech. Follow your teacher’s instructions.
1. and…I was living in Japan at the time, in Tokyo, and my parents came out
to visit me.
2. So, we went on a trip…ermm….for about…10 days. And we ..errr…took a
shinkansen train, which is the the bullet train in Japan, which is really really
exciting to travel on….
3. and…erm…we visited a couple of really nice shrines there and we also
took a cable car up to the top of the island, which was also really interesting
Homework
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Listen to sample 1 and practise adding sentence stress and identifying the connected
speech.
Pauses & Pitch
In spoken English groups of information or ideas are marked with pauses and pitch change, which is the way the voice moves up and down. In other words, these help the listener identify where one piece of information or idea ends and the next one begins. As a result, if these aren’t used correctly, your speech may be difficult to understand. A pitch change up usually means that the information is unfinished and the speaker wants to give more information. Higher pitch is also often used for the key information. A pitch change down usually means the opposite; that the information is finished or additional in nature. Exercise 1: Listen to the following section of sample 1 and mark short pauses with / and long pauses with //. Also mark the pitch using going up or down where appropriate.
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The second place we went was Miyajima, which is a beautiful island just
off the coast of Honshu…and…erm…we visited a couple of really nice
shrines there and we also took a cable car up to the top of the island,
which was also really interesting…erm… The final place we went to was
Kyoto, which is a traditional city in Japan….and it’s full of lots of temples
and shrines and you can eat really nice traditional Japanese food.
Rhythm
Just like music has rhythm, which is produced by the pattern of strong and weak
beats, so does language. All languages have rhythm, but they vary from language to
language. If you speak English with the rhythm of your first language, you are likely
to be misunderstood. In language, rhythm is the way we use strong beats or stress.
In some language, ALL words and syllables are given an equal stress, so their rhythm
looks something like this:
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2
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Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Spanish are often described as syllable‐timed
languages like this.
English, on the other hand, has been traditionally described as a stress‐timed
language. This means that their rhythm is made up of strong and weak stresses.
Stressed‐syllables are at approximately equal intervals and unstressed syllables
shorten to fit this rhythm. So the rhythm may look something like this:
◦ ◦ ◦ ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
First of all 1 and then 2 and then 3
Content or information words are stressed and therefore longer sounding, whilst
function or grammar words are unstressed or weak and have to be squeezed
together to fit between the stressed words. In order to do this we:
■ use the weak vowel or schwa
■ link words together
Exercise 1
Listen to the following extracts from the audio and try marking the stressed
syllables in the following sentences and pick out some weakened sounds and
linking.
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1. I think being inquisitive is probably the most important. You need to
be curious about the way things work and why they work in a particular
way. So curiosity’s probably the most important factor.
2. erm I also think confidence is important. You need to be confident
talking to people erm and asking sometimes quite difficult and
challenging questions of people.......
3. So I think having the confidence to be able to do that, to be able to
approach people, and ask them things that they may or may not be
comfortable answering, is err is an important factor.
Sound Changes and Omissions
Sound changes within words
In Australian and American English, when a /t/ comes between two vowel sounds,
the pronunciation of it changes to a sound similar to /d/. The reason for this is
because we are lazy speakers! Vowel sounds and /d/ are both voiced sounds. On
the other hand, /t/ is not. Therefore, it is easier for us to say water as /wɔdə/ than
as /wɔtə/, because it requires less movement in the mouth between the vowels and
the consonant.
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Speakers of British English sometimes omit the /t/ sound altogether and replace it
with a glottal stop. This is a complete closing of the glottis at the back of the throat
and basically sounds like an extremely short pause.
It is also common to omit syllables in some longer words. For example, easily may
become /izly/ instead of /izɪly/.
Exercise 1
Listen to how Brad, an Australian, says the following words:
1. variety
2. universities
3. qualities
4. important
5. competitive
6. interests
7. comfortable
Sound Changes Across Word Boundaries
Changes to sounds also occur across word boundaries to make things easier for us to
say. Sounds may also be omitted. For example, ‘right away’ may be pronounced as
/raɪ(d)ɘweɪ/ with the /t/ either omitted or pronounced as /d/. Another example is
that ‘singing in the rain’ may become / sɪŋɪn ɪnðɘreɪn/ with the /g/ omitted.
Exercise 2
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Try to pick out where sound changes or omissions occur across word boundaries in
the following extracts:
1. I also really enjoy writing...erm...It’s something I get a lot of pleasure
from, so that job would allow me to combine my interests in in travel,
learning about the world and also writing.
2. erm I also think confidence is important. You need to be confident
talking to people erm and asking sometimes quite difficult and
challenging questions of people.......
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Appendix 3 (edited version)
Using Podcasts for Self‐Study
Hopefully, your participation in the pronunciation project over the last few weeks has given you a better understanding of the different features of English pronunciation. You can make good use of this knowledge by continuing to practice your pronunciation outside the classroom. To do this you will need to have access to real life English recordings, such as those found on Podcasts. These can also be used to improve your listening skills, vocabulary and cultural awareness. The following is a list of useful podcasts you may want to download either via itunes or the webpages below.
ESL Podcasts: Name HomepageThe English Podcast (World Languages Podcasting)
http://www.worldlanguagespodcasting.com
English Bites http://australianetwork.com/learningenglish/vodcast.htm
Australia Network ‐ Passport to English – IELTS S
http://australianetwork.com/passport/
Academic English (Martin McMorrow)
http://martinmcmorrow.podomatic.com/
Splendid Speaking http://www.splendid‐speaking.com/ LearnEnglish Professionals Podcast
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/business‐and‐work
Podcasts from TV & Radio Networks: Name HomepageAustralian Broadcasting Network (ABC)
http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting/
Highlights of the ABC’s podcasts:Politics – ABC radio national
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcasts/
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QandA http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/vodcast.htm Australia Talks http://www.abc.net.au/rn/australiatalks/subscribe/ British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts
Highlights of the BBC’s podcasts:
BBC Radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/podcasts/
BBC World Service Documentary Archive
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/index.shtml
USA Networks:Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), USA
http://www.pbs.org/podcasts/
Cable News Network http://edition.cnn.com/services/podcasting/
Other Podcasts: Name HomepageNational Museum of Australia – Audio on demand program
http://www.nma.gov.au/audio/
Pulse by CNET Australia http://www.cnet.com.au/podcasts/pulse/ The Naked Scientists Podcast, Cambridge University, UK
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/
Harvard Business IdeaCast, Harvard Business Publishing, USA
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/
Add your own:
Why don’t you check other popular podcasts in the ‘what’s hot’ section on the itunes homepage? For example, ABC’s triple J radio has some good youth‐based music,