English and French Language Resources

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Sounds and Stress: a practical, didactic approach By Carl STORZ Institut National des Télécommunications Evry, France INTRODUCTION After listening to many technical students' (third year students who are about to enter the working world and begin their careers in telecommunications) oral presentations and speech in general, it is quite surprising to still hear, after many years of language training, various levels of oral competence (from excellent, albeit rare except for a few who have lived or worked abroad to incompetence) and especially of English pronunciation. Ex. 1 One particular student's defense of a mini-research project, for example, was virtually incomprehensible for both myself and his scientific advisor/professor. Many fail to clearly pronounce key lexical items often cognates: satellite, cable, telephony, but also basic lexical items: England, friend, blood, study, etc. Ex. 2 To take another simple but illustrative example, another student asked me how to excuse oneself in English and as I did not hear him the first time I spontaneously said, "Pardon me." After understanding his request and repeating my answer several times, I realized that he had not heard or perceived the second syllable of this utterance which is unstressed schwa. Word and sentence stress are even greater a problem than individual sounds. In spite of the student's meritorious efforts and knowledge of the subject we decided that something had to be done if we could say that a student was a good communicator and ready to launch into a career in telecommunications! To deal with this problem on a large scale, I thought it was not sufficient to simply take a course book on phonetics or phonology, to send learner's to the language lab or to explain the system(s) to students and encourage them to take notes. It is important to make students responsible for their own pronunciation work. I found that a simple grid in which students could systematically note down their own examples, their problems from the first class at the I.N.T to the last and even beyond, would be of much greater service to them which is why an open tool is needed. Students will have many teachers with different pronunciations, will take a variety of courses, and will hear a variety of Englishes from foreign students, guest speakers, the media, etc., In other words, pronunciation needs to be made an integral part of each language course or even language experience. Students must have an ongoing system to help them deal with their difficulties and the variety of English phonetic and phonological systems. In giving students a few of the basic rules and a tool to deal with them, valuable classroom time can be spent on more "difficult" areas of phonology sentence stress and intonation. The underlying principles are obviously invidualization, appropriacy, contextualization, and semi-autonomy. In this text we will take a look at some of the reasons French learners of English have problems of pronunciation especially phonetics and the solution I have opted for to help students improve. I will then briefly describe the results obtained and evaluation, problems, extensions, and future possibilities. First of all I will briefly describe the type of students I work with. I. STUDENTS The "Institut National des Télécommunications" is one of the French "Grandes Ecoles" specializing in telecommunications. They are not language majors; they will need English in the work place and perhaps in their social lives. On arrival most students will have studied English as a first language at 'Lycée' and during their preparatory classes and in general are fairly proficient in English; the average first-year student will be what we call a level "2.5" (on a scale of 1-4), that is to say someone who would pass the FCE exam with a good C or B grade. However, in spite of the improvement in the teaching of English in recent years, students still have many difficulties in grammar, lexis, phonology and all four skills. What is more after up to 10 years of studying English, students can be rather cynical about the possibilities or even the usefulness of making further progress. Many of our students have also had the opportunity of spending a period of time in English-speaking countries, and although not fluent, they are able to maintain a general discussion on an everyday topic. This often gives them intensive practice in English as they choose to do their internship in an English-speaking country. On a didactic level this experience is invaluable. For example, one student worked at the switchboard in a company in Canada. When he came back he told me he finally realized that pronunciation was a major problem of his and hoped to do further work to improve. The English programme at the INT aims to offer a wide choice of theme courses, to give students the opportunity of practicing and improving their English through the study of a subject which interests them. The theme courses include, on the one hand, artistic subjects such as music, twentieth century literature, cinema and on the other hand, more professionally oriented courses, such as negotiation skills, advertising, science and technology and telecommunications English. Language is thus contextualized and communication becomes more meaningful and authentic when the focus is not on discrete language items. II. REASONS FOR PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS One reason for many learner's problems resides in the "difficulty" of producing certain (if not many) English sounds correctly. English obviously contains some sounds that are similar but, in fact, sometimes very different from the learner's L1, in this case French. For example compare the quality of the following sounds in the English and the French words as follows: /i:/ as in sheep/oui; /aI/ as in hi/aye; "sh" as is shop/chez. The similarities are perhaps not very numerous and may even be problematic since "similar" does not imply "identical". Sounds are produced somewhat or radically differently in different languages. One big problem French-speakers have with many English sounds is the length of the sound: /i:/, /u:/, /æ/, /ai/ (as in I, eye), /eu/ (as in no), /au/ (as in now) are all longer than the similar French sound. On the contrary, many learners have a problem with the shortness of certain sounds: short "i" (as in is), the short "u" as in cup or push, and especially schwa. Another reason for the difficulty for phonological problems of many learners of English is the seeming lack of correspondence between English spelling and English pronunciation; the written form does not correspond to the spoken form in a very systematic way (compared to say French or German). E.g. though, thought, through, thorough; sew, few; used to, a use. Overgeneralization, comparing seemingly similar words, leads to errors such as die/dye vs. study. The majority, however, of graphic combinations/representations are not quite so erratic/irregular. For example ee or ea are very often pronounced /i:/, or ou/ow /au/, oo /u:/, eu/ew /ju:/. There is always a temptation, or perhaps it is just an easy way out, especially when the learner is focusing on content rather than form, to transfer L1 sounds to L2 lexical items. When a student is not sure or sees or knows an L2 lexical item is similar to an L1 lexical item, at least on the level of (written) form, there is a good chance of reverting to L1 knowledge. Since English is full of words of Latin and French origin (cognates and many loan-words) learners constantly reinforce the idea that both languages are similar and thus tend to pronounce these items as in French. For example: integer, union, frequency, image, private, public, powerful, difficult, computer, European, popular, telephony, version, education, squash, base, coaxial, socialism, future, question, import, concentration, etc. A lack of knowledge and a transfer of L1 sounds also is responsible for the mispronunciation of English words like blood, study, powerful, etc. A lack of knowledge of word stress "rules" in polysyllabic words hinders correct pronunciation especially of weakened vowel sounds (and schwa) : character, England, German, Japan, Japanese, telephony, photograph, photographer, produce, production, introduction, etc. Students' past learning experiences as well as learning techniques and expectations have usually relied rather heavily on the written form, i.e. written texts, course materials, exercises, etc. Students have a tendency to think they need more (written) grammar, not realizing or taking seriously enough the fact that pronunciation is to oral language as spelling is to written language. Teachers are also perhaps partly to blame accepting poor pronunciation, responding too readily to learners' request for more grammar, avoiding the problem because of a lack of knowledge or fear. Students see many teachers over their course of study; hearing so many varieties of English pronunciation may cause confusion. E.g. been in American English is pronounced differently in British and many other varieties of English. Teachers are perhaps at fault as phonological problems are common and many of us, after living in France for so many years build up a tolerance and a capacity to understand French speakers however approximate or accurate their pronunciation. It is nevertheless vital, as we have seen in the examples in the introduction, for effective communication to make an effort and to improve in the area of pronunciation. Concerning speech, a learner mispronouncing words all the time or even part of the time puts pressure on the listener's ear. Sometimes it is possible to make the necessary correction to assure comprehension. However, many experts have shown that phonological errors are much more responsible for communication breakdown than grammar errors. Besides speaking, listening comprehension is seriously impinged upon in so far as a lack of knowledge of the oral form of words (and groups of words, whole utterances) hinders understanding. Learner's comprehension of an oral text compared to reading the same text is considerably lower. They cannot often "hear" the sounds, especially schwa which is very short. For example (schwa is underlined): satellite, pardon me, do you want to go? If a learner is not familiar enough with English sounds or sound system how can we expect comprehension or learning to take place even after listening to a passage twice? As we are training future professional people in telecommunications, like any professional who will have to communicate professional ideas in professional situations, we have to require at least a relatively "clear" pronunciation to assure effective communication and a good image. Given the number of above problems and importance of a finer knowledge of English pronunciation, I thought it would be best to do so through meaningful contextualization (the learners specialized field) and regular revision, something that more academic approaches and materials do not succeed in doing. The grid I am proposing allows for an easier access to the oral form of English. III. THE SOLUTION - THE GRID In order to help students realize the importance of pronunciation and where their particular problems lie, I thought it would be a good idea to encourage students to take on the responsibility of noting down, organizing and categorizing their OWN errors once corrected in any-in-class oral activities so that they can practice out of class. I have very simply given learners a blank Excel grid, that I will call for lack of a better name, a pronunciation grid. The objective of this grid is to help learners organize their own pronunciation practice in order to not only improve their spoken production but also their listening comprehension. Learners in my classes would often note down their problems and the phonetic transcription but not in an organized fashion. As time went by, it was impossible to refer back to any kind of note as a particular word, a particular sound that came up on a particular day was lost in the muddle of notes. In order to help learners learn how words are pronounced and some of the basics of the pronunciation of English a little organization or system is needed. The objective is NOT, however, to get learners to sound like an Englishman or an American but to have a clear enough form of pronunciation in English to understand better and make him/herself understood better. To help learner's organize their pronunciation grid, this grid should include, most typical problem sounds for speakers of a language group. Whether it be examples of technical and scientific leis of general English the sounds and problems are the same. On one page learners can note vowel problems, on another consonants, diphthongs, word stress problems, etc. (See Pronunciation Grid Ewample at end of text.) ) I usually start off by giving a few examples, from learners' speech of course, writing them up on the board. I also put up the sound symbols on the board, asking for an example to illustrate the symbol. In each example I underline the letter(s) of the alphabet to indicate the place of the sound in the word so that a learner can realize exactly where the sound is pronounced in the word. This is especially important when there is more than one graphic representation for one phonetic realization; e.g. image. In the case of polysyllabic words, I ask them to note down the stress using "O" for a stressed syllable and "o" for an unstressed one. Besides marking word stress of polysyllabic words students can use the grid to note down words in column that have the same word stress pattern to discover a few of the basic rules concerning word stress in English. Ex. 1: become, begin, forget, ex. 2: absence, contents, progress, product; ex. 3: backwards, center, kingdom, meter, passion, village, ex.4: advice, affair, relief, success; ex. 5: discussion, publicity, republic, specify, ex. 6 compliment, concentrate, disintigrate, ex. 7: cassette, Chinese, degree, dissuade, machine, routine, personnel. I want to emphasize the fact that I do not "teach" pronunciation per se. I do not offer a class just on pronunciation, nor do I insist on the phonetic alphabet. It is in the context of any and all classes that I try to sensitize students to patterns and their problems, point out specific difficulties in the group and on an individual basis and constantly make reference to the grid, a semi-autonomous tool for which student should assume the responsibility. I also usually introduce learners to a learner's dictionary to help them, when they are out of class, to discover the correct pronunciation of a word and encourage them to note it down just like we do in class. It is up to the learner to continue adding to his/her grid by adding appropriate examples as they come up. As words do come up I ask if the problem sound is already on their grids or similar to a category on the board if I am noting up problems on the board in a feedback session, or what other words we have seen similar sounds. I elicit the correct pronunciation from the class or refer students to a dictionary. They then classify the mispronounced word by comparing it to the example word or words in their list. The idea of the categorization and the underlining of the graphic representation of the sound is to help students reproduce and practice the sound out of class by comparing the sound at the head of the category to the examples. If the category is /aI/ like in the word I, a student should be able to pronounce satellite correctly. In noting words that pose a problem in such a way, learners will have a handy, organized practice tool which will allow them to revise the written AND spoken form of key lexis in their field. Finally, the variety of Englishes in the world is important aspect students should be at least sensitized to. I will not go into great detail about the different systems within the English speaking world but just point out that within any language community there is variety. As I have already said our students meet a number of teachers from different English-speaking countries and will have a number of different contacts with different English speakers, they should be aware of variation. The proposed grid can take this into account. (See part V.) IV. RESULTS AND EVALUATION I started using this technique last year and already I have seen a greater sensitivity to the problem as well as heard in many cases better spoken English, even just after one trimester of class. There is perhaps no need for a formal evaluation in the form of a test as teachers should notice progress in oral activities in the class every class. However, results from a preliminary questionnaire have shown that few students actually work on English outside of class, unless of course there is a test, or they receive a grade. V. PROBLEMS According to a preliminary questionnaire and direct student feedback some difficulties have come up in using the grid but nothing serious enough to question its use or usefulness. One problem is "learning" or using the phonetic alphabet as there are many different phonetic alphabets, even for English. It is not important to learn the symbols but to learn the sound. I tell my learners to have some kind of example under the phonetic symbol to remind them how the sound is pronounced and use that as a "symbol" (reminder). Secondly, there is also a problem of varieties of English, American, Southern American, Standard American; British, Oxford, London, Northern, Southern, cockney English not to mention Australian, Canadian, Irish, Indian, etc. The first form a teacher can give is his/her own. As an American I give my version and when there is a difference the RP form (often with the help of a dictionary)! Some sounds I do point out especially a few of the basic differences : e.g. dance, father, mock, book; r dropping versus non r-dropping: fire, poor, hour, layer . English pronunciation is complicated enough as it is and different enough from learners L1. Besides grammar and lexis, pronunciation is another important aspect that needs to be learned and treated systematically until the learner is familiar with the system enough to be able to have a clear pronunciation. The problem of varieties of English does not really help matters as far as I can see. I would not expect a learner to be experts but at least to be aware of the fact that there is a great deal of variety and again to have a clear, preferably coherent system of pronunciation of his/her own! Another problem is the follow up. I would hope my colleagues pick up on what I have started with students. As I have said above it is important for work to be kept up over time, in any context, with any teacher for learners to improve and to become more sensitive to varieties of pronunciation. VI. EXTENSIONS AND FUTURE POSSIBILITIES The grid which includes students examples can be used in many classroom activities. A teacher can check from time to time to make sure notes are correct or ask another learner to compare his/her neighbors list, pronunciation. Students can compare lists or check each other. Other word exercises based on rhyme and definition could be done. The learner, especially if having prolonged difficulties can also ask a native speaker friend, a very proficient non-native speaker or within reason the teacher to make a recording at least some of his/her examples. The possibilities of extensions of the exercise are numerous. I found that the grid was useful yes but perhaps too small; after 10 weeks many students had noted so many examples that it seemed necessary to have more space. I therefore developed a longer version, a notebook form with much more space for students examples and also a brief description of the phonetic and phonological systems of English. Since the objective is to improve pronunciation through semi-autonomous work, it would be idea to have an audio or video recording of the words that students have noted to serve as an example of correct pronunciation. Students could attempt to do it and the teacher could listen and correct it. I would also like to supply an audio version of the examples in the notebook along with a British colleague to have two accents contrasted. I would greatly appreciate teachers' or learners' comments (positive or negative) should you adopt such a pronunciation grid. Carl STORZ Tél. 01.60.76.44.83 L'Institut National des Télécommunications Fax 01.60.76.44.96 Département LFH E mail: Carl. Storz@int-evry.fr 9, rue Charles Fourier 91011 Evry Cedex Bibliography Bowler, Bill and Sarah Cunningham. Headway Pronunciation (pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. Oxford: OUP, 1990-1992. Deschamps, Alain. De l'écrit à l'oral et de l'oral à l'écrit. Phonétique et orthographe de l'anglais. Paris: Ophrys, 1994. Duchet, J.L. Code de l'anglais oral. Paris: Ophrys, 2nd ed. 1994 Gimson, A.C. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold, 5th ed. 1991; Tardieu, Jean. La prononciation de l'anglais. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1990. Pronunciation Grid Example VOWELS /e/ / / /i:/ /æ/ / / (AM) / / (BR) o O net is beam cat O o o father banana O sweat bit o O o O o O o o idea Nasa project England O o O o O o o o O O o o friendly wanted O Japan robot telephone machine o O o O o O o o o image analyse telephony VOWELS /u:/ too cup push horse firm fruit blood book work o O o O o O o O study input version consume O o o O o O o O o usual govern woman current DIPHTHONGS eye WAY NO NOW title NAture CODE HOUr China DAta PROject disCOUNT (BR) MInus HDTV CONSONANTS /s/ /z/ a use to use ship chip o O o jump decision o O o o o O o o O o search o O O o analysis analyses sugar prestige major close to close o O O o O o o O o o nature usual image Chicago choice choose niche /j/ /ks/ /kw/ you ex O o question o O O o O o o coax frequent computer O o o popular O o union

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