Word pronunciation in different languages

Learn to Sound like a Native and Pronounce Words in Any Language

Here’s a scenario that you may be familiar with:

You’ve learned the basics, and you’re ready to start speaking. You meet a native speaker, and you greet them in your target language. And… they can’t understand you. You know you said the right words! So what went wrong?

If that sounds like you, then you may need to work on your pronunciation.

Poor pronunciation gets in the way of sounding like a native speaker. Sometimes language learners feel like pronunciation will come naturally with time. So many don’t take the time to focus on it.

This is somewhat true. The more you speak and hear the language, the more you will adapt and pronounce words properly. But that’s assuming you’re actually speaking and listening all the time. Many beginners don’t do enough speaking or listening in their target language.

Instead, they depend on learning from reading. They learn from textbooks, Google Translate or transcripts. These can be helpful resources…but too much dependency on them can keep you from mastering pronunciation. You don’t want to fall into that trap.

By focusing on pronunciation first, you’ll be easier to understand right away. It can also help you feel more confident in your language skills and sound more impressive to native speakers.

No matter what language you’re learning, there are ways you can study to improve your pronunciation!

Tactic #1: The Mimic Method

The Mimic Method, created by my friend and fellow polyglot Idahosa Ness, is a way to get over the dependence on reading to learn. With this method, you switch how you learn, and learn faster by training your ear. Think of it as Sound Rehab.

As a musician, Idahosa applied the same concepts of learning music by ear to language learning. The method breaks down languages into sounds, syllables, and sentences. You put them together to create rhythm and intonation, and effortless, native-like pronunciation. You first learn the Basic Elemental Sounds of your target language so you’ll have the building blocks of good pronunciation. Then, you focus on learning to pronounce words by ear instead of reading through a textbook.

For instance, English has about 43 elemental sounds, while Spanish has 39. So when learning Spanish pronunciation, I need to focus on which sounds are different and master those first. I also need to remove the extra sounds in English from my speech when speaking Spanish. It’s important to master the basic sounds because otherwise, you’ll struggle with the language as a whole.

Learning by ear allows for faster recall, better listening comprehension, and near-native pronunciation. After all, that’s how babies acquire their native language with little to no accent.

Take a look at our review of the Mimic Method for more info.

Tactic #2: Master Listening & Shadowing

To learn a language, you must learn how to listen well. In our native language, we have a tendency to passively listen quite often. But we can’t get by doing this in our target language. We don’t have a deep enough understanding of it in the beginning to absorb what we hear. So, we can’t learn from passive listening.

To pronounce words correctly, you need to learn how native speakers pronounce them. The best way to do this is to actively listen. Pay close attention to exactly how the language sounds and flows. If you’re watching a video or chatting in person, notice the way the native speaker moves their mouth to form the sounds.

Let’s look at the way we use our mouth to create these sounds across languages. For example, the Japanese “r” sounds nothing like the English “r”. In Japanese, the “r” is between an “l” and “r” sound. It’s created by flicking the tongue to the spot on the roof of your mouth where it starts to curve upward. But in Spanish, the “r” sound rolls when it’s doubled. When it’s a single “r”, it sounds like a quick “d” sound created by tapping your tongue on the ridge in your mouth just behind your front teeth. It’s very similar to the “tt” sound in “butter” when you say the word quickly.

Think about how different that is from the hard English “r”. The English “r” comes from pursing your lips and drawing your tongue back towards your back molars. Your lips don’t play much of a role in forming that sound in Spanish or Japanese, and you don’t push the tongue back at all!

By listening closely, and observing how the mouth moves, you can greatly improve your pronunciation.

You can take it a step further by shadowing. Shadowing is a learning technique that relies on ear training and mimicry. You listen to the speaker and repeat what they said, either at the same time or immediately afterward. It helps you to not only remember the vocabulary and sentence structure, but also the pronunciation. Plus, it helps you get over your anxiety of speaking! The more you shadow and follow along, the better you will be able to copy the native speaker’s rhythm and tones.

Tactic #3: Learn the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an excellent learning tool for pronunciation. Although a given letter can vary in sound across languages and dialects, the IPA standardises these sounds by giving each one its own unique letter or symbol. It breaks them down in a nuanced way so you learn every small difference. By learning IPA, you can really improve your pronunciation.

When you read a word written in IPA, you read how the word should sound in its original language. It’s uninfluenced by your native language or writing system. Thus, you learn how to pronounce it right the first time. You’ll catch even subtle differences that distinguish learners from native speakers.

It can take a bit of effort to learn IPA, but it’ll help increase your language learning speed and pronunciation in the long run. You don’t even have to master the entire IPA – just learn the sounds used in your target language.

George Millo wrote a fantastic, in-depth article for learning IPA, which you can check out here.

Tactic #4: Record Yourself Speaking

One of the best things you can do to improve pronunciation is to record yourself. This can be intimidating at first! But when you record yourself, you can accurately hear how you sound. You’ll be surprised how much more you notice about your speaking habits when you’re listening to yourself on a recording rather than just hearing yourself speak in the moment.

Is your rhythm off? Which sounds are you struggling with? The recording will allow you to hear the truth. Not only will you be able to catch vocabulary and grammar mistakes, but you can analyse your pronunciation. Then you can see where you need to improve.

This is why so many people find the Add1Challenge (now the Fluent in 3 Months Challenge) helpful. The goal of the Add1Challenge is to have a 15-minute conversation in 90 days. A big part of that is learning to speak the language with good pronunciation. During the Add1Challenge, you record videos to analyse your own progress at different points in the journey. And when you share your video with others in the community, you’ll get encouraging feedback on your progress as well. It’s a win-win!

Once you know what you need to work on, you can go back and assess how native speakers would say it. Then try it again!

Tactic #5: Speak from Day 1

All of the previous tactics have helped me in past language missions, but my most preferred tactic will always be to speak from day 1.

The more you speak and converse with others, the better your pronunciation will become.

Why? Because you’re getting consistent practice. When you converse with native speakers, you’re training your ear to pick up on the nuance of your target language. You become used to those sounds, and you start to adjust to them.

You also hear the natural way a native speaker would say things. It’s usually very different from the written form – spoken words can get clipped or smushed together, such as “going to” becoming “gonna” in spoken English, or “what do you mean” becoming “whaddya mean”. The more you take part in conversations, the easier it is to naturally copy those sounds and improve your own pronunciation.

You will make mistakes along the way, of course. But embrace those mistakes! When you make mistakes, and you practise speaking to correct them, you’ll internalise that information better than you would if you only read it over and over.

While good grammar and vocab depend mostly on your brain’s long-term memory, good pronunciation is more a question of muscle memory. It’s that muscle memory that lets you have easy, fluent conversations. So you need to practise having conversations to grow.

Working on
pronunciation in foreign languages teaching and learning.

Plan.

Introduction.

1. Theoretical aspects of teaching
pronunciation………………………………………….3

1.1    The
main features of pronunciation. Aim and
content of teaching pronunciation……3

1.2
Methods
of teaching pronunciation……………………………………………………8

1.3
Strategies
for English Pronunciation Instruction………………………………………12

1.4 Techniques and exercises of teaching pronunciation…………………………………14

1.5 Factors Affecting the Learning of English Pronunciation…………………………….17

2. Practical aspect of teaching pronunciation in
foreign language teaching and learning….22

2.1 Lesson plans……………………………………………………………………………23

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….32

References………………………………………………………………………………….34

Appendix

Introduction.

         Pronunciation
is an integral part of foreign language learning since it directly affects
learners’ communicative competence as well as performance. Limited
pronunciation skills can decrease learners’ self-confidence, restrict social
interactions, and negatively affect estimations of a speaker’s credibility and
abilities.

         One of the key requirements for language proficiency
is to secure understandable pronunciation for the language learners. Teachers
need to be provided with courses and materials to help them improve their
effectiveness in teaching pronunciation.  Teachers must act as ―pronunciation
coaches and learners must be proactive learners taking the initiative to learn.
The methodologies of teaching must change from emphasizing segmental elements
of pronunciation to supra-segmental elements of pronunciation and from
linguistic competence to communicative competence.

            Students realize
the importance of pronunciation when learning language, most students learn
phonetics passively due to several factors. First, they consider the teacher’s
explanation. Second, students only think of phonetics learning as knowing the
primary meaning of new words. Third, students usually only acquire pronunciation
through new sounds when given by teachers during classroom lessons.

One of the primary goals of teaching pronunciation in
any course is ―intelligible pronunciation – not perfect pronunciation.
Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative
competence.

          The object of the research: teaching
pronunciation.       

         The subject of the research: working on
pronunciation in foreign languages teaching and learning.

         The
aim of the research: to review the features of English pronunciation,
elaborate factors affecting the learning of English pronunciation, and discuss
the strategies and techniques for teaching pronunciation.

         The
hypothesis: A clear pronunciation is an integral part of communicative
competence.

Methods of research: Methods of analysis of the information sources and references.

         The practical
value
is in using theoretical and practical aspects of the research.

1.    
Theoretical aspects of teaching pronunciation

1.1  
The
main features of pronunciation. Aim and
content of teaching pronunciation

Phonetics
is one of the main aspects of the language and characteristic of speech, and a
basis for developing and perfection of all other kinds of speech activity.

Pronunciation refers
to the ability to use the correct stress, rhythm and intonation of a word in a
spoken language. A word can be spoken in different ways by various individuals
or groups, depending on many factors, such as: the area in which they grew up,
the area in which they now live, if they have a speech or voice
disorder, their ethnic group,
their social class,
or their education. (Dalton, C., &
Seidlhofer, B. (1994)

Hard
mastering of pronunciation skills is an indispensable condition of adequate
understanding of speech, accuracy in thoughts expression, and performance of
communicative function of the language.

Aim
of teaching pronunciation  is to form and
develop clear and comprehensible pronunciation. It is impossible to achieve the
aim of communicative ability without forming and developing clear and comprehensible pronunciation habits and
skills.

So teaching/learning pronunciation is a matter of great
importance.
To use a language as a means of communication, on the one hand, the learner
should form and develop receptive pronunciation habits and skills, that is to
hear and discriminate pronunciation units correctly and automatically to
comprehend the information conveyed, on the other hand productive pronunciation
habits and skills, to articulate pronunciation units automatically and
correctly, to convey the information clearly and comprehensibly.

The following factors
affecting pronunciation learning should be taken into consideration.

§  
native language of the learners

§ 
the age of the learners

§  
exposure

§ 
innate phonetic ability

§  
identity and language ego

§  motivation and concern for good pronunciation.

The content of teaching/learning pronunciation includes:

§  sounds
(vowels, consonants, and diphthongs),

§  stress
(word and logical stress),

§  intonation
(rise, fall, rise-fall),

§ 
rhythm and melody.

The sounds and sound
combinations of the language, or phonology. Each language has its own set of
sounds or phonemes. There are 44 English phonemes. Sounds differ depending on
how they are formed in the mouth, throat and nose and whether they are ‘voiced’
(when the vocal chords are used — as when you hum) or ‘voiceless’ (when the
vocal chords are not used — as when you whisper). All vowels are voiced but
some consonants are voiced and some are voiceless. The most common sound in
English is [ə] — the ‘schwa’ or ‘weak’ sound.(23, p 153)

Intonation is a
pattern of rise and fall in the level (the pitch) of the voice, which often
adds meaning to what is being said: for example, when we want to show interest
or surprise in something, the pitch of our voice often rises.(24, p 29)

Rhythm
and stress in utterances. English is generally
considered to be a stress-timed language: some words — usually the
‘content’ words or those that carry information (for example, nouns and main
verbs) — are stressed and others are not. For example: Throw the ball
to Ben. However, sometimes the speaker can choose to stress
‘non-content’ words as in this utterance: Throw it to him, not at
him. (24, p 29)

The
content of teaching pronunciation is made of abilities to produce correct
sounds, sound combinations, intonation models and speech units: the phrases and
different communicative types of the sentence in particular, and the text
consist the content of teaching pronunciation (that is, linguistic component of
pronunciation teaching), as well as concrete actions with these units
(psychological component of pronunciation teaching). These habits made  the
pronunciation skill.(6, p 124)

     The
pronunciation skill is an ability to distinguish and find out freely
and quickly on hearing phonetic phenomena of in foreign speech and to say
foreign sounds correctly and automatically in a speech stream, as well as to
intone appropriately .

    
The basic requirements to the pronunciation skill are — phonemic skill, i.e.
degree of phonetic correctness of forming speech, sufficient for understanding
of the speech partner, and fluency, i.e. automation degree of pronunciation
skills, allowing pupils to tell in normal speech speed (130-150 words per
minute).

      
Success of appropriate pronunciation skill depends on development of the speech
hearing including phonetic hearing, phonemic hearing and intonation types.
     1. The phonetic hearing is defined as ability to perceive correctly and
reproduce non-defined phonetic peculiarities of speech that is necessary
condition of possession of authentic non-accent pronunciation.

2.    The phonemic
hearing is defined as ability to perceive and reproduce meaning-differentiating
properties of phonemes.

The
competence of intonation hearing includes ability to distinguish intonation
structure of a phrase and to correlate it to an intonation invariant.(25, p 24)

Connected with the content the peculiarities of sounds,
stress and intonation should
be taken into account in both languages, comparing both phonic systems
similarities and differences, difficulties for assimilation and strategies to
overcome the difficulties should be underlined.

The first impact of any language comes from the spoken word. The
basis of all languages is sound. Words are merely combinations of sounds. It is
in these sound sequences that the ideas are contained. Listening is the first
experience; the attempt to understand accompanies it. The acquisition of good
pronunciation depends to a great extent on the learner’s ability of listening
with care and discrimination. One of the tasks of FLT consists in devising ways
to help the learner hear, listen and understand the unfamiliar sounds. The hearing
of a given word calls forth the acoustic image of that word from which a
meaning is obtained. Therefore teaching pronunciation is of great importance in
the developing of pupils’ hearing and speaking habits and skills. ( Tench
P., 1991)

Listening is crucial because students can’t produce a sound they
can’t hear. Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students
increase their awareness of subtle sound differences. (Derwing, T. M., Munro,
M. J., 2009)

As
English increasingly becomes the language used for international communication,
it is vital that speakers of English, whether they are native or non-native
speakers, are able to exchange meaning effectively. In fact, in recent
discussions of English-language teaching, the unrealistic idea that learners
should sound and speak like native speakers is fast disappearing (Burns, 2003).

According
to Burns (2003), it is more important that speakers of English can achieve:

•
Intelligibility (the speaker produces sound patterns that are recognizable as
English)

•
Comprehensibility (the listener is able to understand the meaning of what is
said)

•
Interpretability (the listener is able to understand the purpose of what is
said).

Picture 1. Various Features of English Pronunciation

Clear
pronunciation is essential in spoken communication. Even where learners produce
minor inaccuracies in vocabulary and grammar, they are more likely to
communicate effectively when they have good pronunciation and intonation
(Burns, 2003).

As
the figure above illustrates, pronunciation involves features at:

•
The segmental (micro) level

•
The supra-segmental (macro) level.

In
former ESL approaches, segmental features were the major focus for
pronunciation teaching (for example, minimal pairs such as ship/sheep).
While these features are important, more recent research has shown that when
teaching focuses on supra-segmental features, learners’ intelligibility is
greatly enhanced. It is important, therefore, to provide activities at both
levels (Burns, 2003).

Suprasegmental
features
relate to sounds at the macro level. Advances in research have developed
descriptions of the suprasegmental features of speech extending across whole
stretches of language (prosody). Unlike languages such as Vietnamese or
Mandarin which are tonal, English is stress-timed and syllable-timed (for
example, WHAT’s his addRESS?). emphasizes that effective communicative
pronunciation competence can be achieved more through improving supra-segmental
production in preference to segmentals. Linking, intonation and stress are
important features for effective pronunciation at the suprasegmental level
(Burns, 2003).

Linking refers to the way the last sound of one
word is joined to the first sound of the next word. To produce connected
speech, we run words together to link consonant to vowel, consonant to
consonant, and vowel to vowel. We also shorten some sounds and leave others out
altogether. • consonant to vowel an _Australian _animal •
consonant to consonant next _week; seven _months • vowel
to vowel. Some sounds such as r, w and j (y) are inserted
to link adjacent words ending and beginning with a vowel: where (r_ )
are you?; you (w_ ) ought to; Saturday (y_ )
evening • sounds that are shortened. When words begin with an unstressed sound
they are often pronounced as a short schwa ( ) sound: when do they arrive?;
five o’clock • sounds that are left out. Some sounds are so short that
they virtually disappear (become elided): does (_h)e like soccer? we
might as well (h_a)ve stayed at home

Intonation can be thought of as the melody of the
language – the way the voice goes up and down according to the context and
meanings of the communication. For example, note the differences in:

•
Can you take the scissors? (rising pitch) – request

•
Can you take the scissors (falling pitch) – command

Word stress relates to the prominence given to
certain words in an utterance. These focus words are stressed (made long and
loud) to convey: • the overall rhythm of the utterance • the most meaningful
part of the utterance. At the meaning level, some words are given more
prominence than others to foreground which meaning is important. For example,
compare: • Can YOU take the scissors? (not someone else) • Can you take the
SCISSORS! (not the knife) Recent approaches to teaching pronunciation in
computer-based contexts follow the communicative approach in teaching
pronunciation. Harmer (1993) stresses the need for making sure that students
can always be understood and say what they want to say. They need to master
―good pronunciation‖, not perfect accents. That is, emphasis should be on
suprasegmental features of pronunciation—not segmental aspects—to help learners
acquire communicative competence (Seferoglu, 2005). In recent years, increasing
attention has been placed on providing pronunciation instruction that meets the
communicative needs of non-native speakers of English.

Here are some ideas for focusing on specific pronunciation
features.

• Voicing
  Voiced
  sounds will make the throat vibrate. For example, /g/ is a voiced sound
  while /k/ is not, even though the mouth is in the same position for both
  sounds. Have your students touch their throats while pronouncing voiced
  and voiceless sounds. They should feel vibration with the
  voiced sounds only.
• Aspiration
  Aspiration
  refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced. Many languages have far
  fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing
  the aspiration. The English /p/, /t/, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more
  commonly aspirated sounds. Although these are not always aspirated, at the
  beginning of a word they usually are. To illustrate aspiration, have your
  students hold up a piece of facial tissue a few inches away from their mouths
  and push it with a puff of air while pronouncing a word containing the
  target sound.
• Mouth
  Position
• Draw
  simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions. Make sure all students can
  clearly see your mouth while you model sounds. Have students use a mirror to
  see their mouth, lips, and tongue while they imitate you.
• Intonation
  Word
  or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by
  humming. This will take the students’ attention off of the meaning of a
  word or sentence and help them focus on the intonation.
• Linking
  We
  pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of
  a series of separate words. ‘Will Amy go away,’ is rendered
  ‘Willaymeegowaway.’ To help learners link words, try starting at the end
  of a sentence and have them repeat a phrase, adding more of the sentence
  as they can master it. For example, ‘gowaway,’ then ‘aymeegowaway,’ and
  finally ‘Willaymeegowaway’ without any pauses between words.
• Vowel Length
  You
  can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber
  bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones. Then
  let the students try it. For example, the word ‘fifteen’ would have the
  rubber band stretched for the ‘ee’ vowel, but the word ‘fifty’ would not have
  the band stretched because both of its vowels are spoken quickly.
• Syllables
• Have
  students count syllables in a word and hold up the correct number of
  fingers, or place objects on table to represent each syllable.
• Illustrate
  syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the
  syllables of a word. For example, the word ‘beautiful’ would be
  loud-soft-soft. Practice with short lists of words with the same syllabic
  stress pattern (‘beautiful,’ ‘telephone,’ ‘Florida’) and then see if your
  learners can list other words with that pattern.
• Specific Sounds
• Minimal
  pairs, or words such as ‘bit/bat’ that differ by only one sound, are
  useful for helping students distinguish similar sounds. They can be used
  to illustrate voicing (‘curl/girl’) or commonly confused sounds
  (‘play/pray’). Remember that it’s the sound and not the spelling you are
  focusing on.
• Tongue
  twisters are useful for practicing specific target sounds, plus they’re
  fun. Make
  sure the vocabulary is not too difficult.

1.2  
Methods
of teaching pronunciation

          Given
that the language teaching profession changed its positions many times with respect
to pronunciation
teaching, it can be assumed that there have also been changes in methods and
techniques used to teach the skill.

Teaching pronunciation involves a variety
of challenges. To begin with, teachers often find that they do not have enough
time in class to give proper attention to this aspect of English instruction.
When they do find the time to address pronunciation, the instruction often
amounts to the presentation and practice of a series of tedious and seemingly
unrelated topics. Drilling sounds over and over again (e.g., minimal pair work)
often leads to discouraging results, and discouraged students and teachers end
up wanting to avoid pronunciation altogether. (Celce- Mauricia, M. 1996.)

         Teaching
English pronunciation is an area of language teaching that many English
teachers avoid. While there are many textbooks and instruction manuals
available, as well as books on the theories and methodologies of language
teaching there is comparatively little on learning pronunciation. (Celce- Mauricia,
M. 1996.)

Most textbooks will have drill pronunciation with repetition of
the vocabulary. Some of the better ones will have work on it with spelling,
which is an important skill, especially in English with its many irregularities
and exceptions. Very few will start you and your students where you need to
start, however, and that is at the level of the phoneme. (Walker, R., 2010).

The dictionary defines «phoneme» as «any of the
perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish
one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad,
pat, bad, and bat.» This definition highlights one of the key reasons that
we must, as language teachers, start our pronunciation instruction at the level
of the phoneme. If a phoneme is a «perceptually distinct unit of
sound» then we have to realize that before students can consistently produce
a given phoneme, they must be able to hear it. Thus the first lessons in
pronunciation should involve your students listening and identifying, rather
than speaking.

Learners associate
sounds with words.

Picture 2. Vowel/Consonant
Symbols and Keywords

Vowel       Keyword   Consonant   Keyword   
  Consonant        Keyword

/iy/             green              /p/        
   Poland                   /Z/              Malaysia

/I/               pink               /b/           
Bolivia                   /tS/            China

/ey/             grey               /m/        
  Mexico                  /dZ/            Germany

/E/              red                 /f/
            Finland                  /k/              Canada

/Q/              black             /v/           
Venezuela              /g/               Guyana

/uw/            blue               /T/
           South Africa         /N/              Hong Kong

/U/              wood             /D/          
 The Philippines    /w/              Wales

/ow/            yellow            /t/            
Thailand               /y/               Yemen

/a/                 olive             /d/         
  Denmark               /h/               Hungary

/Ã/               mustard        /s/     
       Singapore

/ay/              sky blue        /z/            
Zambia          

/aw/             brown           /n/            
Norway

/oy/              turquoise       /l/            
Libya

/«r/               purple          /r/            
Romania

/«/                tomato       
  /S/            Russia

One
way of helping learners produce speech correctly is to use a cross-sectional
diagram of a head showing the position of the tongue, teeth, and lips for
different sounds. These illustrations are called Sammy diagrams and can be
found in many pronunciation reference books (e.g., Teaching American English
Pronunciation). (Kathryn Brillinger, 2001).

Picture
3. Sammy
diagram showing tongue, teeth, and roof of mouth

From Recognition of Phonemes to
Practice .
Once they can hear and identify a phoneme, it’s time to practice
accurate production of the sound. For this, pronunciation diagrams are useful.
Your students need to be able to see where to put their lips and tongues in
relation to their teeth. Most sounds are articulated inside your mouth and
students have no idea what you are doing in order to produce that particular
noise.

While this may sound time
consuming and unnatural, you have to realize that you are in the process of
reprogramming you students’ brains, and it is going to take a while. New neural
pathways have to be created to learn new facial movements and link them with
meaning.

If you regularly take ten
minutes of your lesson to do this kind of focused phonemic practice, your
students articulation and perception of phonemes will see improvement after
several weeks, and you will get them all to the point where you can practice
pronunciation on a word or even a sentential level.

Moving on to Pronunciation of
Words The progress will be more pronounced with younger students,
but even adults will begin to give up fossilized pronunciation errors when
reciting vocabulary words in isolation. It’s time to make the next leap –
correct pronunciation in the context of natural conversation. Make no mistake;
this is a leap, not because it is more physically challenging, but because you
are about to address a completely different set of barriers.

A teacher can help overcome this
psychological barrier and other challenges by thinking of the goal of
pronunciation instruction not as helping students to sound like native speakers
but as helping them to learn the core elements of spoken English so that they
can be easily understood by others. In other words, teachers and students can
overcome the frustrations, difficulties, and boredom often associated with
pronunciation by focusing their attention on the development of pronunciation
that is “listener friendly.” After all, English pronunciation does not amount
to mastery of a list of sounds or isolated words. Instead, it amounts to
learning and practicing the specifically English way of making a speaker’s
thoughts easy to follow. (Celce- Mauricia, M. 1996.)

Three
Big Barriers to Good English Pronunciation

Anxiety, learned helplessness and cultural identity are the three
biggest barriers to students’ successful adoption of a second language. Not
every student will have all of these problems, but it is a sure thing that all
of them will have at least one of these problems to a greater or lesser extent.
As English teachers we have to find ways to bring these problems to our
students’ attention in non-threatening ways, as well as suggest tools and
strategies for dealing with them.

Anxiety is a fairly straightforward problem to discover. Students
who feel a lot of anxiety in speaking are generally well aware of the situation
and they know that it is impeding their progress. The impact on pronunciation
specifically can be seen in their unwillingness to experiment with sounds, a
general lack of fluency that makes it hard to blend sounds correctly, and poor
control of the sentential elements of pronunciation, such as intonation and syllable
stress. The best remedy for anxiety is highly structured, low- pressure
practice. In other words – games.

Jazz chants, handclap rhymes, reader’s theatre, and dialog
practise from textbooks can all be helpful. Structure and repetition reduce the
pressure on the students and allow them to focus on pronunciation and
intonation. Classroom rituals, like starting the lesson with a set greeting and
reading aloud a letter from the teacher are also excellent ways to integrate
pronunciation practice into the rest of the lesson while reducing stress for
the student. Rote phrases, drilled for correct pronunciation, will eventually
be internalized and the correct pronunciation will improve overall
pronunciation.

Learned helplessness is much harder to bring to a
students attention, and may be difficult for the teacher to recognize. The term
«learned helplessness» comes from psychology and refers to the
reaction people and animals have to a hopeless situation. Basically, after
trying something several times and consistently being unable to get a positive
result, we shut down. We stop trying. If students are getting negative feedback
on their English skills, especially pronunciation, and if they try to improve
but feel they haven’t, then they stop trying. You might think they are being
lazy, but in fact they simply don’t believe they can improve. They have already
given up.

Luckily, once it is recognized, the fix is pretty easy: stay
positive, praise frequently and specifically, and periodically tape students
speaking so that they can hear the difference after a few months. If you can
coax even a little progress out of a student, then tell the student exactly
what they just did right (For example: The difference between your short /a/
and short /e/ were really clear that time! Let’s do it again!). Tape the
students reading or reciting a passage at the beginning of the year, then tape
the same passage every couple of months. Play the tapes for you student and let
them hear how much they have improved over the course of a few months. They
will probably impress themselves, and you!

Finally, the question of cultural identity has to
be dealt with. Students that don’t want to be assimilated into an English
speaking society aren’t going to give up the things that mark them as different.
An accent is a clear message about one’s roots and history, and many people may
be unwilling to completely give it up. As teachers, we need to ensure that
students’ can be easily understood by others, but we don’t have to strive for
some hypothetical Standard English pronunciation. In fact, we should highlight
for our class that after a certain point, accents don’t matter much at all.

A teacher can help overcome this
psychological barrier and other challenges by thinking of the goal of pronunciation
instruction not as helping students to sound like native speakers but as
helping them to learn the core elements of spoken English so that they can be
easily understood by others. In other words, teachers and students can overcome
the frustrations, difficulties, and boredom often associated with pronunciation
by focusing their attention on the development of pronunciation that is
“listener friendly.” After all, English pronunciation does not amount to
mastery of a list of sounds or isolated words. Instead, it amounts to learning
and practicing the specifically English way of making a speaker’s thoughts easy
to follow. (Celce-
Mauricia, M. 1996.)

1.3   Strategies
for English Pronunciation Instruction

There
are a significant number of strategies for English pronunciation instruction
that can help learners meet their personal and professional needs. They are as
follows:

•
Identify specific pronunciation features that cause problems for learners

•
Make learners aware of the prosodic features of language (stress, intonation,
rhythm)

•
Focus on developing learners’ communicative competence

Identify
Specific Pronunciation Features That Cause Problems for Learners

Contrastive
analysis is used by linguists to identify potential pronunciation difficulties
of nonnative speakers of a language. The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis
suggests that by contrasting the features of two languages, the difficulties
that a language learner might encounter can be anticipated (Crystal, 2003).

Features
of many languages were catalogued by linguists, but it was not possible to
systematically predict which areas of English would be difficult for speakers
of particular native languages. A less predictive version of the hypothesis was
eventually put forth that focused on cross-linguistic influence, which claims
that prior language experiences have an impact on the way a language is
learned, but these experiences do not consistently have predictive value
(Brown, 2000). From this work, linguists have been able to develop lists of
sounds that native speakers of particular languages may find problematic in
learning English. For example, speakers of Asian languages may have difficulty
producing /l/ and /r/ sounds; speakers of Spanish may have difficulty
distinguishing between and producing /sh/ and /ch/ sounds. These lists for
specific language backgrounds are now featured in pronunciation texts, such as
Sounds Right (Braithwaite, 2008), and pronunciation software programs, such as
American Speech Sounds (Hiser & Kopecky, 2009).

Teachers
can also learn a great deal by observing the English learners in their classes
as they communicate with each other. By noting the places where communication
breaks down and determining the pronunciation features that caused
miscommunication to occur, teachers can identify pronunciation features that
they should focus on in class. When students are giving presentations or
working together in pairs or groups, the teacher might use a checklist similar
(Grant, 2010) to note when a student is not understood or when several students
make the same pronunciation mistake. This information can become important for
subsequent pronunciation lessons. The checklist can also be used to make
learners aware of particular features of speech that have the potential to
cause problems for intelligibility and to help them develop their own
pronunciation goals. Teachers and learners can work together to complete a
learner pronunciation profile that includes (a) an inventory of the sounds and
stress intonation patterns that the learner does well and those the learner
wants to change and (b) a questionnaire about when and how the learner uses
English (Grant, 2010).

This
profile can help learners develop pronunciation goals and check their progress
toward achieving those goals.

Make
Learners Aware of Prosodic Features of Language

Word
stress, intonation, and rhythm are the prosodic features of language. They are
extremely important to comprehensibility. Teachers should include prosodic
training in instruction (O’Brien, 2004). They might begin with listening
activities. For example, they can ask students to listen for rising intonation
in yes/ no questions, compare question intonation in English with that of their
native languages, and then imitate dialogues, perform plays (O’Brien, 2004),
and watch videos in which yes/no questions are used (Hardison, 2005).

Focus
on Word Stress

There
are a number of activities teachers can do to help learners use word stress
correctly. Lead perception exercises on duration of stress, loudness of stress,
and pitch. These exercises will help learners recognize the difference between
stressed and unstressed syllables (Field, 2005). For example, learners can be
taught to recognize where stress falls in words with two or more syllables by
learning the rules of parts of speech and word stress (e.g., the primary stress
is on the first syllable in compound nouns such as airplane, lapscape).
Learners can also use a pronunciation computer program, such as American Speech
sounds (Hiser & Kopecky, 2009), to learn the duration and loudness of
stress. Do exercises on recognizing and producing weak, unstressed syllables
(Field, 2005). For example, one exercise helps learners identify computer voice
recognition mistakes that have occurred because of mispronunciation of weak
vowel forms (e.g., ―Alaska if she wants to come with us‖ instead of ―I’ll ask
if she wants to come with us.

Present pronunciation rules for stress.
For example, teach learners that in reflexive pronouns, the stress is always on
the syllable -self (e.g., herself, themselves [Grant,
2010, p. 57]). Teach word stress when teaching vocabulary (Field, 2005). For
example, any time that new words are introduced, point out to learners where
the major stress falls. Use analogy exercises (Field, 2005). Words sharing
similar stress patterns are easier for listeners to remember. For example, give
learners a list of words with similar stress and ask them to state the rule
(e.g., in compound adverbs of location, such as outside, downtown,
and indoors, the stress is on the final syllable [Hancock, 1998,
p. 69]).

Focus on Unstressed Syllables

There are many exercises that a teacher
can use to focus on unstressed syllables, or weak vowel forms, in connected
speech.

Use function words. Introduce weak forms
through the grammatical category of function words, such as articles, pronouns,
auxiliary verbs, and prepositions. Present sentence drills where both strong
and weak forms appear. For example, the teacher can read a passage while
learners underline the weak forms in the passage. Allow learners to practice
using weak forms in conversations in order to simulate real-life speech
encounters. For example, the teacher might focus the lesson on the ability to
do things. Student A can play the role of an interviewer, and student B can be
the interviewee. Student A asks a list of questions regarding student B’s
ability to do things. For example, student A asks, ―Can you swim?‖ Student B
uses both the strong and weak form of the vowel in can and can’t in an answer
such as this, ―I can’t swim very well, but I can try.‖

Focus on Developing Learners’
Communicative Competence

Communicative competence is the aim of
pronunciation teaching and learning. Savignon (1997) stressed the need for
meaningful communicative tasks in the language classroom, including those that
focus on pronunciation. Pronunciation exercises that relate to daily use of
English include, for example, role-plays of requests that learners have to make
(e.g., to ask a boss for a day off or to ask a bank teller to cash a check)
(Grant, 2010). Learners can become careful listeners in their own
conversations. Pitt (2009) shows that learners need exposure to conversations
so they can hear variation in pronunciation. By using audiotapes and
videotapes, teachers can give learners meaningful exposure to variation in
pronunciation and increase their communicative competence.

1.4   Techniques
and exercises of teaching pronunciation.

Given that the language
teaching profession changed its positions many times with respect to
pronunciation teaching, it can be assumed that there have also been changes in
methods and techniques used to teach the skill. In this article I would like to
 present an overview of the traditional and time-tested techniques as well as
the new directions in pronunciation teaching.

Phonetic transcription

One
of the long-used and known to all teachers technique is phonetic transcription,
which is a code consisting of phonetic symbols. Each symbol describes a single
sound, which is in fact different from a letter of the alphabet. True as it is,
in order to use phonetic transcription one must learn the code and it takes
time and effort. Although it is possible to learn the pronunciation without the
code, many linguists believe it to be a valuable tool in learning the foreign
sound system. One obvious advantage of learning the code is the ability to find
the pronunciation of unfamiliar words in a dictionary. All good modern
learners’ dictionaries use phonetic symbols to indicate pronunciation, and
learners must therefore be familiar with them’.

Auditory reinforcement

As
A. Brown (1992 ) notes, there is a common assumption among teachers that
perceptual and productive language skills such as listening and speaking are
taught through the same medium, namely speaking and listening. As the result
many of them use the traditional listen-and-repeat approach in spite of the
present tendency for communicative language teaching. Techniques based on this
method are often production oriented and aim at improving students’ spoken
English. Many of such techniques employ minimal pairs, which are words that
have different meaning and their pronunciation differs only in one sound.
Minimal pair drills were introduced during the Audiolingual era and have still
been used both in isolation — at a word-level and in context — at a
sentence-level. The technique is useful for making learners aware of
troublesome sounds through listening and discrimination practice.

Visual reinforcement

Visual
reinforcement has been connected with pronunciation teaching since the time of
Silent Way were the skill was taught through the use of word charts and colour
rods. Since that time many other ways of visualizing pronunciation have been
introduced. They may be especially useful for adult learners who undergo the
process of fossilization. While children benefit from oral repetition, drills
and taping themselves, adult learners find it difficult to learn the patterns
of intonation, stress and rhythm. The reason may be that they simply do not
know whether the patterns they produce are acceptable. Real time visual
displays are to show learners the relationship between the patterns they
produce and those they are required to repeat. One of the

possible
conventions for making the word stress visible is writing the stressed syllable
in capital letters:

FAshion,
SEssion, beHAVE

Another
common way of visualizing word stress is the use of dots. The large dots mark a
stressed syllable in a word:

catwalk
— • •

Tactile reinforcement

The
use of the sense of touch is another frequently employed technique, though it
is not discussed very often. In fact, some teachers might be taking advantage
of it without even realizing this. Celce-Mauricia (1996) calls this mode a
visual reinforcement. One of the forms of this reinforcement includes placing
fingers on the throat in order to feel the vibration of the vocal cords, and it
may be useful when teaching the distinction between voiced and voiceless
consonants. A different form of tactile reinforcement incorporates simple
tactile descriptions given to the students: ‘When you pronounce /r/ your tongue
feels liquid and your jaw is tight (Celce-Mauricia, 1996).

Drama Voice Techniques

The
focus of the above techniques has been generally on accuracy of sounds and
stress at a word level. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that both the
ability to produce isolated sounds or recognizing suprasegmental features and
fluency contribute to effective communication. Today’s pronunciation curriculum
which has communicative language teaching as its goal thus seeks to identify
the most important features and integrate them in courses. The interactive
aspect of pronunciation as well as other aspects of English can be emphasized
by the use of drama techniques. In classes where these techniques are employed,
they help to reduce the stress that accompanies oral production in a foreign
language. They are fun, entertaining and relaxing. Moreover, they also increase
learner confidence, because they help learners to speak clearer, louder and in
a variety of tones. One means in which drama voice techniques can enter
pronunciation classroom is for teachers to employ poetry, tongue twisters and
raps.

Audio feedback

In
traditional methods, which have been used for a long time now, teachers have
taken the advantage of the audio medium, namely a tape recorder, for a dual
purpose. First, for listening to the recorded native speaker discourse. And
second, for taping students and replaying their own production. As a matter of
fact, in today’s pronunciation classroom audio feedback still plays a
significant role. Most of all, learners are provided with authentic material
and unlimited access to native-speaker’s discourse. They can also record
written passages and ask teachers for feedback.

Multimedia enhancement

One
of the major developments in the field of linguistics following the audio
medium are video

recorders
and the use of software. These are an advance over audio tapes in that they
provide visual support, which is as important in pronunciation teaching as
auditory. Celce-Mauricia (1996) lists also other advantages of multimedia
enhancement:

1.
access to a wide variety of native-speaker speech samplings

2.
sheltered practice sessions in which the learner can take risks without stress
and fear of error.

3.
opportunity for self-pacing and self-monitoring of progress

4.
one-on-one contact without a teachers’ constant supervision

5.
an entertaining, game like atmosphere for learning.

As for video recorders, they may serve
both as a source of learning material and feedback. Students may not only view
a native speakers’ production of speech but can also see and hear themselves if
videotaped. Another innovative technique, which is becoming more and more
frequently used in pronunciation teaching, are computer displays. The
advantages of this medium include: visual feedback, entertaining, game like
quality of programs, a great amount of individual feedback and the opportunity
to compare learner’s own production of speech with a native-speaker model. The
only limitation of this medium that learners and teachers may come across is
the availability of software, since many schools are still not equipped with
large enough computer labs to meet users needs.

Pronunciation
exercises may be of two main groups:

§ 
recognition exercises

§  reproduction
exercises

          Recognition exercises
are aimed at developing learner’s ability to listen to, discriminate and
understand the sounds, stress, sound sequences and intonation. The 
assimilation of clear and comprehensible pronunciation depends on learner’s
ability to and on the factors mentioned
above (native language, the age, exposure…).

To
acquire the phonic aspect of the language learners should perform a lot of exercises
in listening and understanding on the one
hand, and speaking, articulating on the other.

Listening can be done in two
ways:

§  Listening to the teacher, classmates and TV

§  Listening to tape-recording, records or radio.

         In the first case listening is
reinforced by visual perception, in the second is not. All listening
exercises begin with listen and do.

1.    
Listen to the following words. When you hear the sound   …….. 
raise your hands or green cards.

                   
Ten, pen, fine, this pan, than, fan

2.    
Listen attentively to the following words
and raise your green cards or hands

                                   a.   when you hear a short
sound

                                   b.  when you hear a long sound

                                            ship, live, sheep, piece, hit, leave, hid

3.  Listen and say whether there is any
difference in the following pairs of words:

Ship-sheep;   live-leave;    use(v)- use(n);
Bit-bid;     hat-had;        niece-knees.

       4. 
Listen to the following sentence and say which words are stressed:                  )

                                   The table is in the middle of
the room.                            

            5. Listen to the following
sentences and raise your hands or green cards, when

            you hear a rising
tone/falling tone/rise-fall  tone.

Reproduction exercises are aimed at developing
learner’s articulating habits. Learners should not only pronounce English
sounds correctly but also combine them into words, phrases and sentences. They
should be able to produce pronunciation unit correctly, automatically,
subconsciously.

         At each lesson a few minutes should be devoted to
drilling difficult sounds, stress or intonation. The teacher may turn to
pronunciation drill whenever it’s necessary to draw his learner’s attention to
the phonic aspect of the material they deal with.

         The material used for drill should be connected with the
lesson they study. The teacher should attentively follow the pronunciation of
learners, find out mistakes and shortcomings, suggest exercises including
mispronounced sounds, phrases with stress and sentences with intonation,
suppose they mispronounce ……… .

The teacher selects words including the
sound and drills them,
man, can, cat, black, has.
The man has a black cat.

          Teaching present continuous, past
simple.

           The following skills can be conducted;

      speak-speaking            wash-washed         
buy-bought         sit-sat              

      read-reading                open-opened           bring-brought      sing-sang

      play-playing                want-wanted           teach-taught        run-ran

      sit-sitting                     hand-handed                                      begin-began

      run-running

         Different
sentence patterns can be used to drill their intonation: such as special, general, alternative, disjunctive questions,
poems, proverbs and useful expressions can be used as well.

                
“A  friend in need is a friend indeed’’.

                
“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and 

                
wise’’.

         Achieving the aims of
teaching/learning pronunciation, that is forming and developing clear and
comprehensible pronunciation habits and skills one and the same time we prepare
the learners to use their pronunciation abilities automatically and
subconsciously to solve the problems of phonic aspect of communication
successfully.

1.5 Factors Affecting the Learning of English Pronunciation.

In
this section, the researcher mentions some of the important factors that affect
the learning of pronunciation. They are as follows:

Attitude

It
seems as though some learners are more adept at acquiring good pronunciation.
Even within one homogenous classroom, there is often a large discrepancy among
the pronunciation ability of the students. This phenomenon has lead many
researchers to study the personal characteristics of the learners that
contribute to their success in foreign language acquisition. In a study on
pronunciation accuracy of university students studying intermediate Spanish as
a foreign language, Elliot (1995) found that subjects’ attitude toward
acquiring native or near-native pronunciation as measured by the Pronunciation
Attitude Inventory (PAI), was the principal variable in relation to target
language pronunciation. In other words, if the students were more concerned
about their pronunciation of the target language, they tended to have better
pronunciation of the target allophones (Elliot, 1995). This study echoed
earlier research done by Suter (1976), which found that students who were ―more
concerned‖ about their pronunciation (p. 249) had better pronunciation of
English as a Second Language (Elliot, 1995).

When
discussing the attitude of the second language learners in relation to their
pronunciation and second language acquisition, it is necessary to note the work
done by Schumann (1986) on acculturation and its role in the process of
language learning. His acculturation model defines that learners will acquire
the target language to the degree that they acculturate (Celce-Murcia, et al.,
1996). According to Schumann, acculturation refers to a learner’s openness to a
target culture as well as a desire to be socially integrated in the target
culture. His research (1976, 1986) on acculturation examines the social and
psychological integration of immigrant students as a predictor of the amount of
English language they acquire and use (Tong, 2000).

Schumann
maintains that the acquisition and use of English is a measure of the degree to
which students have become acculturated to the host culture. Acculturation,
according to Schumann (1986), refers to the social and psychological contact
between members of a particular group and members of the target culture. The
more interaction (i.e., social/psychological closeness) a group has with the
target group, the more opportunities will result for the group to acquire and
use English. Conversely, less interaction (i.e., social/psychological distance)
results in less acquisition and use of English. The group’s amount of contact
with the target culture has an effect on the amount of English acquired and
used. Sparks and Glachow’s work (1991) on personality found similar results.
They state that students with motivation to learn with positive attitudes
towards the target language and its speakers were more successful than were
students with less positive attitudes. They refer to Gardner and Lambert’s
research on motivation wherein two types are highlighted. The first type of
motivation is instrumental, which is motivation to learn the L2 for the value
of linguistic achievement. Second is integrative motivation, which describes
the desire to continue learning about the second language culture. According to
Gardner and Lambert students with integrative motivation would be expected to
work harder to develop communication skills in the second language because they
are more likely than their less interested counterparts to seek out native
speakers of the language.

Motivation
and Exposure

Along
with age at the acquisition of a language, the learner’s motivation for
learning the language and the cultural group that the learner identifies and
spends time determine whether the learner will develop native-like
pronunciation. Research has found that having a personal or professional goal
for learning English can influence the need and desire for native-like pronunciation
.The review by Marinova- Todd et al. (2000) of research on adult acquisition of
English concluded that adults can become highly proficient, even native-like
speakers of second languages, especially if motivated to do so. Moyer (2007)
found that experience with and positive orientation to the language appears to
be important factors in developing native-like pronunciation. In a study of
learners of Spanish, Shively (2008) found that accuracy in the production of
Spanish is significantly related to age at first exposure to the language,
amount of formal instruction in Spanish, residence in a Spanish-speaking
country, amount of out-of-class contact with Spanish, and focus on
pronunciation in class. Therefore, in addition to focusing on pronunciation and
accent in class, teachers should encourage learners to speak English outside
the classroom and provide them with assignments that structure those
interactions.

Instruction

Foreign
language instruction generally focuses on four main areas of development:
listening, speaking reading and writing. Foreign language curricula emphasize
pronunciation in the first year of study as it introduces the target language’s
alphabet and sound system, but rarely continues this focus past the
introductory level. Lack of emphasis on pronunciation development may be due to
a general lack of fervor on the part of the second language acquisition
researchers, second language teachers and students, that pronunciation of a
second language is not very important (Elliot, 1995). Pennington (1994)
maintains that pronunciation which is typically viewed as a component of
linguistic rather than conversational fluency, is often regarded with little
importance in a communicatively oriented classroom (Elliot, 1995).

According
to Elliot (1995), teachers tend to view pronunciation as the least useful of
the basic language skills and therefore they generally sacrifice teaching
pronunciation in order to spend valuable class time on other areas of language.
Or maybe, teachers feel justified neglecting pronunciation believing that for
adult foreign language learners, it is more difficult to attain target language
pronunciation skills than other facets of second language acquisition. Teachers
just do not have the background or tools to properly teach pronunciation and
therefore it is disregarded (Elliot, 1995).

Teachers
have taught what they thought was pronunciation via repetition drills on both a
discrete word or phrase level, or give the students the rules of pronunciation
like the vowel in a CVC pattern, when given an e at the end, says its name. For
example, when an e is added to the word bit (CVC) the
pronunciation of the ―short i‖, becomes long and therefore ―says its name‖.
This type of instruction is meant to help students with decoding words for the
purpose of reading rather than pronunciation.

For
example, students are rarely given information about the differences between
fricatives and non-fricative continuants, or the subtleties between the trilled
or flapped /r/ between Spanish and English (Elliot, 1995). This particular
information is often left up to the students to attain on their own.
Researchers have explored the question of whether explicit instruction helps
these second language learners. Such studies have generated inconsistent
results. Suter (1976) reported an insignificant relationship between formal
pronunciation and students’ pronunciation of English as a Second Language
(Elliot, 1995). Murakawa (1981) found that, with 12 weeks of phonetic
instruction, adult L2 learners of English can improve their allophonic
articulation (Elliot, 1995). Nuefield and Scheiderman (1980) reported that
adults are able to achieve near native fluency and it can be developed in a
relatively short time without serious disruption to the second language
teaching program with adequate pronunciation instruction (Elliot, 1995). It is
necessary to note at this point that even though there seems to be quite a
contradiction in the range of results presented, the diversity of those results
may be due to the differing designs of the particular experiments.

Some
pronunciation studies focus specifically on the instruction of supra-segmental.
Derwing, Munro and Wiebe (1997) conducted research in which ESL learners who
had been studying for an average of ten years, participated in a speaking
improvement course that focused on the supra-segmental features of
pronunciation (e.g. stress, rhythm, intonation). Thirty-seven native listeners
transcribed speech samples (true/false sentences) taken at the beginning of a
12-week course in order to assess the learners’ intelligibility. Each sample
was rated in order of comprehensibility and degree of accentedness. In the end,
there was a significant improvement in the intelligibility, and better ratings
over time of comprehensibility and accentedness. They showed that 30 language
learners could alter their pronunciation in a reading task (Derwing &
Rossiter, 2003).

Exposure
to Target Language

When
we speak of the exposure that a learner has to the target language, it may come
in the form of their current day-to-day life as well as the amount of prior
instruction a learner received in the target language. According to the
language learning theories, learners acquire language primarily from the input
they receive and they must receive large amounts of comprehensible input before
they are required to speak. Adult learners may have little opportunity to
surround themselves with the native target language input. Whereas children who
are possibly in English-speaking schools for hours during the day, their adult
counterparts are likely to live and work in what these theorists call
―linguistic ghettos‖ where they again have little meaningful exposure to the
target language thus inhibiting their acquisition. Learning a new language and
speaking it is especially difficult for foreign language learners because
effective oral communication requires the ability to use the language
appropriately in a variety of interactions (Shumin, 1997).

Verbal
communication also affects the supra-segmental features of speech such as
pitch, stress and intonation. Such features are often not learned from reading
a textbook or dictionary. Beyond the supra-segmental features, are the
non-linguistic elements involved in language such as gestures, body language,
and facial expressions that carry so much meaning yet are not learned through
explicit instruction, but rather through sheer experience in a language and
culture. Due to minimal exposure to the target language and contact with native
speakers, adult English language learners often do not acquire a native-like
level of pronunciation, regarding fluency, control of idiomatic expressions and
cultural pragmatics (gestures, body language, and facial expressions) (Shumin,
1997).

Integration of English Pronunciation into the
Curriculum

Because
pronunciation is everywhere it is possible to deal with pronunciation through
what is already in the curriculum. This involves two basic ideas. First
teachers need to be aware of what is in the curriculum and what will be doing
with the learners and how this relates to sound structure. So in order to do
this, teachers need to have quite a good idea of what sound structure entails.
The decisions that the teachers make on what particular aspect of pronunciation
recovered within a certain phase of a curriculum need to be based on their
overall knowledge of sound structure. The second major idea is that of learner
centeredness. Using this type of approach, it might be best to do this based on
what’s observed in the classroom. Teachers can focus their attention on areas
learners need particular help on as demonstrated by their own performance. This
is more efficient than basing what teachers are doing on assumptions that may
or may not be right. At the same time it means that the teachers need to be
very flexible in their approaches to dealing with the class. What is important
here is implementing a task-based model more than a presentation based model of
language teaching.

This
type of integration for pronunciation means that the basic approach the
classroom needs to be founded on learners actually doing things with language,
not listening to presentations from their teachers all day (Walker, 2010). A
long range oral communication goals and objectives should be established to identify
pronunciation needs as well as speech functions and the context in which they
might occur (Morley, 1998). These goals and objectives should be realistic,
aiming for functional intelligibility (ability to make oneself relatively
easily understood), functional communicability (ability to meet the
communication needs one faces), and enhanced self-confidence in use (Gillette,
1994; Jordan, 1992). They should result from a careful analysis and description
of the learners’ needs (Jordan, 1992; Moley, 1998). This analysis should then
be used to support selection and sequencing of the pronunciation information
and skills for each sub-group or proficiency level within the larger learner
group (Celce-Murcia, Bringon, & Goodwin, 1996). To determine the level of
emphasis to be placed on pronunciation within the curriculum, programs should
consider the following particular variables: 1. the learners (ages, educational
backgrounds, experiences with pronunciation instruction, motivations, general
English proficiency levels) 2. the instructional setting (academic, workplace,
English for specific purposes, literacy, conversation) 3. institutional
variables (teachers’ instructional and educational experiences, focus of
curriculum, availability of pronunciation materials, class size, availability
of equipment) 4. linguistic variables (learners’ native languages, diversity or
lack of diversity of native languages within the group) 5. methodological
variables (method or approach included by the program).

2. Practical aspect of teaching
pronunciation in foreign language teaching and learning.

         In my
course work I would like to present lesson plans, which are plans of
approbation. These lessons I would like to use during my practice. In these
plans I would like to introduce the traditional forms of English lessons in a
different and more living form.

2.1   Lesson
plans.

Lesson plan

Theme:
Weather forecast

Aims:        
— Introduction of new lexical topic and grammar structure.

                   — Developing
of listening and speaking skills

Objectives:               —
  Develop
students’ listening and reading skills.

—        
Review
grammar.

—        
Develop
students’ communication skills.

—        
Present
new vocabulary.

Age: 
        teenage

Level:         intermediate

Timing:      45
minutes

Lesson
plan

Theme:
GREAT BRITAIN

Aims:        
— Introduction of new lexical topic and grammar structure.

                   — Developing
of listening and speaking skills

Objectives:               —
  Develop
students’ listening and reading skills.

—        
Review
grammar.

—        
Develop
students’ communication skills.

—        
Present
new vocabulary.

Age: 
        teenage

Level:         intermediate

Timing:      45 minutes

Lesson
plan

Theme: Environment

Aims:        
— Introduction of new lexical topic and grammar structure.

                   — Developing
of listening and speaking skills

Objectives:               —
  Develop
students’ listening and reading skills.

—        
Review
grammar.

—        
Develop
students’ communication skills.

—        
Present
new vocabulary.

Age: 
        teenage

Level:         intermediate

Timing:      45 minutes

Lesson
plan

Theme: 
Environment

Aims:        
— Introduction of new lexical topic and grammar structure.

                   — Developing
of listening and speaking skills

Objectives:               —
  Develop
students’ listening and reading skills.

—        
Review
grammar.

—        
Develop
students’ communication skills.

—        
Present
new vocabulary.

Age: 
        teenage

Level:         intermediate

Timing:      45
minutes

Lesson
plan

Theme: 
Wildlife

Aims:        
— Introduction of new lexical topic and grammar structure.

                   — Developing
of listening and speaking skills

Objectives:               —
  Develop
students’ listening and reading skills.

—        
Review
grammar.

—        
Develop
students’ communication skills.

—        
Present
new vocabulary.

Age: 
        teenage

Level:         intermediate

Timing:      45
minutes

Conclusion.

Pronunciation
can be one of the most difficult parts of a language for EFL learners to master
and one of the least favorite topics for teachers to address in the EFL
classroom. All learners can do well in learning the pronunciation of a foreign
language if the teacher and learner participate together in the total learning
process. Success can be achieved if each has set individual teaching and
learning goals. Pronunciation must be viewed as more than correct production of
phonemes: it must be viewed in the same light as grammar, syntax, and discourse
that is an important part of communication. Research has shown and current
pedagogical thinking on pronunciation maintains that intelligible pronunciation
is seen as an essential component of communicative competence. With this in
mind, the teacher must then set obtainable aims that are applicable and
suitable for the communication needs of the learner. The learner must also
become part of the learning process, actively involved in their own learning.
The content of the course should be integrated into the communication class,
with the content emphasizing the teaching of suprasegmentals, linking
pronunciation with listening comprehension, and allowing for meaningful
pronunciation practice. With the teacher acting as a ‘speech coach’, rather
than as a mere checker of pronunciation, the feedback given to the student can
encourage learners to improve their pronunciation. If these criteria are met,
all learners, within their learner unique aims, can be expected to do well
learning the pronunciation of a foreign language.

In
this paper all objectives of research are followed:

1. Study and analyze the scientific,
educational, and periodic psychological-pedagogical and methodological
literature on the problem of working on pronunciation in foreign language
teaching and learning.

2. Reveal the particular structure and
content of English pronunciation.

3. To highlight the methodological
techniques of analysis.

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