Abstract
The article dwells upon the possibility to assess quantitative evaluation of the level of articulatory skills. The rapidity and correct pronunciation of letter combinations, as well as the placement of verbal accents in the course of reading a coherent text, are subject to quantitative assessment. A procedure is proposed in which the subject reads aloud a standard text, and then a text, which includes a number of unfamiliar words (quasi-words). As a result, the subject’s pronunciation competence is estimated quantitatively (on a 100-point scale). The validity of the proposed procedure is checked by testing groups of subjects with varying levels of language training, as well as by data from a similar survey in Russian. Recommendations are given on the use of the procedure described. Besides, the experiment allowed us to point out the common mistakes made by the students. These mistakes concerned the rules of reading some letters and letter combinations, placing the primary and secondary stresses in polysyllabic words, as well as tertiary stresses in compound nouns. We considered both phonological mistakes which lead to misunderstanding, and non-phonological ones which distort words and make them difficult to understand in the process of communication.
Highlights
Phonetic aspect is part and parcel of the process of learning a foreign language
The formation of pronunciation skills is a long and complex process that begins with mastering the ability to articulate individual letters and letter combinations, after which the learners move on to words, acquiring the basic rules of verbal accents, and further on – to pronounce whole phrases, i.e. learning to use the correct models of intonation, norms of pause, logical accent, etc
It is natural to assume that university lecturers and undergraduates are quite proficient in articulatory skills
Summary
Phonetic aspect is part and parcel of the process of learning a foreign language. The formation of pronunciation skills is a long and complex process that begins with mastering the ability to articulate individual letters and letter combinations, after which the learners move on to words, acquiring the basic rules of verbal accents, and further on – to pronounce whole phrases, i.e. learning to use the correct models of intonation, norms of pause, logical accent, etc. Phonetics mustn’t be undervalued and ignored in teaching any foreign language. The due approach to teaching the English phonetics to the Russian students will help correct common mistakes in the English pronunciation
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