TOOLS FOR TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Abstract

Learning a foreign language has often erroneously meant undue emphasis on grammar in the form of paradigms, and vocabulary in the form of memorized lists of new words and their equivalents in the native language of the learner. Unfortunately, pronunciation is given only a mention in the preface of many texts, and the actual problem of teaching pronunciation often rests with a teacher who may lack the tools and the training to teach it effectively. The English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, with its goal of teaching oral proficiency in English to students of other language backgrounds, has incorporated into i ts teaching material anumber of tools for teaching pronunciation: a special alphabet, a vowel chart, and a facial diagram. A brief description of each of these tools may be of help to teachers in need of pronunciation materials that the students can see and work with in and out of class. It is extremely difficult for a student to hear and reproduce correctly significant sounds in a new language which do not occur in the sound patterns of his own language. With the teaching materials to be presented here, the teacher can explain and illustrate the proper way to pronounce these new sounds. THE SPECIAL ALPHABET In English the same sound is often spelled in a variety of ways. The underlined le t ters in the following words a re all pronounced the same way: bee, me, key, @pie, spKak, qKy. The sound which we may represent as Bj, in other words, is spelled ee, e, ey, eo, ea, and uay. On the other hahd, words which a re spelled similarly are often pronounced in a number of different ways: c s , h i c c e , through, en=, dr-t. It can be seen that it would be of great help to a teacher of pronunciation to have an alphabet in which a sound in a particular language is always represented by the same symbol and each symbol represents only one significant sound in that language. The following special alphabet used by the English Language Institute includes all the distinctive sounds of English and is based on the principle 1 sound1 symbol.