3. Teaching English Pronunciation: Its Relevance Today- Ms. Tallapragada Rama

Abstract

Possessing good pronunciation skills is a desirable quality that ensures easy access to employment in the initial stages of one’s professional life and later to faster professional growth. Good pronunciation skills are equated with good communicative competence which in turn impresses interviewers. There is no doubt that students who have communicative competence and the right kind of attitude have an edge over others in the employment race. In this context teaching pronunciation, along with the other language skills, to students at all levels becomes relevant.

Melanie, a TESL certified English teacher in Toronto, Canada, has said:

Good pronunciation=Good listening skills= Good communication skills.

The objective of this paper is to stress the relevance of teaching pronunciation in Indian schools and colleges and discuss the various methods that can be adopted to impart pronunciation training.

Key Words: Pronunciation, Relevance, Universal intelligibility, Communicative competence.

Introduction

Possessing good communication skills is a boon and the same is realized by all students of all courses. The fact that communication skills are the key to getting employed has been stressed by English teachers in professional colleges and degree colleges and by recruiting officers from all MNCs. What constitute good communication skills? It is the ability to convey one’s ideas, thoughts, and feelings in a clear, precise and effective manner using the right vocabulary, grammar and also correct pronunciation in oral communication. Thus communication skills include correct pronunciation which is an area mostly neglected by both students as well as most teachers. Lack of good pronunciation leads to unintelligibility. Most speakers become unintelligible to foreigners as well as to many Indians. People with a good command over the language are preferred by companies as they would be able to interact effectively with clients abroad.

Objective

The objective of this paper is to show the importance and relevance of pronunciation teaching to students, especially, of professional courses, to enable them to be competent communicators.

Methodology

This paper is written partly based on empirical study and partly based on secondary sources and conversations with students on the need for pronunciation training in their

“We have probably met foreign speakers of English who sounded very fluent and may have been perfectly grammatical, with appropriate vocabulary, but who were unintelligible owing to poor pronunciation”, (Brown, 1991: p.1).

As Joan Morley, (1994, pp. 64-91) editor of TESOL says, “Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence.” Hence teaching pronunciation should be an essential part of any communicative ESL classroom.

These statements show how significant and relevant it is to have good pronunciation skills.

A list of hundred words that conform to seventeen word stress rules was prepared and the same was given to twenty five students each of third year B. Tech and second year MBA students. These students were selected in particular because B. Tech students do not have English as a subject after their third year and MBA students have it only in their first year first semester. Both are professional courses after gaining which students either choose to work or to study further, abroad. Both these options require good command over the language. Good command over the language does not mean just fluency but also good vocabulary and good pronunciation. In fact students need training in communication skills which include pronunciation training to be given in their final year of study to prepare them to face interviews for jobs as well as for studies abroad.

The fifty students belonging to different colleges in the city were asked to read the words aloud and their pronunciation was recorded. The recordings were loaded on to a computer and saved. The collected data was analyzed based on auditory impressions and using the software Praat. The sound files were listened to repeatedly a number of times. Based on the auditory impressions stress was marked in the word list given to students. Then it was verified using Praat. The readings of pitch for each syllable were noted and then accordingly word stress was marked for each of the informants. Praat is a Dutch word which means to ‘talk’ or ‘speak’. It is a computer software used for the analysis of speech in phonetics. It was developed by Paul Boersman and David Weenink from the Institute of Phonetic Sciences-University of Amsterdam. It can be downloaded free of cost.

Result

The analysis of the word stress used by the students reveals that only 40.22% of B. Tech students and 36.41% of MBA students conformed to the standard norm of pronunciation. Many students mispronounced many of the words in the list. It is evident that many of them have not come across these words before. The outcome of the study points to the fact that lack of good pronunciation skills leads to unintelligibility. It also proves that pronunciation teaching and training is essential for ESL learners.

For example cacophony was pronounced /kQknofonI/, the word galvanometer was pronounced /gQlnomiùter/, and orthography as /ùrTrogrÃfI/. The word ‘burlesque’, ‘grotesque’ and ‘picturesque’ were pronounced /bÃrleskjU/ /groteskjU/ /grstIkjU/ and /pIktSereskjU/. The word lugubrious was pronounced /lÃgbrIÃs/ and /lUdZUbrIÃs/ by many B. Tech as well as MBA informants. The word vivacious was pronounced /vaIveùSIÃs/ and the word zealous as /ziùlÃs/. The word disavow was pronounced /dIsvoùv/ by 16 informants, disburse was pronounced /dIsbruùs/, disenchanted was pronounced, /dIsenhQnsd/ by some. The word against was pronounced /Ãgenest/. The word immoral, was pronounced /ImùrtÃl/ the word degenerate was pronounced /dIdZenreùt/. Most of them pronounced reponsibility as /respnsIbIltI/. The word necessity was pronounced /nesItI/.

1. Table showing the 17 word stress categories selected for the corpus with the individual and overall average percentages of conformity with the standard norm of B Tech informants.

2. Table showing the 17 word stress categories selected for the corpus with the individual and overall average percentages of conformity with the standard norm of MBA informants.

Relevance of Possessing Good Pronunciation Skills

In A. C. Gimson’s words, “…..unless a learner expects to deal with English only in its written form, there is no escape from the acquisition of at least the rudimentary elements of English pronunciation”. This statement sums up the importance of pronunciation and its relevance in today’s world as students and employees have to interact with native speakers in the course of their study and employment. Thus possessing good pronunciation skills play an important role in a person’s life. They help a person to be an effective and competent communicator globally. On the other hand lack of good pronunciation skills restricts one’s employability and opportunities for career advancement.

Good pronunciation refers to having knowledge of the basic stress pattern of English which gives it its characteristic rhythm. It does not mean gaining an American accent or British accent but neutralization of accent. Neutralization of accent is extremely important for Indian speakers to make them intelligible to foreigners. Indian speakers most often become unintelligible not only to foreigners but also to other Indians as their Mother Tongue influences the way they speak English. So the goal of pronunciation teaching is not an acquisition of a native-like accent but neutralization of accent where the influence of the Mother Tongue is done away with to a large extent.

Daniel Jones says, “The ultimate object of the language learner is to be able to pronounce properly without having to pay any particular attention to the way in which he does it.” He also goes on to give tips on how to surmount the difficulties faced by ESL learners. He suggests, ear training which helps to distinguish, recollect and recognize sounds easily and definitely. This kind of ear training requires practice in listening to the sounds first individually, then in words and then in connected speech. This requires exposure to the right kind of pronunciation.

Methods to Teach Pronunciation

Earlier two general approaches were used to teach pronunciation. They were:

1. An intuitive-imitative approach (late 19th century)

o This approach banks on the learner’s capability to listen and imitate the sounds of the native target language without providing any overt training or information on various aspects of pronunciation.

o This approach takes it for granted that valid and reliable models for listening are available

2. An analytic-linguistic approach

• utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic alphabet, articulatory descriptions, chartsof the vocal apparatus, contrastive information, and other aids to supplement listening, imitation, and production

• explicitly informs the learner of and focuses attention on the sounds and rhythms of the target language

• was developed to complement rather than to replace the intuitive-imitative approach, which was typically retained as the practice phase used in tandem with the phonetic information.

• In 1886 the International Phonetic Association was formed by phoneticians like Henry Sweet and Paul Passy. They developed the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA, which made it easy to teach sounds. These phoneticians proposed the following ideas to teach sounds:

· The spoken form of a 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 good speech habits.

Phoneticians and professors of English Language Teaching in ESL classrooms have proved that intelligible communication is necessary for effective oral communication. Having established that, the next step is to identify methods that can be adopted in the Indian context to teach pronunciation. Since the preferred approach to teaching language worldwide is the Communicative Approach, just teaching the theoretical aspects of segmentals, as was done earlier, should be rejected in favour of a more comprehensive method. This method should include suprasegmental features like stress, rhythm, and intonation along with segmentals in appropriate texts, to suit the communicative language teaching and learning classrooms.

McNerney & Mendelsohn (1992: 186) express this position very clearly:

. . . a short term pronunciation course should focus first and foremost on suprasegmentals as they have the greatest impact on the comprehensibility of the learner's English. We have found that giving priority to the suprasegmental aspects of English not only improves learners' comprehensibility but is also less frustrating for students because greater change can be effected in a short time. (Celce-Murcia, 1996)

But teaching just the suprasegmental features without including the segmental would not be very beneficial to the learners. Hence a more balanced approach which would blend the more important features of both these aspects would help meet the needs of the learners to a large extent.

Conclusion

The fact that good pronunciation is essential for international intelligibility is proved by many proponents of ELT worldwide. A lack of intelligibility in non-native speakers proves to be a detriment to their professional growth. The study of word stress used by the fifty informants of B. Tech and MBA courses proves that they require focused training in pronunciation. The findings of the study prove that pronunciation teaching is very much relevant today in the Indian classrooms and that special attention needs to be given to pronunciation teaching in a systematic manner so as to improve the communicative competence of our students and to help them become global citizens.

References

Bansal R.K. 1978. Introductions to English Language Teaching, Volume 2, Phonetics and Spoken English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bansal R.K., J. B. Harrison. 1972. Spoken English for India, A Manual Of Speech And Phonetics, Orient Longman.

Celce-Murcia, et. al. 1996. “Pronunciation Teaching, History and Scope.” TESOL.

Celce-Murcia, M. 1987. “Teaching Pronunciation as Communication.” In Morley (1987), pp. 1-12

Cruttenden, A. 2008. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English, Seventh Edition, Hodder Education.

Hancock, Mark. 2003. English Pronunciation in Use, Pack Intermediate Book and Audio CDs.

J. D. O’Connor. 1998. Better English Pronunciation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jones, Daniel. 1976. An Outline of English Phonetics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kenworthy, J. 1987. Teaching English Pronunciation. London: Longman.

Morley, Joan. Editor, TESOL.1994. Pronunciation Pedagogy and Theory, New Views, New Directions.

Pennington, Martha C. 1996. Phonology in English Language Teaching: An International Approach. London and New York: Longman.

www.eric.ed.gov, Improving Adult ESL Learners’ pronunciation Skills, ERIC Digest.

www.nceltr.mq.edu.au/pdamep, AMEP Research Centre, “Fact Sheet – What is Pronunciation?”