Pronunciation Strategies
Aileen Halloran
Capital Region Education Council
Hartford, CT
(860) 524-4028
[email protected]
Where to begin?
•What is pronunciation?
•What it’s not
•Some useful definitions
•Components of pronunciation
•CASAS Listening Skills Content Standards
•Ideas for the classroom
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Pronunciation
the way in which a sound, word,
or language is articulated,
especially in conforming to an
accepted standard
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Pronunciation is…..
• Consonant
sounds
• Vowel sounds
• Word Stress
• Phrasal stress
• Connected text
•
•
•
•
•
Thought groups
Emphasis
Reduction
Linking
Intonation
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What it’s not
• Phonics
– a way to teach READING using a correspondence
between sounds and written symbols that do not
correspond to the sounds of the language, but are a
practical approximation (e.g., that the sound /k/ can
be represented by c, k, or ck spellings).
• Graphemes
– the units (letters) of a writing system that represent
a phoneme (f in fin, ph in phantom, gh in laugh)
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Some useful definitions
• Phonemes - the smallest MEANINGFUL units of
sound in a language
– /s/ /d/ /m/ /p/
– /ei/ /ch/ /ck/ /th/
• Morphemes - smallest meaningful units of
language, consisting of a word or part of a word, that
cannot be divided without losing its meaning; a
minimal unit of language that has meaning
– /s/ /ed/
– /duck/ /walk/
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Phonological Awareness
• Phonological awareness - the ability to
recognize rules unique to each language.
– Includes sound discrimination, rhyme
awareness, sentence segmentation, word
segmentation, rhyme segmentation, and
phonemic awareness
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Phonemic Awareness
• Involves the auditory and oral
identification and manipulation of speech
sounds (phonemes)
• Involves understanding that speech is
composed of a sequence of phonemes that
are recombined to form words. (does not
involve printed letters)
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Phonemic Awareness
•
•
•
•
Auditory
Speech-based
Spoken language
Speech sounds
(phonemes) have
symbols (letters)
• Phoneme
discrimination
•
•
•
•
Natural units of speech
Brain and speech-based
Frees working memory
Connecting phonemes
(sounds) to graphemes
(letters)
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Word Stress
•
•
•
Each word has only one primary stress, on vowels not
consonants.
Most 2-syllable nouns and adjectives put the stress on the
first syllable. (China, present, slender, happy)
Most 2 syllable verbs put the stress on the 2nd or last syllable
(Import, present, begin)
•
•
Words ending in –ic, -tion, -sion, put stress on penultimate
syllable (second from end) (graphic, geographic, communication)
Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy, -gy and -al put stress on antepenultimate syllable (third from end) (democracy, photography,
critical)
•
For compound nouns, the stress is on the first part (blackbird,
greenhouse)
•
For compound verbs the stress is on the second part (to
understand, to overflow)
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Word Stress
• Recipe
– Next you need to add the cold cream (coldcream)
• Numbers
– 13/30, 14/40, 15/50
– Thirteen, thirty
• Noun vs verb
– Present, object, conflict
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Sentence Stress
• Content words (words that carry meaning) are stressed
–
–
–
–
–
Main verbs- employ, walk, sell
Nouns- car, music, Mary
Adjectives- big, interesting, black
Adverbs- loudly, quietly
Negative auxiliaries – don’t, can’t, won’t
• Structure words are unstressed
– Pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions
– Auxiliary verbs- do, be, have, can, must
– "To be" as a main verb-is, are, was
• The time between stressed words is always the same
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Stress
He can come on Sundays as long as he
doesn’t have any homework to do in
the evening.
The beautiful mountain appeared
transfixed in the distance.
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Emphasis
Woman without her man
is nothing
We aim to please You aim
too please
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Emphasis
I didn't say he stole the money.
I didn't say he stole the money.
I didn't say he stole the money.
I didn't say he stole the money.
I didn't say he stole the money.
I didn't say he stole the money.
I didn't say he stole the money.
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Emphasis
A: He won’t win.
B: Who won’t?
A: He won’t.
B: He will win.
A: He won’t win.
B: He will!
A: He won’t!
B: I hope he wins.
A: I hope he loses.
B: He won’t lose.
A: He will lose.
B: You’re wrong!
A: You’re wrong!
B: He’s won!
A: Who’s won?
B: He’s won!
A: Oh no!
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CASAS Listening Content Standards
• L1.2 Recognize words and sounds when they are
modified by adjacent sounds
• L1.3 Distinguish individual words in connected
speech
• L1.4 Distinguish basic stress and intonation patterns
in English words and sentences
• L1.5 Recognize reduced forms of words and phrases
• L1.6 Recognize location of stress in multi-syllable
words
• L3.7 Recognize noun plurals
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Interlanguage Development
• An unstable language developed during the
language learning process
– Rule for 3rd person “s" and then overgeneralize the
rule to modal forms (she cans)
– Use of "privaty" for privacy (from private on
doors)
• Fossilization
– Certain interlanguage forms become fixed, or
fossilized, and no amount of input seems to be able
to induce a re-analysis of the fossilized form to put
it more in line with the L2
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What can we do?
• Focus on pronunciation issues that can improve
“intelligibility”
– Sentence stress, word stress
• Marking sentences
– Connected speech
• Dialogues http://www.scc‐fl.edu/adulted/els/lesson‐
plans/pronunciation_lessons.htm
– Final consonants (/d/, /t/, /s/)
• Verb sort
– Question words
• Activity on note cards
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Brewster the Rooster
Bill the chicken farmer had hundreds of hens, called
pullets, and several roosters to keep them company.
He put bells on the roosters so he could track which
ones were working. His favorite rooster was ol'
Brewster. Unfortunately, Brewster's bell wasn't
ringing, so Bill went to investigate. Brewster had the
bell in his beak, so he could sneak up on the pullets.
Bill was thrilled, and entered Brewster in the county
fair.Brewster was a sensation. The judges not only
awarded him the No Bell Prize, but also the Pullet
Surprise! .
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