Adrienne Cardoza Ling 260 / Bro.

Wolf 11/5/12 Pronunciation Doctor paper: analyzing speech samples

Introduction There are many factors of pronunciation that can be analyzed and improved on in order to create a more native-like or more intelligible accent. Some of these factors include: intonation, sentence stress, vowels, consonants and more. For this assignment we collected speech samples from four different BYU-Hawaii students, representing accents from Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan. Each student will be rated on a scale from one to ten on intelligibility, segmentals, and suprasegmentals, followed by a deeper analysis of the problems with the said categories. Diagnostic Test: Speech Samples The material used for the diagnostic tests include three separate speaking and reading exercises meant to test English pronunciation. In the first test, the student is given a series of four pictures in which thy are supposed to create their own story of what happened in the pictures; everything they say comes from their head, with nothing being read. The next test is a written story called My Exercise Routine that the students read out loud while being recorded. This passage is designed to test intonation, suprasegmentals, word stress, and many more pronunciation factors. The last test given is the Accent Analysis Sentences. These mainly help to pinpoint problems with the students segmentals, as it has sentences with words that have similar phoneme patterns. These tests and the students results will be referred to frequently throughout this paper. STUDENT #1

Background This student comes from Korea. She has been studying at BYU-Hawaii for about a year now, and before coming to Hawaii she studied in Utah where she had a Utahan pronunciation coach. Segmental Issues Vowels One problem noticed is the ea and ie diphthongs, or the /i/ sound. Often times, though not always, the student changes the vowel sound /i/ that comes before voiceless s /s/. It also doesnt seem to matter where the phoneme is located in the word; for example, the words please

(she pronounces the s as /s/ instead of /z/) least and cookies (also pronouncing the end as /s/). For please, least and cookies she is consistent in her vowel substitution saying /pls/, /lst/, and /kks/. However she has no difficulty saying sweet or beans, she unfortunately read peas as pens so that further analysis of the word could not be done. Consonants As one might have noticed from the earlier analysis, she often mixes up s ending sounds, not differentiating between words that end with either the /s/ or /z/ sound. Through analyzing the separate speech samples it was made clear that the student often does not put the /z/ sound at the end of a word; she either exchanges it for /s/ or erases the sound all together. As in the examples before, she changes cookies to /kks / and please to /pls/. In the My Exercise Program reading, instead of saying clothe/z/, she erases the s on the end completely, saying /klo/ instead. This could be a reading mistake, but it is most likely due to the fact that the students native tongue is Korean. Korean doesnt have voiced fricatives, so this is much of the reason why she cant tell or create the difference between the voiced fricative /z/ and the unvoiced /s/. Another problem I found with this student is her difficulty in making the schwa // sound. Often times instead of pronouncing it like er sounds on the end of a word //, she substitutes the e for another vowel. Like when she says the word thirty. Instead of /di/ she says /di/, when she says cheeseburger she also uses similar pronunciation. However, when she says cheeseburger the only time she has trouble with //is during the one in the middle of the word; saying /tizbg/. The schwa on the end is pronounced just fine. This shows that she has trouble with // that is followed by a voiced consonant (note, that thirty is pronounced with the voiced /d/ even though it is spelled with a T). When she is faced with // in words like several and cucumbers (again she pronounces the s /s/ instead of /z/) she has no problem pronouncing the schwa correctly, because a is a vowel and /s/ is a voiceless consonant. Again this is due to the fact that Korean doesnt use the post alveolar phoneme //, its close approximant being more a mix between // and /l/ where the middle of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth instead of the back of the tongue as is the case with //. It is also very common for Koreans to have trouble discriminating between vowel sounds like // // // //, which explains the substitution for e in the er sound. Suprasegmentals For the most part this student does very well with intonation and sentence stress. She ends each sentence with a lower pitch and when reading lists, for the most part, she raises her pitch at the end of each word being listed until a drop on the very last. She speaks with a good pace that does not hinder her intelligibility and she rarely makes word stress mistakes, giving the correct syllable of a word proper stress. However, she does often add vowels in-between consonant pairs which harms the overall flow and rhythm of the utterances. Just as described in the Teaching American English Pronunciation book on page 142; Korean speakers pronunciation of English words and sentences may lack the vowel reduction necessary for English rhythm. But overall, she has pretty good suprasegmental habits. Rating

On a scale from one to ten I rated the student on three categories: intelligibility, segmentals, and suprasegmentals. After studying the students speech samples I came to give her a 7 for intelligibility, 8 for suprasegmentals and a 5 for segmentals. Being as she had the most trouble with consonant and vowel sounds I gave her a lower intelligibility score because according to Global English and the teaching of pronunciation by Jennifer Jenkins All the consonants are important except for th sound.

Pedagogical suggestions Many of these pronunciation problems can be worked on through specific activities. The utilization of minimal pairs can be especially useful to the students vowel and s ending mix up. Creating a word list with words that have /i/ and // preceding an s like his and hiss or his and hes can help her to see the difference between the s ending while helping her differentiate vowel sounds at the same time. Also just explaining about the three types of s endings /s/, /z/, and /z/ and when each should be used would greatly help the students understanding of pronunciation. As for / /, I believe most of the problem lies in the formation of the mouth and tongue position. Because Korean doesnt have the schwa the student most likely doesnt know how to shape their mouth when pronouncing the sound. Even a simple explanation of how the mouth should be shaped while pronouncing this sound would help. There is even a description from the text book page 56 that reads Point your tongue towards the roof of your mouth, but dont let the tip touch. Breathe out, using your voice, and hold the sound for as long as you can. Using a tongue twister like German speakers are charming when they eat hamburgers after arguing all day that has a lot of the / / sound before a voiced consonant can also give the student good practice on saying the phoneme as well. STUDENT # 2 Background This student is from Japan; she has been studying English for about 13 years and was mostly taught by Japanese teachers. She has lived in Hawaii for a little over 2 years now, and studies English because she says it is important for her future. Segmentals Consonants Like most Japanese or Asian language speakers in general, this student has trouble differentiating // and /l/. However she usually only has trouble when the sounds come in the middle or at the end of a word, like in very, hungry, and unusually. In instances like very and hungry she

changes the // to a flap, so the words sound like /vi/ and /hngi/. This is very common for Japanese speakers because the alveolar lateral flap is very prominent in the Japanese language; where as // is nowhere in the language at all. Because Japanese has the alveolar lateral flap one would think that the word unusually would be somewhat easy for a Japanese speaker to say /njuui/, even though using the flap is not exactly how the word is pronounced it is closer than what this student is trying when she says /njuui/. Also having to do with // , in words like early and yesterday this Japanese speaker often completely erases the / /, replacing / / with //, saying /i/ and /jstdi/. This problem also has to do with lack of any type of consonant in Japanese that sounds like //. Because the student finds saying this sound very difficult she just replaces it with a vowel sound that her language uses. Suprasegmentals This students sentence stress is not very good, she speaks in a very monotone manner, not using much intonation and having a very steady beat, giving each word the same amount of stress as the next. For example, the student says I.used.to.love.to.sleep.late.on.weekends. until.I. watched. my.neighbor.getting.exercise.every.day (The periods represent a pause in the sentence) Each word is said with the same amount of stress and with the same amount of time shared for each word, pauses between the words are just as equal throughout the entire sentence. This is because Japanese is not like English; it is a syllable timed language whereas English is stress-timed, so the student has a hard time creating sentence stress, often times sounding.very.boring.and.monotone. This affects her intelligibility because English speakers are used to stress-timed language, language that has a sort of rhythm to it, so it is very hard for them to listen to syllable-timed English because content words and structure words arent stressed accordingly in the sentence. Pedagogical suggestions Like the Teaching American English Pronunciation book says when students have a hard time differentiating between /l/ and // it is helpful to point out that the /l/ sound is made with the tip of the tongue touching the tooth ridge while the // sound is made with the tip of the tongue touching no part of the roof of the mouth Pg 136. Minimal pairs would also be a great help to this student. One way to help with sentence stress is to have the student, before reading aloud, find all the content words in the sentence. Then give them a beat and show them how the sentence should be stressed. It would also help them to know that pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs are usually unstressed. Just knowing the rules of sentence stress can help the student significantly. Rating I have given this student a 7 in intelligibility, 6 in segmentals, and 4 in suprasegmentals. Even though her suprasegmental score is really low I still gave her a relatively high intelligibility score. This is because the paper by Jennifer Jenkins, in reference to stress timing and pitch movement says On the

other hand, many other items which are regularly taught in English pronunciation courses appear not to be essential for intelligibility in EIL interactions. Because we are at BYU-Hawaii, the most diverse campus on the planet, I have been rating the students more based on the global English standards spoken of in Jenkinss article.

STUDENT # 3 Background This student comes from Japan, and she has been studying English for around eight years. She says she wants to learn English so that she can communicate with foreign people. She has lived in Hawaii for ten months now. Also, because this student is also Japanese, she had many of the same problems as the other girl from Japan, but I would like to focus on some things that I did not mention before. Segmentals Vowels This student has trouble differentiating between the vowel sounds// and //. Like in the words Africa, and inhabit; instead of saying /fka/ she pronounces it /fika/ also with inhabit she changes /nhbt/ to /nhbit/. This is because Japanese has only five main vowel sounds whereas in English there are as many as 27 vowel sounds (if diphthongs are included), so Japanese students have great difficulty with English vowels. As was exhibited in the examples before, this student also mixes up the lax vowel //, with the tense vowel sound /i/ saying /fika/ and /nhbit/. This is because Japanese only uses the tense vowel /i/, // is nowhere to be found in the Japanese language so she switches it with something she is familiar with. However, she does not mix up the vowels when one is at the beginning of a word. She never mispronounces it and she has no problem with saying the beginning // in inhabit. So she is able to pronounce the sound but just has trouble remembering to use it when it comes at the middle or end of a word. Suprasegmentals This student has the same problem with stress timing as the other Japanese student but her use of intonation is much better. When reading lists, she raises her pitch to signal that she isnt done speaking yet, I ate a cheeseburgER, a lArge green salAD, some sliced cucumBERS (Capitals showing rise in pitch) and at then at the end of the sentence she lowers it to tell us she is finished talking. This student again shows many signs of syllable-stress but her intonation is not bad, which helps in aiding her intelligibility. Pedagogical suggestions

Again the use of minimal pairs with the sound /i/ and// would greatly aid this students pronunciation. Words such as lick and leek, or candid and candied. Who knew minimal pairs could be so useful?

Rating I gave this student a 6 for intelligibility, 4 for segmentals and 6 for suprasegmentals. She scored so low in intelligibility and segmentals because of one sentence from Global English and the teaching of Pronunciation by Jennifer Jenkins that says, The contrast between tense and lax vowels is important. For example, the difference between the vowel sounds in sit and seat. STUDENT #4 Background This student is from Hong Kong, and she has been learning English since she was a child. She studied mostly with Chinese teachers who used British English as their model. Segmentals Consonants She has trouble pronouncing double consonants, often treating them like single consonant sounds but even giving the double consonant less duration than a single. For instance the word jogging she pronounces / doki/ and with the word little she pronounces it correctly saying /ldl/ but the duration that the /d/ is supposed to be is cut in half, it sounds like instead of making the double consonants longer than normal ones, she rushes through them. This double consonant problem plagues many Hong Kong natives and Chinese because Chinese doesnt have double consonants. Vowels This student seems to have trouble with close vowels like in the words book, cook, week and sleep, she often doesnt pronounce the sound fully, creating a shorter, tenser version of the phoneme. Instead of saying /bk/ and /kk/ she says them /buk/ and /kuk/. This is most likely due to the fact that her mouth isnt shaped correctly, // is a more lax vowel than /u/ and many Chinese speakers have trouble differentiating between lax and tense English vowels. This is also why she has trouble with vowel duration, often not giving the vowel sound its proper amount of say time. Instead of saying week she cuts the time you say the ee in half so it turns into wek Suprasegmentals There are a lot of intonation problems in her readings; this is because Chinese uses stress and intonation differently than English. Chinese is a tone language, so it uses pitch to distinguish word

meaning whereas, for the most part, English uses stress to convey that. In English, changes in pitch are used to emphasize or express emotion, not to give a different meaning to a word. So often times she raises her pitch instead of stressing the syllable, creating a sentence with random intonation, and a lot of times she raises pitch at the end of the sentence, for example (upper case showing raise in pitch, underline show a fall), yesterDAY I ate a cheeseBURGER, a large green salad, some sliced cucumbERS, two bags of potato chips, a milk shAKE, rice pudding, and five delicious choCOlate chip cookIES.

Rating I give this student a 6 on intelligibility, 6 on segmentals, and 3 on suprasegmentals. My reason for the higher intelligibility rating is similar to the previous student. Word stress and pitch movement are not as important for intelligibility when in an EIL situation. Pedagogical Suggestion This student has trouble with stress patterns, often mixing intonation and stress. I would suggest the find a partner: stress patterns activity which would help her to start recognizing stress patterns in English, because she has to stress the phrase correctly in order to be able to find her partner who has the same phrase. I also like the Categorization: word stress activity, this will help her to see the different word stress patterns in English. This will also force her to stress the syllables rather than simply raising the pitch.