OVERVIEW ON PRONUNCIATION

A common observation is that pronunciation is not given adequate attention in the language
classroom. This may be a reflection of the evaluation on which language macro skills
(listening. Speaking, reading, and writing) and micro-skills (vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation) are most important and therefore allotted precious class time or a result of
the predisposition of teachers who dislike handling pronunciation lessons, especially in the
EL classroom.

Nunan (2015) asserts that EL teachers either love or hate teaching pronunciation. If we
reflect on our experience in learning English, we remember the English teacher who was
zealous in teaching us how to say things “properly” in English although to our uneducated
ears, she sounded really weird whenever she articulated the English words we had trouble
saying “properly”. We also remember that English teacher who did not teach pronunciation
but instead used up the class time making us understand the subject and predicate of the
sentence, the forms of the verb, and the ways to use adverbs and adjectives to expand a
sentence. English teachers either think pronunciation is important or pronunciation is not as
important as the other language skills. It may also happen that there are teachers who know
pronunciation is as important as all the other language skills but choose to refrain from
teaching pronunciation because they do not feel competent to teach it in the first place.

This module is for EL teachers to feel confident teaching pronunciation. Their confidence
stems from their understanding of the evolution of key methods and approaches underlying
the teaching of pronunciation. It also is the result of their exposure to a substantial
discussion of strategies they can employ to help develop the pronunciation of second or
foreign language learners of English. Finally, knowing ways to evaluate and assess the level
of pronunciation skills and ways to further enhance these gives them the certainty that they
are in a good position to give justice to teaching pronunciation to their students. If you are
one of those teachers who need a boost of confidence teaching pronunciation, then we
encourage you to read on.

Eight topics consist of this module and after every two modules, your grasp of the topics
shall be assessed through a 30-50 item test.

Make sure that when you decide to take the test you are confident you have understood the
concepts because when you click to take the test, you won’t have the chance to re-read the
topics anymore or change your mind about taking the test.

When you are ready, start read on.

ON PRONUNCIATION

The systematic study of pronunciation started shortly before the beginning of the twentieth
century. Grammar and vocabulary have been studied much earlier so these are better
understood compared to pronunciation leading Kelly (1969) to consider pronunciation the
“Cinderella” area of foreign language teaching.
There are two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation:

1) intuitive – imitative approach and

2) an analytic – linguistic approach.

The intuitive–imitative approach. The only approach before the late nineteenth century, it
was at times supplemented by predominantly inaccurate observations about sound-based
orthography (Kelly, 1969). It depended on: 1) the learner’s ability to listen to and imitate the
rhythms and sounds of the target language without the intervention of any explicit
information and 2) the availability of good models to listen to, a possibility that has been
enhanced by the availability of phonograph records, them of tape recorders and language
labs in the mid-twentieth century, and more recently of audio-and video cassettes and
compact discs (Celce-Murcia, et.al 1996:2).

The analytic-linguistic approach. Developed to complement rather than replace the

previous approach, it uses information and tools such as a phonetic alphabet, articulatory
descriptors, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information, and other aids to
supplement listening, imitation, and production. The learner is provided with explicit
instruction and the focus is on the sounds and rhythms of the target language. The intuitive-
imitative approach served as the practice phase used in tandem with phonetic information in
the analytic-linguistic approach (Celce-Murcia, et.al 1996:2).

The teaching of pronunciation was ignored in some methods in the 20 th century like the
Grammar Translation and reading-based approaches. Grammar or text comprehension
is taught through the medium of the learner’s native tongue, and oral communication in the
target language is not a primary objective of instruction in these methods.

The methods and approaches that follow show pronunciation as a genuine concern in EL
language teaching.

Direct Method and More Recent Naturalistic Approaches

Direct Method. Pronunciation is taught through intuition and imitation in this method which
first gained popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The students imitate a model – the
teacher or a recording – and do their best to approximate the model through repetition and
imitation. This instructional model was based on observations of children learning in their
first language and of children and adults learning a foreign language in non-instructional
settings.

Naturalistic Methods. Many so-called naturalistic methods, including comprehension

methods that devote a period of learning solely to listening before any speaking is allowed,
include: Total Physical Response (Asher, 1977) and 2) the Natural Approach (Krashen
and Terrell, 1983). Proponents maintain that the initial focus on listening without pressure to
speak gives the learners the opportunity to internalize the target sound system. When
speakers do speak, later on, their pronunciation is supposedly quite well despite their never
having received explicit pronunciation instruction (Celce-Murcia, et.al 1996:2).

The Reform Movement. This movement was influenced greatly by phoneticians such as
Henry Sweet, Wilhelm Viëtor, and Paul Passy, who founded the International Phonetic
Association in 1886 and developed the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This
alphabet led to the establishment of phonetics as a science dedicated to describing and
analyzing the sound systems of language. A phonetic alphabet made it possible to
accurately represent sounds of any language through a consistent one-to-one relationship
between a written symbol and the sound it represented. The movement was the first
linguistic or analytic contribution to the teaching of pronunciation (Celce-Murcia, et.al
1996:3).

The movement influenced modern language teaching and advocated that:

● The spoken form of language is primary and should be taught first.

● The findings of phonetics should be applied to language teaching.
● Teachers must have solid training in phonetics.
● Learners should be given phonetic training to establish speech habits (Celce-Murcia,
et.al 1996:3).

Audiolingualism and the Oral Approach. The development of Audiolingualism in the

United States and of the Oral Approach in Britain during the 1940s and 1950s is believed
to be because of the Reform Movement. In both the Audiolingual and Oral Approach, the
teacher (or a recording) models a sound, a word, an utterance and the students imitate and
repeat. However, the teacher also typically makes use of information from phonetics, such
as visual transcription system (modified IPA or some other system) or charts that
demonstrate the articulation of sounds. This is based on the concept of the phoneme as a
minimally distinctive sound (Bloomfield 1933), is used for both listening practice and guided
oral production.

Here is how this approach works.

● Using minimal pairs, the teacher first has the students practice listening skills. The
teacher says two words (e.g. “sheep, sheep” or “sheep, ship”) and asks the students
to decide if they are the same or different.
● Alternatively, the teacher might read a word or words from either list A or list B and
ask the student to identify which sound (A or B) is being produced.
● Such listening discrimination practice is followed by guided oral presentation practice.
Following the teacher as a model, students practice lists A and B first in isolation (i.e.
reading list A and then reading list B), then in contrast (i.e. reading across columns A
and B).
● Finally, the teacher asks individual students to read the list without a model.

The Cognitive Approach. Influenced by transformational-generative grammar (Chomsky

1959, 1965) and cognitive psychology (Neisser 1967), the Cognitive Approach viewed
language as a rule-governed behavior rather than habit formation. Its advocates
deemphasized pronunciation in favor of grammar and vocabulary and claimed that 1)
native-like pronunciation was an unrealistic objective and could not be achieved (Scovel
1969); and 2) time could be spent on teaching more learnable items, such as grammatical
structures and words.

The Silent Way and Community Language Learning. There are differences in how
pronunciation was addressed by these two methods which emerged in the 1970s.

The Silent Way. Like Audiolingualism, the Silent Way (Gattegno, 1972, 1976) focuses on
the accuracy of production of both sounds and the structures of the target language from
their very initial stage of instruction. How words combine in phrases – on how blending,
stress, and intonation all shape the production of an utterance are also emphasized in the
Silent Way class to sharpen the learners’ inner criteria for accurate production. Unlike in
Audiolungualism, the learner in the Silent Way focus on the sound system without having to
learn a phonetic alphabet or a body of linguistic information.
In the Silent Way, the teacher speaks as little as possible and instead uses gestures to
instruct students. This includes tapping out rhythmic patterns with a pointer, holding up their
fingers to indicate the number of syllables in a word or to indicate stressed elements, or
modeling the position of the articulators by pointing to their own lips, teeth, or jaw. Sound-
color chart, the Fidel charts, word charts, and colored rods are also used in the Silent Way.
The principle of sound-color correspondence is believed to give learners an “inner resource
to be used“ (Stevick 1980) to establish a true feel for the language, “its diction, rhythm, and
melody” (Blair 1991)”.

Community Language Learning. This method for teaching second and foreign language
was by Charles A. Curran (1976).

In a CLL classroom:

● Students sit around a table with a tape recorder – a key tool of the method.
● The counselor (i.e. the teacher) stands behind one of the students, with hands-on the
student's shoulders.
● After speaking reassuringly, the counselor asks the student to say something in the
native language she or he wishes to be able to say in the target language.
● This utterance is then provided by the teacher in the target language, who takes care
to phrase it idiomatically.
● The counselor provides the phrase (broken into chunks for ease of repetition), the
student repeats, and once the student can produce the whole utterance fluently, it is
recorded on tape.
● Then the utterances are played back, and students must match the new target
language with the word-for-word translation provided by the counselor.
● Next, the teacher asks if the students wish to further practice the pronunciation of any
of the new utterances learned.
● If they do, the counselor again stands behind the student who requests further
practice and engages in a technique known as human-computer. The
counselor/computer can be turned on or off at will by the student, who can request
the correct pronunciation of any given phrase or piece of phrase from the computer.
This provides the raw data for the stunts to mimic and repeat until he or she is
satisfied with the pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et.al., 1991:7).

Tools critical to the treatment of pronunciation in CLL are:

 1. the audiotape recorder – captures the student-generated utterances and allows
students to distance focus on how the utterance was said and compare it to that of
the counselor.
2. the human computer technique – which gives no overt correction of pronunciation,
allows the students to initiate pronunciation practice by selecting the item(s) to
practice and deciding the amount of repetition needed. The students are able to
approximate the target pronunciation to the extent that they desire.

Thus the teaching approach is intuitive and imitative as in the Direct Method, but its exact
content and the extent to which practice takes place are controlled by the learner/client
rather than the teacher or textbook (Celce-Murcia et.al., 1991:7).

The Communicative Approach. The basis of this approach is the assertion that the
primary purpose of language is communication and using language to communicate should
be the core of all classroom language instruction. The approach gained traction in the 1980s
and remains influential in current language practices. Since the focus is on language as
communication, the teaching of pronunciation is significant because studies indicate that
there is a threshold level of pronunciation for non-native speakers of English. No matter
how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar and vocabulary might be, they
will have oral communication problems if they fall below this threshold level.

The groups of English language learners whose oral communication needs mandate a high
level of intelligibility and therefore require special assistance with pronunciation are:

1. Foreign teaching assistants – and sometimes foreign faculty – in colleges and

universities in English-speaking countries.
2. Foreign-born technical, business, and professional employees in business and
industry in English-speaking countries.
3. International business people and diplomats who need to use English as their work
lingua franca;
4. Refugees (adult and adolescent) in resettlement and vocational programs wishing to
relocate in English-speaking countries (Morley, 1982).
5. Teachers of English as a foreign language who are not native of English and who
expect to serve as the major model and source of input in English for their students.
6. People in non-English speaking countries working as tour guides, waiters, hotel
personnel, customs agents, and the like, who use English for dealing with visitors
who do not speak their language (Celce-Murcia, 1991:8).
Pronunciation is taught to these groups to enable them to surpass the threshold level so that
their pronunciation will not detract from their ability to communicate.

Intelligible pronunciation is the goal of oral communication in the Communicative Approach.

How can teachers improve the pronunciation of unintelligible speakers of English so they
become intelligible?

This is a problem for Communicative Language Teaching, since proponents of this

approach have not dealt adequately with the role of pronunciation in language teaching, nor
have they developed an agreed-upon set of strategies for teaching pronunciation
communicatively (Celce-Murcia, 1991:8).