Teaching Pronunciation Prof. Marina N.

Cantarutti (2004)

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Goals of Pronunciation Teaching

Celce-Murcia et al (1998:3) identify a “threshold level of pronunciation for non-native

speakers of English”, which needs to be surpassed by learners in order to be successful
communicators. If they fail to do so, their “poor pronunciation can mask otherwise good
language skills, condemning learners to less than their deserved social, academic and work
advancement”, implying that a learner’s thorough knowledge of grammar and lexis is not
enough to ensure understanding by an English speaking interlocutor.

Therefore, Kenworthy (1993:3) states that the most practical goal for pronunciation
instruction is to be comfortably intelligible. An intelligible speaker for Kenworthy is able to get
the message across through the correct production of the larger number of words and their
accurate decoding or identification by a native speaker with the minimum degree of effort,
avoiding irritability on the part of the listener. Dalton and Seildhofer (1994:9) define
intelligibility as the ability of “achieving a transaction as effectively and efficiently as possible”.
They also identify two main elements within intelligibility: accessibility and acceptability. The
former points to a speaker’s power to speak clearly and accurately. The second element, that of
acceptability, assigns a social dimension to intelligibility, in which the speaker projects an image
of himself and an acquiescence in social conventions when he speaks that may not be met or
interpreted as such by the interlocutor. Dalton et.al thus imply that both speakers assign certain
values to each other and that “we adjust our understanding of the other person according to how
we relate to them socially and as individuals”. Therefore, intelligibility goes beyond accuracy in
grammar, lexis or pronunciation, since it may be “overridden by cultural and economic factors”.

Since there is as much transaction as interaction in a communicative act, Otlowski

(1998) concludes that “the overall aim is for the learner to develop spoken English that is easy to
understand, serves the learner’s individual needs, and allows a positive image of himself as a
speaker of a foreign language”. (Otlowski 1998, my italics)

View of the Learner

Regardless of the teacher’s enthusiasm for teaching pronunciation, it is the learner who
places barriers or shows willingness to acquire the English sound system and its suprasegmental
features. So it is more important then to analyse the learner, his/her abilities, attitudes and
views on learning to pronounce a foreign language, with everything this involves for the
learner’s personality.

Biological and personal factors

Age
The influence of age over successful foreign language learning has always been largely
studied and debated. No agreement seems to have been reached.

In the first place, research by Roberts, Penfield and Lenneberg in the 1950s and 60s
prove that until puberty the brain is completing the process of lateralization, i.e. the assigning
of certain functions to the different hemispheres of the brain. This period up to puberty has
been called the critical period, that is, the “biologically determined period of life during which
maximal conditions for language acquisition exist”. After this period, researches claim, the
brain loses the plasticity enabling successful pronunciation acquisition. This hypothesis has two
versions: a weak version by which language learning will be more incomplete and difficult after
this period; and a strong version in which it is stated that an accurate production in L2 will be
actually impossible.

Flege (1981) and Brown (1994) oppose this view, and posit that although brain plasticity
does have an important role in pronunciation acquisition, it involves the neuromuscular realm
and other psychological factors as well.

Cognitive scientists claim that there are sensitive periods during which language
acquisition is developed in the different aspects. They consider that adults and children perceive
sounds in much the same way, and that external circumstances are what really matters. One of
the studies carried out shows that adults had an initial advantage in pronunciation learning, and
that children progressed after a considerable amount of time. Once equalled, the children went
on developing, whereas adults’ progress seemed to level off. Researchers adjudicate this to the
lack of confidence adults adopted when noticing the children’s advance.

It should also be pointed out that children and adults learn in different ways. Children
are just finishing their first language acquisition stage. Adults, on the other hand, must integrate
the new sounds into already existing (and rather fixed) neural networks. This makes language
learning for adults less natural, and not as input-rich as for children.

All in all, biological factors such as age do have an influence on the naturalness, rapidity
and quality of language learning, but are not conditioning. They very much depend on the
interplay of other factors.

Phonetic Ability
Carroll (1981) puts forward the idea that there are four traits constituting language
aptitude, one of which is the phonetic coding ability. This can be paraphrased as a “good ear”
for sounds, allowing the person to hear, discriminate and compare their own renderings with
the model in an accurate way. Aptitude is part of every learner’s baggage, but in different
degrees among different people.

Psychological and sociological factors

Apart from physiological, there are psychological and sociological constraints to

pronunciation learning, which might become even more conditioning than other factors. These
are the aspects which make students sometimes reject the proper production of the English
sounds, regardless of time, quality and amount of explicit and implicit instruction on
pronunciation.

View of the foreign language

Each culture has its own prejudices and stereotypes about how members of other
cultures are, behave and speak. Historical and cultural factors, then, are on our minds when we
learn a foreign language. Many people, whose country underwent wars with the British or the
American, or cultures resented with the status of English as a lingua franca, may unconsciously
activate these negative feelings when faced with the attainment of a foreign pronunciation.
Students need to accept that they will not be betraying their culture, nation, ancestors if they
attain a near native-like English pronunciation.

Learner’s beliefs about pronunciation learning

Laroy (1995:6) claims that “a person will only want to achieve something if they believe
it is achievable and worth attaining because of the social, intellectual or aesthetic benefits it will
bring”. If students are not made aware of the major role of an accurate pronunciation in
effective communication, other barriers will intrude learning and lead to its resistance.
What is more, students believe that pronouncing English well is impossible. A positive
atmosphere, where relaxation and positive comments are encouraged, where confidence is
enhanced and errors part of the process will be beneficial for the lowering of the affective filter.

Attitude, Personality and Identity

Guiora explains the unconscious resistance and dislike for language learning in these
terms: “Speaking a foreign language entails the radical operation of learning and manipulating a
new grammar, syntax, and vocabulary and, at the extreme limits of proficiency, modifying one of
the basic modes of identification by the self and others, the way we sound”. Here the learner’s
personality and ego permeability, that is, the extent to which the learner is flexible to adapt
leaving the ego aside, come into play.

As stated before, the person’s feelings of identity and group affiliation as signalled by
language condition the way he/she reacts to the foreign language. Adolescents, for instance, may
willingly like to mispronounce in order to integrate with their peers, or may choose to emulate
other accents to “honour” their favourite show-business stars or music bands. What is more,
producing certain English sounds may seem “ridiculous” to them, and this inhibition and self-
consciousness puts them off.

Adults, on the other hand, are more liable to believe they will not attain the expected
pronunciation, and that they are too old to change and control the way they speak. Moreover,
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they feel they are “losing face” in front of youngsters, seeing them succeed in some aspects of the
language they still haven’t managed to master.

Motivation and Concern

It is important to point out that motivation is the centre of success as far as
acculturation is concerned. Schumann in Celce-Murcia (1996) distinguishes between
integrative, assimilative, and instrumental motivation. Kenworthy adds achievement
motivation to this inventory.

Integrative motivation points to people who need to integrate in the foreign society,
and so need to learn the language. Secondly, assimilative motivation is connected to a desire to
emulate the speaker of the foreign culture, and has the same status as the motivation a children
has when acquiring their first language. On the other hand, instrumental motivation has to do
with occupation, the fact that the language is needed to achieve a certain goal. Finally,
achievement motivation consists of the simple desire to “do well”. The students being motivated
in this way, will be concerned for their pronunciation, controlling their performance, asking for
instruction, usually saying “sorry” or correcting themselves every time they mispronounce.

The problem is, most of these motivations are not part of the learner’s lives, especially
adolescents, since the foreign culture is rejected –though many artists from English-speaking
countries are admired-, many students attend English lessons because they have to, and very
few students are concerned with being successful.

“Teachers”, then, in Laroy’s words “are up against strong resistance, prejudice, myth
and a belief that all efforts will be hopeless”. Therefore, the first and most important teachings
to be introduced in the classroom are those of relaxation, of the adoption of a different identity
(“playing to be someone else”), and of confidence of success after a long but necessary process.

Background factors

Finally, there are other factors which contribute to language learning in connection to
external circumstances, which are also essential to effective pronunciation learning.

Exposure and Prior Instruction

Whether the learner is in contact with native speakers of the language, or through the
media, will certainly affect the way he/she will pronounce. Input has always been considered the
basis of a successful production. However, even if input does not equal intake, exposure helps
learners to internalise the intonation and rhythm of the language unconsciously, and enhances
their ability to discriminate and assess their own performance.

Prior instruction is also important, since the way students were taught will exert an
influence on their openness to new instruction. Some mistakes tend to become fossilised if
pronunciation is never taught systematically or corrected, making it more difficult for learners
to re-learn a way of speaking English.

Native language
Different languages share some or none phonetic features. The Spanish sound system is
very different from the English one, both as far as vowels and consonants are concerned, let
alone rhythm and intonation. Consequently, Spanish learners would attempt to fit the English
sounds into the Spanish system, mispronouncing words and neutralizing oppositions. It also
means that new neural networks need to be created for the new sounds, and the vocal tract has
to be “rediscovered” for their production.

Content

There are two main set of features constituting the phonological system of any language:
segmental and suprasegmental features. The former include the inventory of sounds, together
with the variations –or allophones- each sound –or phoneme- can have. The latter comprise all
the elements going beyond one segment of language, that is to say, all those aspects of
intonation, rhythm, word and sentence stress acting over a stretch of sounds. The question is
now, which of these two sets of features should be privileged in communicative teaching of
pronunciation? In order to make a choice, the implications of communicative importance and
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intelligibility, teachability and integration within general language teaching of these features
need to be taken into account.
Traditional approaches to pronunciation teaching are definitely bottom-up, drilling
individual sounds through minimal pairs and decontextualised short phrases. However, the
teaching of individual sounds might not be as essential to intelligibility as they are considered to
be. As Underhill (1994:75) sustains: “while certain limits of intelligibility mistakes or
inappropriacies of pronunciation, grammar and even vocabulary can be accommodated by the
native listener, inappropriate intonation can at times give rise not just to obscuration of the
message, but to reception of a quite different message”.

Kenworthy (1993:14) also believes that suprasegmental features are relevant for
communication, and puts it in this way: “Features like word and sentence stress, rhythm, and
intonation are very important in highlighting the important bits of a message”, since “if it is easy
for listeners to hear the ‘important words’, then there will probably be few intelligibility
problems”. In the same way, Dalton et al (1994) believe that a top-down approach is “more
coherent with communication”, as prosodic units are connected to “how speakers achieve
meaning in discourse”. Regardless of an intelligible production, the accurate perception of these
features is also essential to comprehension, i.e. the understanding of the interlocutor’s message.
For this purpose of perception, other suprasegmentals such as linking, assimilation and elision
should also be taught, although they are not crucial for an intelligible production. Moreover, the
communicative importance of certain features of pronunciation can also be measured in terms
of the mother tongue.

The following aspect to be considered when a choice of pronunciation content is to be

made is that of teachability .Those teachers who believe pronunciation can and must be taught
encounter a problem whenever they face the choice of phonological features to work on.
Segmental features are far easier to teach, and are therefore easier to perceive and correct.
Suprasegmental features such as intonation, on the other hand, are not only less teachable
because of their more ‘abstract’ nature, but also due to the socio-linguistic and cultural
implications it has. Rhythm and stress are teachable enough once vowel reduction has been
introduced. As a result, the so-called ‘auditory’ learners might be the ones in a better position to
acquire the prosodic features, -which does not mean that other types of learners might not,
provided appropriate techniques are put to use.

The third variable to be focused on when analysing the phonological features privileged
by a communicative approach is that of integration to general language teaching. Keys states
that “pronunciation permeates all of language”, since every time a learner is exposed to spoken
English the language is being perceived and practised. What is more, pronunciation is –or must,
for that matter- be part of the teaching of grammar, let alone of that of lexical items. For
instance, pronunciation plays an essential part in inflectional endings for the third person
singular in the present tense and for regular verbs as well. The weak forms for the auxiliaries are
undeniably important for an accurate rhythm of English. Furthermore, the relationship between
spelling and sound must be explored, especially because English is not a phonetic language and
Spanish is. It follows that many are the tasks exploiting structural elements that can easily be
blended with pronunciation work. More importantly, integration implies the inclusion of
pronunciation within communicative activities.

Therefore, any reading or speaking class having communicative objectives does take
into account suprasegmental features such as vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, word and
sentence stress, linking and rhythm to be able to fulfil the interactional purposes effectively.
What is more, other possible content connected to pronunciation will crop up once these
prosodic features are taught in a communicative framework. These features are related to the
general communicative competence and include hesitation, turn-keeping signals and fillers,
among others which are culture-specific and need to be taught in order to improve general
communicative competence. It is undeniable then, that pronunciation work is an integral part in
the training in oral skills.

When setting objectives for pronunciation and choosing what phonological content to
include in the syllabus, the teacher must not only take these variables of communicative
importance, teachability and integration into account, but should also consider other aspects.
Firstly, the learner’s age and level should be analysed in order to narrow or widen the scope of
communicative functions to be dealt with in the classroom. The learner styles and learner’s
abilities –and even Gardner’s notion of “multiple intelligences”- should also be observed
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so as to adjust the teaching of the phonological features to the learner’s needs and capabilities in
terms of their difficulty and teachability. Finally, the time and resources available for instruction
must be regarded to establish the amount of phonological training and materials to be
integrated within the lesson.

In conclusion, it is the emphasis on suprasegmental features which is preferred in a

communicative approach, since these are essential not also for intelligibility but also for a
successful interaction with a foreign speaker. Segmental features are also relevant and must be
practised, though the focus should be on the weak vowels in unstressed syllables which assure
the stress-timed rhythm English has and also in those L2 sounds which are utterly different
from L1. This emphasis put on prosodic features allows the teacher to integrate pronunciation
work into the teaching of other areas of language within a communicative framework.

Activities

Once the teacher has selected the phonological aspects to work on, the stage of activity design
(or compilation) begins. In order to allow for effective learning and ensure the autonomy of the
learner outside the classroom, there are certain requirements these pronunciation activities
should meet:
communicative
 contextualisation;
 learner-centredness;
 integration within general language teaching;
 presentation and practice of pairs of features in opposition
(e.g: /b/ and /v/, falling vs. rising tones, etc)

These activities need to be included within a communicative framework to teach pronunciation

which includes a presentation, a practice and a remedial stage. Within the presentation stage, an
identification of feature step serves as the bridge between the text, recording or grammatical or
lexical element being focused on and pronunciation work. In this stage, the teacher draws
students’ attention to a phonological feature and uses different resources (mouth cavity
drawings, spellings’ chart, Cusenaire rods, etc) to present the features and describe their
articulation or pitch movement. This is known as the description and analysis stage. Students
later test their listening discrimination skills by means of perception of these features in
minimal pairs and short dialogues. Opportunities for production are provided in different kinds
of guided and less controlled activities in which cues are given for students to read and
spontaneously start putting into use the features. Finally, truly communicative tasks are set up
within a certain framework allowing for the application of the newly-discovered (and hopefully,
acquired) phonological items.

Bibliography

 Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton and D., Goodwin, J.. Teaching Pronunciation. A Reference
for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996.
 Dalton, C. and Seildhofer, B. Pronunciation. Oxford: OUP, 1994.
 Hancock, Mark. Pronunciation Games.Cambridge: CUP, 1995.
 Kelly, G. How to Teach Pronunciation. Essex: Longman, 2000.
 Kenworthy, Joanne. Teaching English Pronunciation. Third Reimpression, 1993. Essex:
Longman, 1993
 Laroy, Clement. Pronunciation. Oxford: OUP, 1995.