Silent Pronunciation Modelling 18th January Tefl Lab

Hi

I will be hosting an IPA session on silent modelling of the vowels and consonants in English. I would love to see you all there on the 18th January at 6.30pm or thereabouts.

My method is taken from what is called 'Silent Way' the brainchild of Caleb Gattegno. Adrian Underhill has successfully utilised this method and teaches using the silent model. This workshop will essentially model what he does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5RekixAMoM

Here is a link to how Adrian approaches the IPA and silent modelling.

The central question is; Is teaching pronunciation a physical act or a mental act? Grammar and lexis are often seen as mental representations of language and teachers find these 'easier to teach' than aspects of phonology. Teachers (especially non native teachers) find the teaching of pronunciation difficult. Often trainee teachers find drilling a difficult technique to master for a wide variety of reasons and often don't see the utility of it during a preliminary training course. Language learners across the world know though that drilling makes a big difference to their mastery of language.

We will discuss silent modelling and a whole lot more. I would like to talk to you about aspects of phonology such as prosody, contrastive and lexical stress and the role of teaching intonation- this is a particular challenge. I believe there is no consistent approach to teaching intonation. ELT literature offers nothing accessible to the English language teacher. We all know our learners need explicit help with intonation but there is little if not nothing on how to teach it and improve our learners ability in this area.

Here is a good website to get an idea about Silent way and improving the teaching of pronunciation

http://www.pronsci.com/

I look forward to seeing you there.

Will Tichener

Why Listen and repeat does not work

This post from pronsci clarifies the message about listen and repeat.

http://www.pronsci.com/pronsci-approach/why-listen-repeat-doesn-t-work/

Why Listen & Repeat doesn't work

All around the world, pronunciation is taught using the ‘Listen and Repeat’ (L&R) model: the student is asked to listen to his teacher or to a recording, and then asked to repeat what he hears. Many students cannot do this successfully, but even those who can find that it doesn’t have a lasting effect on the way they speak.

This is because L&R misdirects the student's attention. Instead of focussing on what he is doing with his speech articulators and what the acoustic effect is, he is trying to copy an acoustic image. That copying process is attempted using good, bad or indifferent skills that he learnt in the past, but whatever his level of success he is not left with any insight into the mechanics of the pronunciation of the new language. He has little to take away with him at the end of the process.

Those few students who do emerge with good pronunciation from L&R classes do so because they subvert the process: they practise on their own, they watch what they are doing with themselves, and so on. The good results they achieve are achievable by all, if only we encourage these behaviours in everyone.

How we speak and breath....where does stress come from?

Here is an activity from Piers Messum and Roslyn Young. They are both members of a special interest group that discuss issues relating to pronunciation. I have added it to our blog as I think it is interesting and relevant for trainee teachers.

The issue that they have been discussing in general is whether it is a good idea to teach students pronunciation with a 'listen and repeat' model. This is the primary method used in EFL throughout the world. They question its utility. We will start with the idea of stress and timing.

1 When we speak we're normally unaware of how we control our breath (our

`speech breathing'). But in extreme circumstances, it's more apparent.

Try

saying a nursery rhyme (like `Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a

pail of

water') in a loud whisper. Try saying it after breathing out almost all

of the

air that you can. (It may help to stand up for this exercise.)

a) What can you feel in the muscles around your waist?

Now go back to normal breathing and make a string of short /s/ sounds at

different rates. 4 per second, 2 per second and 1 per second.

b) What can you feel in each case in the muscles around your waist?

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/iatefl_pronsig/message/916

The idea behind the first exercise was for people to become a bit more

aware of what they do with their respiratory systems during speech.

Technically, this is known as speech breathing (SB), although the name

is a bit imprecise: we're only really concerned with the control of

expiratory ventilation rather than breathing as a whole.

When we speak under normal conditions, we use voluntary muscular

activity to inhale. Pulling down the diaphragm and expanding the ribcage

opens up our lungs, and air flows in. The muscular activity stretches

the stiff, elastic tissue in our chest walls and as we decrease the

voluntary effort this tissue creates pressure inside us as it starts to

recoil. The situation is not dissimilar to a balloon, where the elastic

skin compresses the air inside.

The pressure this creates is more or less sufficient to drive the vocal

folds and create other sounds sources in the mouth (explosions for /p/

and /t/ etc). As we `deflate' we add a bit of pressure through

voluntary muscular activity, but for normal speech we really don't

need to do much that is active with our respiratory systems. There's

a constant pressure under our vocal folds, and all the interesting

things in speech happen from the vocal folds upwards.

This changes under extreme conditions, or when we don't speak

normally. If you tried to say a train of /s/ sounds at different rates,

you probably found that at 4 per second your SB was as it is during

normal speech. But at 1 per second, you were actively compressing

yourself for each sound, and relaxing between sounds. Let's call

that a pulsatile style of SB, since you were breathing out in pulses.

Clearly your SB can be either `smooth' or `pulsatile'

even if it is normally smooth.

This is leading up to a discussion of stress. How do speakers create

routine (rather than emphatic) prominence on some syllables in English?

Among phoneticians, there's disagreement about this and disagreement

in the data. Traditionally, phoneticians said that speakers put more

respiratory system effort into stressed syllables. Some data from the

1970's challenged this, and now there are people who believe that

stress is largely created by a vocal fold adjustment (more tension means

a louder signal) plus lengthening of the syllable, while others think

that it is caused by SB pulsatility which leads to greater loudness and

length automatically.

This affects us as teachers, because it has implications for how we

should teach stress. If stress is no more than greater loudness and

length, we might be best teaching it by getting students to copy

acoustic models.

But if it involves more effort being made by the respiratory system, we

should probably start with this, and get the extra loudness and length

as a by-product of the correct actions being made by the learner.

The extra information which, we think, resolves this dilemma is

something that phoneticians have paid no attention to: the SB of

English-speaking children during the period when they learn to stress

syllables. I looked at this as part of my PhD research, and it turns out

be very significant.

Children have compliant, floppy tissue in their chest walls, not stiff

tissue. So when they breathe in and stretch this tissue there is very

little pressure created by its weak tendency to recoil. If an

adult's lungs are like an inflated balloon at the end of

inspiration, a child's is like an inflated paper bag: full of air,

but not pressurised.

Also, children can't make syllables louder just by tweaking their

vocal folds ( in the way that adults can). They have to increase their

respiratory drive for greater loudness.

So for children learning English, stress has to be the result of

pulsatile SB activity.They are making more effort on every prominent

syllable than on other ones. Stress is something they do with their

respiratory systems and larynx in combination, not just an acoustic

effect they copy with a small adjustment of their vocal folds.

This post would get very long if I went into more detail about this now,

and I think it would be better to see if what I have written so far is

clear to everyone and what questions and thoughts, if any, it

precipitates before we go any further.

The proposal, though, is that stress can and should be taught

non-imitatively: by getting students to do something active with their

respiratory systems for a stressed syllable, and for the result to be

louder and longer as a result of this. Concurrent activities like using

some other part of the body in synchrony with the stressing may be

helpful, but in this case let's get to the core of the matter and

help students to make stress in as `natural' a way as possible:

with their respiratory systems, as phoneticians in the past always used

to recommend.

Piers Messum

Living and teaching in China

Here is an interesting site. Lots of expats working in China.

http://middlekingdomlife.com/guide/our-china-efl-adventure-part-1.htm

Blog from China

Hi

One of our Tefl Lab trainees has blogged his experience of living and working in China. It is a very insightful and well-written blog and will give any prospective trainee, thinking of working in China, an interesting perspective on life there.

http://willphilipps.wordpress.com/

Field Guide to working and living in China

One of our Tefl Lab trainees' has written a short piece on life in China.

Taiyuan, Shanxi province, is a Chinese city like any other. Ancient, yet utterly and essentially modern. The modern entity is the product of a coal boom, and thus although there are some much-touted yet initially unapparent ancient dimensions, the place is in the main a glorified farming settlement. There are the rich coal baron types, for whom shopping malls have sprung up filled with imported luxury goods. Then there is the rest of the population, for whom such goods start at around a month's wages. There is little in the way of what might be described as a middle class, although it is growing, tending to congregate in pricey but tasteful cafes. Though some of the international fast food chains, namely McDonald's and KFC, have multiplied in the last few years, there is still no H&M or similar outside of the bigger population centres like Beijing. However, for the shopping-minded there are arcades filled with Chinese clothing boutiques and electronics (usually very reasonable, but the electronics may not be durable, and many of the clothes are pretty wacky. Cotton and leather shirt anyone?).

It may read as if I dislike the place, but after living here for the best part of a year it's grown on me. And I have received help along the way. As with most ESL teachers here, I received help with accommodation, a bank account and practically anything else I could want. Buses are around 10p at the time of writing, although taxis or bikes are perfectly viable. Overall China is more foreign-friendly than, so I've been told, parts of South America. Despite this, there is a slight tendency among a number of the fairly tiny expat community to get 'China rage,' which might be explained by culture shock if it weren't most apparent among people who have been here longer. I have no idea if this is common in other provincial cities, but there are some understandable sparks such as public spitting, defecation (nappies aren't really used here) and sometimes obnoxious behaviour from people who aren't used to a foreign face.

There are some advantages to living outside the large international cities. One is forced to pick up some Chinese fairly rapidly, and the lack of decent nightlife means at least it can be easier to save. Not that there aren't ways to abuse one's wallet. Around Taiyuan there are reservoirs, ski slopes, an enormous seated Buddha on a mountain and a famous ancient town called Pingyao; all of which are viable day trips. Getting further away is not too much trouble by train, bus, or plane – the amazing tourist destinations of China are quite accessible. In the city there are ice rinks, karaoke TV places, bowling places, pool places, massage parlours and more. Parks are something of a highlight – though my local park may be an extreme example with a gaudy in-built funfair, a video game arcade, motor and pedal boats, a small museum and even an aquarium – it still has the staples of public aerobics, elderly people kicking trees repeatedly, practicing tai chi, playing cards, playing instruments, singing songs, playing 'jianzi' (a sort of hackey-sack with feathers), flying kites or simply walking and sipping hot water. As a second-tier city, Taiyuan has its fair share of temples for those who enjoy calligraphy and other old stuff (there are churches and a mosque too). And as eating out on an ESL teacher's salary is affordable, like me many who work here have some of the best and worst gastronomic experiences of their lives. Much of this applies to any Chinese city of this size it seems; the main differences being climactic, linguistic and culinary.

Not that teachers have all that much time off to do these things. The private language schools such as the one I work for will offer around 10 days leave per year plus public holidays, which adds another 2 or 3 weeks. Universities allow more, though the pay is often lower. But, whereas university teachers work in the week, private classes are mostly during weekends and evenings, which means days off are during the week. Another difference is the students. The majority of students in private language schools are between 3 and 10 years old, with some teenagers and a smattering of adults. This seems to be broadly the case across East Asia. In a place like Taiyuan, the average ability is fairly low – though demand is high many parents don't have an excellent grasp of the language. Depending on whether one likes kids, or playing active language games that change every five minutes, this can be a positive or negative aspect. Aside from regular classes, there are marketing activities, Halloween and Christmas parties and more that teachers are expected to participate in. This past year I have also had public school classes (imagine being locked in a small room with 40 odd kids) and corporate language classes (think a similar number of office workers) put into my schedule, both a result of contracts made with the school. The school itself is equipped with electronic white-boards, as are many today, and all the other office equipment one might expect plus more. I have had little training or observation, though this can vary.

Here I have tried to give an honest impression of China as I have experienced it. Some of the better aspects include the general safety of the streets, relative freedom as a consumer, beautiful countryside, and the possibilities for Chinese acquisition (there are plenty of books and courses), whilst the worse aspects include the lack of safety standards in, say, electrical wiring, a government that makes using the Internet fully a real hassle (without a VPN there are no blogs, no foreign social networking sites, no Youtube), and a broad lack of professionalism in many areas from plumbing to medicine. It is not a hard place to live in, and can be quite an experience for those who seek it whilst here.

Getting it Right in the Interview

It's such a pity, when you've worked so hard to get through the TESOL course, that you, so to speak, fall at the last hurdle, by under-performing in the interview with the Trinity Moderator.

Nerves often play a part, but they don't have to. If you start to get the jitters, shift in your seat, or move your hands while speaking, so as not to clam up.

The most important thing, though, is in the discussion of your materials to use as much of the metalanguage you've learned on the course. That seems to be key.

So, when practising, ask yourself, 'How can I show the moderator what I've learned in this answer?'

It will prove invaluable to do so.

Mike