Unit 2: Speaking Accurately

Outcomes

• make your students aware of the correct pronunciation of some commonly mispronounced English vowel sounds in words;

• help your students practise pronouncing words accurately;

• teach your students that letters of the English alphabet have different pronunciations in different words;

• help your students pronounce words with silent letters correctly; and

• make your students aware of some conventions of English word stress.

Terminology

Monophthong:

A single vowel sound, such as /e/, /i:/ or /u/.

Diphthong:

Also called a vowel glide, a diphthong is a vowel that begins in one sound but glides to another at the end, such as /ei/, /au/ or /eǝ/.

Weak forms:

The unstressed forms of structure/function words like auxiliary verbs, pronouns and articles in an English utterance. (See Module 1, Unit 1.)

Connected speech:

Speech that comprises utterances and not isolated sounds or words.

Case study

Mallam Gwani, who teaches 15-year-olds at Community Secondary School, had always believed that speaking and reading skills were two separate things with very little in common. Because reading focused on comprehension, he thought reading classes could not be used to practise pronunciation — until he visited Mrs Afuwa’s class at St. Mathew’s College. Mrs Afuwa always used interesting reading texts from the course book as resources for improving students’ pronunciation. She saw reading aloud as an opportunity to practise the sounds she taught in isolation and to train her students to read with proper stress and intonation.

To give them a good model of pronunciation, Mrs Afuwa took care to read the passage herself in a natural, unaffected style, using an audible voice and pacing her speed to help her students follow her easily. She injected a sense of drama by using facial expressions and gestures, and Mr Gwani noticed that the students listened with attention, mesmerised by Mrs Afuwa’s enunciation. Because her class was quite large (47 students), it was difficult to give all the students the opportunity to read aloud, but Mrs Afuwa had a clever strategy to remedy this. She trained ten of the best students during breaks, and made each of them group leaders for pronunciation practice. These students led the others in reading aloud in their groups, and made each group member, in turn, read a section every day. This way, all the students had an opportunity to improve their pronunciation, and so become familiar with the conventions of spoken English.

Mr Gwani noticed that these efforts had made Mrs Afuwa’s students much more confident and fluent than his students. He decided to replicate Mrs Afuwa’s strategy with his own JSS students.

Points to ponder

1. Do you agree that pronunciation practice can be made a part of reading classes? What difficulties do you anticipate in using this strategy?

2. Do you think reading lessons aloud actually helps students in speaking in English outside the classroom? Why or why not?

Activity 1

• In English, as you are aware, there are vowels comprising one sound (i.e., monophthongs such as i, e, u), and vowels comprising two sounds (i.e., diphthongs such as ei, au, oi). If the students’ home language does not contain similar vowel sounds or distinctions, they commonly mispronounce English words with diphthongs, often leading to ambiguity in meaning. In this activity, you will be able to help students practise using diphthongs correctly in connected speech.

• To test whether your students can detect differences in vowel sounds, you can give them a dictation. Resource 1a contains a list of pairs of words. The first column has monophthongs (single vowel sounds) and the second column has words with diphthongs (vowel glides). Read any one word from each pair in the list and ask the students to circle the word they hear. When they are done, ask them to peer correct. Then give them the answers, and highlight the pronunciation differences by asking them to repeat all the words after you. Have a discussion on how differences in pronunciation can signal difference in meaning as well.

• For this activity, put the students in pairs. Partner A in each pair will have Conversation A, and Partner B will have a copy of Conversation B. The partners take turns to dictate to each other the passages given in Resources 1b and 1c. Partner A will read his or her conversation first, and Partner B will fill in the blanks in the worksheet with the words he or she hears. Then Partner B will read his or her passage and Partner A will fill in the blanks in his or her corresponding worksheet. When both partners have finished, they will exchange notes to see if they have filled in the blanks correctly.

• It is likely that not all the students will complete the exercise successfully, as one partner may mispronounce or mishear some words. To ensure that your students learn the appropriate pronunciation, you could lead them in choral reading, by making them read both the passages after you. This should give them enough practice in articulating the diphthongs, with the correct pronunciation, when used in connected speech.

Activity 2

English has 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds, represented by just 21 consonant letters and five vowel letters. Also, unlike some other languages, English does not have a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound. For example, the spelling group ough is pronounced differently in the words ought, rough, though and through. Or take the letter sequence gh, which has different pronunciations in rough, ghost and through. In fact, in through, gh is not pronounced at all. There are many other such words in English where some letters remain silent — calm, pneumonia, doubt, for example. In this activity, students will practise the pronunciation of some such challenging words in English.

Distribute the words given in Resource 2 to the students, working in pairs, and ask them what is common to them. The answer you are looking for is: silent letters. Then ask each pair to find which letter in each word is silent; that is, which letter is not pronounced. Each pair then has to add three more similar words. For example, in the word calm “l” is silent, so three other similar words are talk, half and chalk. Allow the students to refer to a dictionary if they wish — the more words they learn the better.

After the pairs have finished making their lists, they should give them to you. Jumble the lists and redistribute them to different pairs. Each pair will have to pronounce two words from the list given to them. The process will continue until all the words have been read aloud.

The last part of the activity involves helping students use the words in connected speech. For this, have them compose sentences using at least three of the words in a sentence. Each pair should make at least three sentences and read them aloud to the class. Give them an example like:

Oh no, I’m late for church! Let me just comb my hair, grab a sandwich and quickly dash upstairs for my hymn book!

(Silent letters: b, d and n)

Activity 3

As you are aware, English words containing more than one syllable have fixed stress patterns. Module 1 — Better Listening contains an activity on words of two syllables that are pronounced differently when used as a noun, adjective or verb. The difference in pronunciation is simply a matter of stressing a different syllable (e.g., PRE-sent, pronounced /^lpre - zǝnt/, is a noun whereas pre-SENT is a verb and is pronounced as /pri - ^lzent/). To be intelligible to the listener — that is, to ensure that people understand the speaker clearly when speaking in English — we must pronounce English words with the appropriate stress. In this activity, students will learn to recognise and use appropriate stress patterns when they speak in English.

Before you have your students pronounce words with different stress patterns, you can test their familiarity with the pronunciation of common disyllabic (having two syllables) or polysyllabic (more than two syllables) words by giving them a listening exercise. Put words like the following on the board and ask two or three students to read them aloud. Point out to them how one part of each word is pronounced with more force than the others. Explain that this force or emphasis is called stress, and that each word has a fixed stress.

Words of two syllables:

^ltea-cher  ^lgra-mmar  ^lspe-cial ex- ^lplain re- ^lpeat a- ^lgree

Words of three syllables:

^lac-tua-lly  ^lcon-fi-dent con- ^lsu-mer to- ^lge-ther add-re- ^lssee re-fu- ^lgee

Change of stress:

^lpho-to-graph pho- ^lto-graphy pho-to-gra- ^lphic

To ensure that the students understand the stress patterns in the words, read them out once again, this time telling the students to place a stress mark (^l) before the part of the word that is said with more force than the others. Also explain that these “parts” are called syllables.

To add a little humour to the task, you could show them the importance of the stress patterns by reading the words once with the wrong stress — this usually evokes laughter, and makes your point clear more easily.

For this activity, divide the students into groups of three and have them read the funny poem in Resource 3 (one stanza by each group member in turn). After they have read it, ask them which words were stressed on the first syllable, and which were stressed on the second. (Answer: confused and exams have stress on the second syllable; all the rest are stressed on the first.)

Now ask the groups to make their own short poems (four lines) with words of more than three syllables, and read them to the class. This will help them to pronounce words correctly in connected speech and to notice the rhythm of the language.

Summary

In this unit we introduced a few activities to help you familiarise your students with some conventions of spoken English. These activities need to be supplemented with a lot of practice material — you could use the English lessons in the textbook for pronunciation practice. Good pronunciation is an important part of learning to speak effectively, and you can help your students by engaging them in activities that make them pronounce words and sentences in conversations and other verbal interactions in the classroom.

Reflection

• Which activity interested your students the most? Did the activities help to improve your students’ pronunciation?

• Were you able to involve all the students in the activities? Did the shy or quieter students participate?

• Which activity would need to be modified or improved? How would you do it?

Assessment

• Identify five other areas of pronunciation use where your students need to improve. Can you make similar activities for your classroom?

Resource 1a

In the list below there are pairs of words, one containing a single vowel sound (monophthong) and the other containing a vowel glide (diphthong). Can you hear the difference in their pronunciation? Listen as your teacher reads out one word from each pair, and circle the word that you hear.

1. bet                            bait

2. fare                           fair

3. lord                           load

4. man                          main

5. wet                            weight

6. red                            ride

7. shut                           shout

8. hat                             hate

9. bread                         braid

10. let                               late

11. bird                             beard

12. get                              gate

Resource 1b

I. Read Passage 1 to your partner and ask your partner to fill in the blanks.

“Run, Stephen, quick — get the gate open before I reach it!” shouted Emily to her ten-year-old younger brother. She had a whole wash load of clothes in her arms, and was struggling under the weight of the wet clothes. Emily was 15, and she was already taking care of the household. Their mother had died the previous year and, as the oldest of four children, Emily had to leave school to run the farmhouse. As Emily walked unsteadily towards the gate, she muttered to herself, “I hate the hat falling off my hair every time I run — I must remember to ask Papa to buy me a new one from the fair.” Emily reached the end of the yard and put down her load. “Lord!” she exclaimed. “I forgot the clips again!”

II. Now fill in the blanks in Passage 2 as your partner reads it out.

As she turned to see if any of the kids was playing nearby, she caught sight of her father in the field. He was taking a nap, and a ________ was perched on his __________, pecking at the crumbs of _________ on his __________. She loved him, but was a little scared of him too. As the ________ __________ on the farm, she often heard him turn red in anger and __________ “S______ up!” at the farmhands. “If only Mamma were alive,” Emily thought, “I could run and play with my friends instead of doing all this boring work!” She longed to __________ her __________ pony, ___________ herself be __________, sleep until noon — do everything that Stephen, Johnny and Mindy did on holidays. “Poor me,” she thought. “I wish I could run away from all this!”

Resource 1c

I. Fill in the blanks in Passage 1 as your partner reads it out:

“Run, Stephen, quick — ­­_______ the _________ open before I reach it!” shouted Emily to her ten-year-old younger brother. She had a whole wash-load of clothes in her arms, struggling under the ________ of the ________ clothes. Emily was 15, and she was already taking care of the household. Their mother had died the previous year and as the oldest of four children, Emily had to leave school to run the farmhouse. As Emily walked unsteadily towards the ______, she muttered to herself, “I _________ the _________ falling off my hair every time I run – I must remember to ask Papa to buy me a new one from the _________.” Emily reached the end of the yard and put down her _________. “L______!” she exclaimed. “I forgot the clips again!”

II. Now read Passage 2 to your partner and ask your partner to fill in the blanks.

As she turned to see if any of the kids was playing nearby, she caught sight of her father in the field. He was taking a nap, and a bird was perched on his beard, pecking at the crumbs of bread on his braid. She loved him, but was a little scared of him too. As the main man on the farm, she often heard him turn red in anger and shout “Shut up!” at the farmhands. “If only Mamma were alive,” Emily thought, “I could run and play with my friends instead of doing all this boring work!” She longed to ride her red pony, let herself be late, sleep until noon — do everything that Stephen, Johnny and Mindy did on holidays. “Poor me,” she thought. “I wish I could run away from all this!”

Resource 2

island  muscle  thumb  pneumonia  soften   hymn
honour  calf  mnemonic  knowledge  reign  sandwich

Resource 3

Studies!!

Physics is crazy and hardly ever easy

I have no interest in gases that are busy

Geometry is angular and algebra is messy

Give me history and four hundred B.C.!

The first planet’s Mercury

I’m always confused, very sorry!

I’d rather read my A-B-C

Than practise horrid Do-Re-Me.

Soccer, cricket for company

End of exams and agony,

Every day a holiday

O heavenly, I would say!

Feedback

Question: How do I know if my students can pronounce words correctly outside the classroom? In the classroom they seem interested, but would they remember what they have learned when they use English in other situations?

Answer: Since you can’t keep track of your students’ language use outside the classroom, the best thing to do would be to motivate them to follow your instructions closely. You can play them audio or video recordings (e.g., movie clips) to show how people sound when they use good pronunciation and when they don’t. This is likely to make them more conscious and determined to speak with care even when they are not under your supervision.