2020-04-20
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all know that it is difficult for adults to learn accurate pronunciation in a foreign language. We also know that some people achieve better results than others. Why is this? What are the factors that might predict which students will achieve good pronunciation? If we knew the factors helping pronunciation, we could improve our own learning.Suter, a language researcher at a California university, decided to test the relative importance of factors that might predict which students would achieve the most accurate pronunciation. He wanted to find out if there are any factors a student could change in order to improve performance.first tiling Suter did was to make a list of all the factors that might possibly show which student would learn the best pronunciation. Then he compared these factors with the pronunciation of a group of foreign students. Here is a list of six of the factors Suter studied.
. Sex. Do females learn better than males?
. Mother tongue. Is it easier to learn a language close to one’s own?
. Personality. Do out-going people learn pronunciation better than shy people?
. Attitude toward pronunciation. Does it make a difference if the student believes that pronunciation is a very important part of language?
. Natural ability. How important is the ability to mimic or imitate? Most people assume that natural ability is the single most important factor in learning pronunciation.
. Conversation with natives. Does the amount of conversation in English, with naïve speakers of English, make a significant difference?Suter compared the students’ pronunciation accuracy scores with this six variables, some of the results were surprising. He found that two of the factors did not have any relation to the accuracy of pronunciation. That is, these two factors were not at all significant in predicting who would do well learning pronunciation.two factors were:
. Mother tongue. This was the most significant factor in predicting achievement. If the student’s own language was closer to English, the achievement was likely to be greater.
. Attitude about pronunciation. This was the second most important factor in predicting achievement. In fact, a belief in the importance of pronunciation was far more important than many of the remaining factors. After the mother tongue factor, this factor of attitude was the single most significant variable in predicting good pronunciation learning.
. Conversation with natives. The third most important variable was the amount of time the student spent in conversation with native speakers of English.
. Natural ability. This was the last important variable. The ability to imitate helped, but it was not nearly as significant as most people think. It was far less significant than the first three.concluded that the three most significant predictors in achievement in pronunciation are: (1) the student’s mother tongue, (2) the belief in the importance of pronunciation, (3) the amount of time spent in conversations with native speakers.conclusions of this research are encouraging. Of course, we cannot change factor 1, our mother tongue. But we do have control over factors 2 and 3, which are the next important variables in learning accurate pronunciation. First, we can decide that pronunciation is important, and second, we can choose to make the effort to speak the new language with natives. You might say that our own choice is the most significant factor in achievement in the new language. [12,78]opinion regarding English Second Language pedagogy in general and pronunciation in particular, has at least two generally accepted theoretical cornerstones. The suprasegmental features of English - stress, rhythm, intonation, linking, reduction, and deletion - are called prosodies. These contribute more to meaning and overall listener perception of nonnative speaker fluency than do the segmentals, the individual vowel and consonant sounds.article describes two specific sets of activities - song and video - and provides a template that readers can adapt and revise for their own populations and settings. It should be stressed that the general model can be adapted to a variety of pronunciation and grammar features., particularly, may be chosen so that they are effective and engaging at almost any proficiency level. Song recordings and video clips are particularly useful for nonnative speakers teachers in English foreign language settings. Often in such situations few native speaker models are available, and teachers sometimes lack confidence in their ability to leach pronunciation. A final benefit of these types of activities is that besides building pronunciation and grammar proficiency, they also help improve students’ listening.are several ways to proceed, depending on students’ proficiency level, the amount of time available, and any other constraints. The following is one set of steps:
. Have the song playing as students enter the class and/or play it through once as a warm-up before beginning the activity.
. Distribute typed copies of the text to the students.
. Have students, working in pairs or small groups, mark features.
. Have students practice some of the words and put them into longer phrases and sentences.
. Play the recording one more time, asking the class to speak along, and try to match the singer in the practiced features.
. Have students create their own short dialogues and conversations using words and expressions from the song that have the practiced features. If desired, this step can be done after step 7.
. Bring grammar into the activity by using a cloze exercise. [13,48]
