Unit 15: Pronunciation 1

Introduction

Along with grammar and lexis, pronunciation is a key area of language which teachers need to
focus on in the classroom. Not only is pronunciation work useful to help learners with how
they sound in English, but it will also help learners understand proficient speakers better.
Therefore, it is important for teachers to help learners with this area of language to improve
both their speaking and their listening skills.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this unit, you will have:

 examined students’ views on pronunciation

 identified different features of pronunciation and explored problems learners have

with these

 explored ways of responding to difficulties learners have with pronunciation

 analysed ways of helping students improve their pronunciation and examined

published material focusing on pronunciation.

Task 2: Difficult Sounds

It is clear from the previous task that students with different L1s will struggle with different
sounds. This is because certain sounds may not exist in other languages, such as, the /z/
sound in Spanish, which is why Spanish speakers often use /s/, thus pronouncing fleas and
fleece the same. Similarly, the ‘th’ /θ/ is not used in Brazilian Portuguese which is why Samia
finds this sound hard to pronounce.

In most languages, there are sounds which are equivalent to those in English. However, in
some languages there are also sometimes sounds that fall somewhere in the middle between
two sounds that are clearly distinct in English. This happens in Arabic with the English sounds
/p/ and /b/, which explains why Nahed appears to say examble instead of example. Other
examples of sounds which are not differentiated include: /b/ and /v/ for Spanish speakers or
/l/ and /r/ for speakers of Japanese.

Word Stress 1

Nahed says she finds long words difficult to pronounce; for example, she identified
environment as challenging. This is because it has a number of syllables. Some words have
only one syllable, such as dog or door, whereas others may have two (ea-sy, wa-ter), three
(com-pu-ter, te-le-phone) or more (tech-no-lo-gy, cos-mo-po-li-tan). In words with more than
one syllable there is one strong stress and students often have trouble knowing where to put
the stress. For example, in environment, the strong stress is on ‘vi’ as in en-vi-ron-ment. This
area of pronunciation is called word stress.

Other learners of English can make similar mistakes. For example, Spanish speakers might say
message with the stress on the ‘sage’ rather than on the ‘me’. This is because in Spanish the
word is mensaje and the stress falls on the ‘sa’.

Another area that can be problematic for students is when word stress changes depending on
whether the word is a noun or a verb. For example in Can you record that programme? the
stress on the verb ‘record’ is on ‘cord’. But if we use the noun as in I need to make a record of
your progress the stress falls on the first syllable ‘re’.

Word stress is a very important area for students to focus on since it has a great impact on
whether or not they will be understood by proficient speakers. Often learners can make a
change to a sound e.g. pronunshiation instead of pronunciation but the listener can still
understand the message. In contrast, wrong word stress e.g. pro-nun-ci-a-tion rather than pro-
nun-ci-a-tion can cause difficulty for the listener and, as they may fail to recognize the word,
lead to a breakdown in communication.

Student Problems with Sentence Stress

A third area of pronunciation which can be challenging for students is sentence stress: which
words are stressed and unstressed in a sentence or clause. It can be very difficult for learners
to know which words or syllables should carry the stress to make their speech intelligible for
the listener. Putting stress on all words or placing the stress incorrectly in a sentence or
utterance can affect the listener. For example, Nahed tends to stress almost every word
equally, which affects the rhythm of her speech. This can cause strain for the listener and
sometimes results in the message being lost.

Task 7: Stressed Words

1. Conversation A contains words including auxiliary verbs, pronouns, prepositions and

articles. These can be referred to as the grammatical words.

2. Conversation B contains words including nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. These
are called the content or meaning words.

3. Conversation B carries the stressed words or syllables.

4. Therefore, it can be seen that the content words normally take the prominence in the
sentence.

In summary, it can be seen that in speech the words which will normally carry the stress are
the meaning or content words. In this way, it helps guide the listener to what the key
information in the message is. This is often referred to as neutral sentence stress.

Task 9: Contrastive Sentence Stress

There is also another type of sentence stress: contrastive sentence stress. This is where the
speaker adds extra stress or volume to a word (these could be content words or grammar
words) and the speaker will choose to do this for several reasons.

Therefore it can be seen that contrastive sentence is used to correct information, emphasise
and contrast particular information to the listener.

Stress-timed and Syllable-timed Languages

English tends to be a stress-timed language which means that the stress tends to fall at more
or less equal intervals of time regardless of the number of syllables in between.

For example, compare

‘Like a drink?’

with,

‘Would you like a little drink?’

Both utterances take up a similar amount of time. The more syllables there are, the quicker
they have to be said in order to fit them into the rhythm. Therefore, the time taken to say or
deliver an utterance depends on the number of stresses and not on the number of syllables.
The utterance can be illustrated like this, the sections in bold represent what is stressed.

‘Like a drink?’

‘Would you like a little drink?’

As well as English, other predominantly stress-timed languages include Dutch and German.
This is in contrast to languages such as Korean which is a predominantly syllable-timed
language. This is where the time it takes to say an utterance depends on how many syllables it
contains. Other predominantly syllable-timed languages include French, Japanese and
Spanish.

Task 10: What Did They Hear?

Since English is a stress-timed language and the stress tends to fall on the content or meaning
words, this has a serious impact on what happens to the other words, such as grammatical
words in an utterance. In order to maintain the rhythm over an utterance, the non-content
words get compressed or squashed together. This is an important phenomenon to explore
with students as it will affect their understanding as listeners.

Sinoff dada

sinoff – the speaker was saying ‘that’s enough’

dada – the speaker was saying ‘John’d had a really busy day
Although the student knew these words, they were unable to recognise them in connected
speech. This suggests it is important for learners to be aware of the features of connected
speech and how sounds and words link together as they are spoken.

Task 11: Weak Forms

The compression of words between stresses leads to three key changes to pronunciation. The
proficient speaker compresses all these grammatical words and they all contain the sound
( ‘er’ )which will be examined in more detail on the next screen.

Strong and Weak Forms

Since content words carry the main meaning, these words will carry sentence stress. In
contrast, grammatical words which do not carry the main meaning will often take a weak
form in an utterance. Therefore some vowel sounds become weak while others remain strong.
This means that some grammatical words have two forms, a strong form when the word
carries key meaning in a sentence and a weak form when it does not.

Below is a selection of these grammatical words and their strong and weak forms. Listen to
the recordings to hear the different forms. N.B. the weak forms here can be heard in isolation
but they are normally heard within an utterance.

In each of the weak forms, the phoneme is used. This is a special phoneme as it is the only
one with a name. It is called the schwa (this comes from the Hebrew shva meaning ‘weak’). It
is an unstressed sound, and the most common sound in English in continuous speech.

Task 13: Assimilation and Elision

As well as weak forms, there are also other phenomena which take place to make speech
smoother, quicker and easier to say.

b. The /n/ sounds like /m/. In the phrase in Paris the words connect together and change to
sound like imParis . This is called assimilation, where a sound at the end (or near
the end of a word) changes in preparation for the first sound of the next word. This can
happen, for example, when the sound near or at the end of the word is a /n/, /t/ or a /d/and
often happens when the next word begins with a /p/, /b/ or /m/ sound.

a. Sometimes a sound will disappear, such as the /d/ in Zealand which becomes Zealan .
This is called elision.

Connected Speech

The previous tasks all explored what happens to unstressed syllables in utterances and what
changes may occur to them in order to maintain natural rhythm in English. All of these
changes are examples of a phenomenon called connected speech.
Connected speech is a phenomenon in natural, spoken language when language is a
continuous sequence as opposed to individual sounds or words in isolation. In addition to
weak forms, assimilation and elision, there are also two other features of connected speech.

Task 15: Linking

Sounds Linkage

The sentences highlight what is called sounds linkage, where the sound at the end of one
word runs into the next. This happens when one word ends in a consonant sound and the next
word begins with a vowel sound. This can be seen in many of the sentences, such as not as, can
I and piece of. Remember that although the spelling the word piece ends with a vowel, ‘e’, the
final sound is a consonant /s/ so it links to vowel sound following it in /ə/ in of.

As was discussed earlier, it can be very frustrating for learners to discover that, although they
may know the words or phrase in isolation, they are often unable to recognise it in speech
because of the way sounds link together. For example, in the first sentence in the previous
task, students will hear She’s no tas ta llas I am and can be confused as to what ‘tas’ and ‘las’
mean.

Task 16: Intrusion

Finally, there is one more phenomenon which occurs in connected speech. This is when an
extra sound can appear when certain sounds connect. This phenomenon of an extra sound
appearing is referred to as intrusion.

In sentence 1, an extra /j/ sound appears between I am so it sounds like I yam . In

sentence 4, an extra /w/ sound can appear between to and a so it sounds like to wa .
In sentence 6, an extra /w/ sound appears between two and and. Therefore it can sound like
two wand
There can also be an intrusive /r/ sound, such as in the utterance law and order which can
sound like law rund order .

The fact that these sounds can appear in speech often causes confusion and difficulty for
learners. They may well know the words written down or in isolation, but are unable to
recognise them when they are listening which can be very frustrating for learners.

There is a useful pattern to help remember when intrusive sounds occur between two words:
/j/ occurs after a final where the next word begins with a vowel sound,
/w/ occurs after a final where the next word begins with a vowel sound,
/r/ occurs after a final where the next word begins with a vowel sound.

Task 17: Intonation Functions

You will probably have noticed that your voice rises and falls depending on the information
which is being given.

In A, the speaker is asking a wh-question so the intonation drops at the end of the question. In
the second question, which is a yes/no question, the intonation follows a similar pattern but
the change in pitch is much wider. The fact that intonation changes depending on the
grammar of the sentence illustrates intonation as a grammatical function.

In B, the intonation varies according to the mood or attitude of the speaker. In this case,
intonation as an attitudinal function can be seen. Not only does the intonation rise and fall
but the changes in pitch are also note-worthy.
In C, the intonation will rise and fall depending on which information the speaker wishes to
highlight. As was discussed earlier with sentence stress, the new information is stressed for
the listener. To make this clearer, intonation is added to guide the listener.

When new information is being signaled, the intonation pattern is usually falling, i.e.

In contrast, when the speaker is referring to given information, the intonation pattern is a
fall-rise,

i.e.

The anecdote therefore highlights intonation as discoursal function. This will be explored
further in Discourse.

Solutions

In summary it can be seen that there are five key aspects to English pronunciation.
Remember that although learners need to develop their pronunciation in order to achieve
clear and intelligible English, it is unnecessary and often impossible for learners to achieve
‘perfect’ pronunciation. What is important, however, is for teachers to provide ways of
practising and developing learners’ pronunciation in the classroom.

You will have already seen teachers in your observations and in your Teaching Practice group
responding to difficulties learners may have with pronunciation. There are a number of
solutions for helping learners with pronunciation and these can be broadly divided as follows:

 Drilling

 Boardwork

 Coursebook activities
  The Phonemic Chart.

Drilling

Nahed had difficulty in pronouncing the sound /p/ in example. In order to help her with this,
the teacher could model the sound and the word and ask Nahed and other class members to
repeat. This technique, drilling, allows the teacher to drill sounds, words and phrases to help
students with all aspects of pronunciation, including sounds, stress and intonation.

Modelling the language for the students and drilling helps students achieve better
pronunciation of language items, builds their confidence and helps them to remember new
items. By repeating words and more usefully, phrases, drilling encourages greater spoken
fluency.

If you would like to watch clips of experienced teachers drilling and remind yourself of
drilling techniques, look back at the unit Using the Coursebook 2 where drilling was examined
in more detail.

Boardwork 1

As well as modeling and drilling the language, it is a good idea to write the sounds students
have problems with in phonemic script just above the word or syllable. Remember that the
Phonemic Chart will be looked at in detail in Pronunciation 2: The Phonemic Chart.

For example, the words that students struggle with can be highlighted on the board as below.

By writing the pronunciation on the board, the teacher can provide a written record for the
students which they can refer to after the lesson.

Boardwork 2

Similarly, the board can be used to highlight and record word stress and sentence stress by
putting stress boxes or circles above the stressed syllable.
It is also useful to show students how stress is recorded in dictionaries so that students can
identify word stress outside class. Most learner dictionaries will use a ' symbol before the
stressed syllable. The word example will therefore appear as as the stress falls
on the second syllable.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English The Living Dictionary New Edition (2003)

Task 18: Stress Circles

By highlighting the stressed syllables, the learners have a visual image of where the stress
falls to reinforce drilling. Not only can the teacher highlight the stressed syllables but the
learners can also be asked to predict stress patterns and listen and check. Or the teacher can
model the utterances and the students identify where the stress falls. This encourages the
students to notice how stress falls on content words and makes the activity more student-
centred.

While listening to the sentences, you may have noticed additional, secondary stresses in the
sentences. These have not been marked on the model answer for the sake of clarity.

Remember stress circles can also be used for word stress and teachers can encourage
students to use these when recording new grammar and lexis so that they have a written
record of the pronunciation.
Intonation Arrows

As with sentence stress, teachers can highlight intonation on the whiteboard for learners. For
intonation, it is useful to first mark where the stress falls and then draw arrows from the
stressed words. By drawing arrows to show when intonation rises and falls and how much it
rises and falls helps provide learners with a visual image of the pronunciation, as in the last
task.

Task 20: Teachers’ Ideas

Marking intonation arrows on the whiteboard

Recording students speaking

Encouraging students to write problem sounds in phonemic script in their notebooks

Drilling

Marking stress circles/boxes on the whiteboard

Use of the phonemic chart

Use of coloured card

Encouraging learners to compare problem sounds to their own language

Although Annie and Dave did not mention all the techniques in the box above, all these
methods are beneficial for students. For example, training students to write the sounds in
phonemic script in their notebooks will encourage them to remember how to pronounce
difficult sounds and words. For example, the word enough is often difficult for students
because the spelling looks very different from how it is pronounced. Learners often try to
write the sounds using normal letters e.g. inuff which is unhelpful and often causes confusion.
By encouraging students to compare problem sounds to their own language, students will
start to notice differences between their L1 and English.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 1

Area of pronunciation How it helps students

Gives clear information about when sounds

A feature of connected speech: sounds
link words connect. Students have a chance
linkage.
to listen first, then practise.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 2

Area of pronunciation How it helps students

Students identify sentence stress and have

Sentence stress.
an opportunity to practise.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 3

Area of pronunciation How it helps students

Lets students listen and discover the shift

in word stress. Gives students a chance to
Word stress.
recognise stress. However, there is no
productive practice.

Task 22: Classroom Activities 4

Area of pronunciation How it helps students

Visuals help show students intonation

Intonation. patterns, clear examples contrast
friendly/unfriendly

End Notes

Pronunciation is a key part of language and it is a part that students need and enjoy
developing. When you focus on pronunciation in class, remember the following points:

 remember to make time for this in the classroom; not only will you be helping
students’ pronunciation but you will also be improving their listening skills
  give students the opportunity to listen to proficient speakers using the language
and focus on how they sound and how their speech connects

 give students plenty of practice by drilling both chorally and individually so that
learners become more confident with their pronunciation

 encourage students to notice differences between how language is written and how it
is said and use your board to give learners a visual image of sounds, stress and
intonation and make pronunciation more memorable

 remember that each student is different and will have different areas to work on so
ensure there is a variety of activities in the classroom to cover all aspects of
pronunciation and cater for different learning preferences

 students value pronunciation work and often find it very enjoyable to do in the
classroom.

Expert Views: Adrian Underhill on Pronunciation

Download Adrian’s Sounds app at: http://www.macmillaneducationapps.com/soundspron/

If you are interested in how Adrian teaches the chart to his students, watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5RekixAMoM&noredirect=1

Have a look at Adrian’s blog at http://adrianpronchart.wordpress.com/.

Reading List

If you would like to read more about pronunciation, we recommend looking at one or two of
the following:

http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/p-is-for-pronunciation

Underhill, A (1994) Sound Foundations, Oxford: Heinemann.

Hancock, M (1995) Pronunciation Games, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This book
has lots of practical ideas for activities to use with students of all levels.

Bowler, B et al New Headway Pronunciation Course Oxford: Oxford University. This series from
Elementary to Upper Intermediate includes a variety of activities and exercises for the
classroom and self-study.