Teaching pronunciation

Over recent years there has been a renewed interest in the teaching of pronunciation. Why is it so important? Work on pronunciation is important for two main reasons:

•to help the students understand the spoken English they hear;

•to help them make their own speech comprehensible and meaningful to others. Christine Dalton and Barbara Seidlhofer define pronunciation as the production

of significant sound in two senses. First, sound is significant because it is used as part of a code of a particular language. In this sense we can talk about pronunciation as the production and reception of sounds of speech. Second, sound is significant because it is used to achieve meaning in context of use. Here the code combines with other factors to make communication possible. In this sense we can talk about pronunciation with reference to acts of speaking.

So, primary communicative goal is important as a general guide for teaching pronunciation, because pronunciation is never an end in itself but a means to negotiate meaning in discourse. Teaching English pronunciation is envisaged in English School Syllabus as it is one of the basic habits necessary to be acquired in school. Under phonetic habits that should be formed we mean:

a) comprehensible and intelligible pronunciation of individual sounds, sound clusters or sounds in connected speech, correct word stress, rhythm and stress in utterances;

b) intonation patterns.

The main requirement to learners' pronunciation is to be phonetically intelligible and accurate enough to be understandable. Absolute phonetic accuracy is impossible to achieve in secondary school, we cannot expect more than approximate correctness, the correctness that ensures communication between people speaking the same language. In communicative language teaching appropriacy is a more important criterion for intelligibility than correctness. So, the principle of approximation is the basic principle of teaching pronunciation in school. It deals with the pronunciation that is similar to the RP standard but not perfect and authentic enough as it is impossible to gain in secondary school. Approximated pronunciation is comprehensible pronunciation which is sought in the teaching process.

As in case of grammar and vocabulary, some limits to phonetic material acquisition are envisaged in a secondary school curriculum. So, we deal with phonetic school minimum. The criteria for its selection are as follows:

•difficulty of a certain phonetic phenomenon (the subject for special training is phonetic phenomena which are difficult to overcome, e.g. unusual sounds and sequences, the length of vowels, etc.);

•communicative needs (those sounds and intonation patterns which possess meaningful distinctive features should be in the sphere of attention:

e.g. question tags where rising or falling tones will result in different meaning; requests with rising tone in English and falling tone in Ukrainian; orders with rising tone in Ukrainian and falling tone in English; sentence stress; function of an utterance);

•Received Pronunciation (RP) standard which is the phonetic standard teaching object, a convenient teaching norm for foreigners.

Teaching pronunciation is a process which should be covering both early and advanced stages of instruction. A distinction must be drawn between the types of exercises suitable for each stage. Training on the early/initial stages aims at avoiding problems in comprehension; not only particular sounds are practiced, but also patterns of stress, information and juncture. Phonetic habits are formed through identification exercises, imitative production, and guided non-imitative production. At a later, advanced stage, the stage of autonomous production appropriate exercises for remedial training should be proposed for advanced students who often need intensive practice in the production of certain problem sounds or sequences of sounds to correct a "foreign accent".

The classification of phonetic exercises acceptable for secondary school learning is as follows:

•receptive (recognition, discrimination, identification);

•reproductive (imitation, substitution, transformation, answering the questions).

Teaching pronunciation should be strategically planned and connected with the particular structures and lexis dealt with in the lesson. In the light of this Gerald Kelly divides lessons into three main types:

•Integrated lessons in which pronunciation forms an essential part of the language analysis and the planning process, and the language presentation and practice within the lesson;

•Remedial or reactive lessons, where a pronunciation difficulty which arises in class is dealt with there and then, in order to facilitate the successful achievement of classroom tasks;

•Practice lessons in which a particular feature of pronunciation is isolated and practiced for its own sake, forming the main focus of a lesson period.

As native speakers of our first language, we automatically adapt our ways of speaking to situations and interlocutors. However, learning a foreign language may make us painfully aware of these factors. This awareness will be affected by our purpose and motivation. Motivation in second language learning may be instrumental and integrative, state Ch. Dalton, B. Seidlhofer.

An instrumental orientation reflects the practical advantages of learning a language, while an integrative orientation stems from a sincere and personal interest in the people and the culture. Obviously, this distinction is a very general one between two extreme positions, and many learners may actually go through different motivational stages in their language learning career. Learner with primarily

instrumental motivation will probably be interested mainly in getting meanings across, and regard their linguistic performance as satisfying if it is accessible to interlocutors.

An integratively motivated learner, on the other hand, will probably set greater store by the interactional side of communication, and will be concerned to be not only accessible but also acceptable to the foreign language community he or she is aspiring to be a member of. Attitudes and motivation can naturally change, both in the course of learning and in the course of a particular interaction.

All in all, the communicative value of pronunciation is undoubted and the importance of teaching pronunciation is evident since if we sound badly, nobody will understand us, if we perceive badly, we will fail to understand others.

Дата добавления: 2017-01-13