Z. M. Bobur nomidagi andijon davlat universiteti chet tillar fakulteti ingliz tili va adabiyoti kafedrasi

Lecture 12
Technologies teaching pronunciation. (10-11 forms, students of lyceum and colleges)
Plan
1.Teaching pronunciation for B1 level pupils.
2.The Innovative technologies in teaching pronunciation.
3.CEFR requirements of assessing pronunciation.


Key words: articulation, phonetic contexts, palatalization, word stress, sentence stress, motor movements, discrimination, articulation, intonation, integration, automatic.
Proceeding from the aims and objectives the FL syllabus sets out, pupils must assimilate.
1.The sounds of the English language, its vowels and consonants. They should be able to articulate these sounds both separately and in different phonetic contexts.
2.Some peculiarities of the English language in comparison with those of the Russian language (length of vowels, palatalization (dark L, light L).
3.Stress in a word and in a sentence, and melody (fall and rise). Pupils must be able to divide a sentence into groups and intone it properly.

The teacher faces the following problems in teaching pupils pronunciation.

1)The problem of discrimination identifying the differences between phonemes which are not distinguished or used in the Russian language and between falling, rising and level tones.
2)The problem of articulation, i.e. learning to make the motor movements adequate to proper production of English sounds.
3)The problem of intonation, i.e. learning to make right stresses, pauses and use appropriate patterns.
4)The problem of integration, i.e. learning to assemble the phonemes and a connected discourse with the proper allophonic variations (members of a phoneme) in the, months, hard times.
5)The problem of automaticy, i.e. making correct production so habitual that it does not need to be attended to in the process of speaking.
Consequently, discrimination, articulation, intonation, integration, automaticy are the items that should constitute the content of the teaching of pronunciation.
Absolute correctness is impossible. We cannot expect more than approximate correctness, the correctness that ensures communication.
How to teach pronunciation
Pupils assimilate English pronunciation through 1) the acquisition of new sounds, stress, tone-patterns 2) drill in recognition and reproduction new material to acquire pronunciation habits and 3) making use of the pronunciation habits in language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing).
In teaching pronunciation there are at least two methodological problems the teacher faces:
1.To determine the cases where conscious manipulation of the speech organs is required and the cases where simple imitation can or must be used.
2.To decide on types of exercises and the techniques of using them.
Since imitation can and must take place in FL teaching the teacher’s pronunciation should set the standard for the class and the use of native speakers whose voices are recorded on cassettes is quite indispensable.
Teaching a FL in schools begins with teaching pupils to listen to it and speak it that is with the oral introductory course, or the oral approach. The teacher’s task is to determine which sound the pupils will find hard to pronounce, which sounds they can assimilate through imitation and which sounds require explanations of the position of the organs of speech while producing them.
Millions of foreign students want to learn English as well as they can. For instance it is only a matter of reading and writing it, and they will find no help here. But many learners want to be able to speak English well, with a pronunciation which can be easily understood by both other learners and English people.
Language starts with the ear. When a baby starts to talk he does it by hearing the sounds his mother makes and imitating them. If a baby is born deaf he cannot hear these sounds and therefore cannot imitate them and will not speak. But normal babies can hear and can imitate. They are wonderful imitators, and this gift of imitation, which gives us the gift of speech, lasts for a number of years. It is well known that a child of ten years old or less can learn any language perfectly, if it is brought up surrounded by that language, no matter where it was born or who its parents were. But after this age the ability to imitate perfectly becomes less, and we all know only too well that adults have great difficulty in mastering the pronunciation of foreign languages.
Some learners are more talented than others, they find pronouncing other languages less difficult, but they never find them easy. Why is it so? Why should this gift that we all have as children disappear later in our life? Why cannot grown-up people pick up the characteristic sound of a foreign language as a child can? The answer to this is that our native language won’t let us. By the time we are grown up the habits of our own language are so strong that they are very difficult to break. In our own language we have a fairly small number of sound-units which we put together in many different combinations to form the words and sentences we use every day. And as we get older we are dominated by this small number of units. It is as if we had in our heads a certain fixed number of boxes for sounds.
When we listen to our own language we hear the sounds and we put each into the right box, and when we speak we go to the boxes and take out the sounds we want in the order we want them. And as we do this over the years the boxes get stronger and stronger until everything we hear, whether it is our own language or another, has to be put into one of these boxes, and everything we say comes out of English boxes contain the sounds at the beginning of the words fin, thin, and sin, that is f, th and s. As children progress through the discovery of language in their first three years, there are predictable patterns in the emergence and development of many features of the language they are learning. For example, children do not use temporal adverbs such as “tomorrow” or “last week” until they develop some understanding of time. Learners of English often expect to be able to speak that language like a native speaker. However, they encounter many factors to gain their desire. One of the common factors that they find difficult is the pronunciation of another sound system. Learners find that their mother tongue influences their pronunciation of English.
And also we can see some problems on consonant sounds. Especially Uzbek learners of English will have some difficulties in the pronunciation of sounds which do not exist in the native language.
For instance, /s/ and /z/ is considered confusable in usage. The learners pronounce /s/ instead of /z/, so that a word such as peas is pronounced as peace. Consequently, the meaning will also be changed.
And some consonants are written but not pronounced. This is either because they were once pronounced (knock) or come from a foreign language (psychology).
Initial position – kn — knock, knee, knife – ps — psychology, psychiatry
End position – mb — lamb, climb, thumb – mn — condemn, autumn, column Besides, we have a lot of pronunciation mistakes in the consonant sounds /θ/ and /ð/. Differing these sounds are very difficult for Uzbek learners too. Speakers often create a heavily voiceless stop /t/ instead of a voiceless fricative /θ/ in a word like thank. Apparently, they vocalize the sound /t/ based on their language since in elementary level learners the letter th is combined by a heavily aspirated /t/. So, the word three can be pronounced exactly like tree.
Elementary level learners of English commonly produce /d/ or /z/ for /ð/ sounds, so the word than may sound like /dæn/ or /zæn/. In the Uzbek language, the voiceless stop /p/ does not occur in initial position of words. And our speakers can substitute a voiced stop /b/ or a voiceless fricative /f/ for /p/. As a result, the word pool may sound like fool, and pop may sound like bop.
In contrast, in the final positions, these consonants often provoke confusion for learners. For example, lab might sound like lap. Except that there is a problem with grammatical ending s. When words end in s in forms of consonant-vowel-consonant, the /s/ sound is frequently omitted.
For examples, sits may turn to /sit/ and wants may become /wan/. Sometimes, our speakers tend to omit both /t/ and /s/ sound in the word wants. Some other final consonant clusters such as /kt/ as in walked, /t/ as in washed, /d/ as in judged, and /ld/ as in filled are very difficult for our elementary level learners to pronounce. To clarify, the words world may be pronounced as /w/, myself may be pronounced as /mayse/.
These mistakes can be very difficult for our learners to overcome. Some speakers come across various difficulties in learning English pronunciation. The complications of vowels, particularly between tense and vowels in English can be tough to learn. In addition, the differences between consonant positions, consonant clusters lead elementary level learners of English to meet a large number of difficulties. As a result, our speakers often come across pronunciation problems when communicating in English. Penny Ur in his book “A course in language teaching” suggests the following teaching ideas to use in teaching pronunciation:
– Dictation: of random lists of words, of words that have similar spelling problems, of complete sentence, of half- sentence to be completed.
– Reading aloud: of syllables, words, phrases, sentences.
– Prediction: dictate a set of words in the target language the learners do not known yet, but whose spelling accords with rules.
The results of experiment held among beginners in the English language learning show that process of pronouncing phonemes correctly should be accomplished in three steps:
1) to pronounce consonant and vowel sounds which do not exist in the Uzbek language separately. For example, consonants [ð, θ, r, w, f, v] and vowels [u, ou, ai, ue].
2) to pronounce the words with voiced consonant at the end [b, d, g, v,].
3) To pronounce “similar” consonants (consonants which exist in both English and Uzbek languages) in phrases [m, g, b, s, z, n. d, p, t, k,].
Learning the pronunciation of some words are combined with the degree of easy and difficult sounds. That means some English sounds are difficult to pronounce. The teacher utters one sound and this way is named “saying speech sounds” and “listening sounds by elementary level learners” level. The learners should pay attention to the content of phrase and should understand its meaning of that new word or phrase. Elementary level learners must listen and then perceive those sounds. In conclusion, the mistakes made by Uzbek learners in pronouncing English sounds may be corrected by teacher step by step based on some well known theories and practices. The lessons of English will be more productive if the teachers take into account the above given proposals in making curriculum and lesson plans.
It is the duty of the teacher to unable his student to speak in English. Through speech the pupil learns to make a direct connection between English words or phrase, and the object and ideas. He learns the habit of using words in the correct sentence pattern and phrases pattern and he can learn this in no other way.
Spoken words always have first place over the written words. Bloomfleld has rightly pointed out «We write the spoken word» . The written word or printed word is nothing but a symbol of spoken word. For cultivating good speech habit enough attention should be paid to pronunciation because it is the root to a good speech. The teacher must himself be acquainted with the fundamental of English pronunciation. There are few causes of incorrect speech.
1.Less attention is paid on speech training in schools. When teacher teaches in class, he does not care about the pronunciation of himself and students.
2.During teaching teacher himself, commits faulty pronunciation so student also follow him.
3.Teacher has no knowledge of speech sounds. Every language has its own sounds. There is difference in the sounds of English and Uzbek languages. So enough knowledge should be given to students and teachers.
4.Regional effect on the speech.
5.Physical disability.
6.Lack of knowledge of intonation and stress.
7.Clipping of the sounds.
Measures to develop correct speech habit: There are three main methods of teaching which can develop correct speech habit in students:
1. Imitation method
2. Phonetic method
3. Subsidiary method
Imitation The teachers' pronunciation must be good and correct and it must separately be imitated by his students. This method has four steps:
1. Perception
2. Imitation
3. Feed back
4. Drill Perception:
Perception: Teacher writes the words or sentence on the black board and himself gives model pronunciation among the student. Students follow the pronunciation words or sentence.
Imitation: The training of the ear is an importance means of mental development. The students therefore, carefully attend to the two processes of listening and imitation. The teacher pronounces the words and students try to pronounce the words clearly and exactly like the teacher but the pronunciation of the teacher must be correct.
Feed Back: The teacher asks the students to pronounce the words and if he finds that the pronunciation is not correct, he tells them correct or exact pronunciation. That is called feedback.
Drill: It is the last step of imitation method. It had two parts. 1. Individual drill 2. Group Drill The teacher asks the students to listen to his pronunciation carefully and then ask them to speak the word individually in higher class and collectively in lower class.
Phonetic Method: Phonetic is science of sounds as used in speech. The teacher tells the correct pronunciation to student by giving the knowledge of English phonetics. There are many sounds in English language. So students must receive the knowledge of English phonetic to produce these new sounds correctly. In this method the teacher tries to tell about 45 sounds presents in the English letters. He tells that these sounds are produced by different human sounds organs and also side by side explain the rules of producing these sounds. Daniel Jones has given five steps of the phonetic method in his book An Outline of English Phonetic.
1. Recognition of various speech sounds correcting the English language.
2. Making of these sounds by students.
3. Learning these sounds in the usage of sound attribute.
4. Learn to pronounce the complete sequence rapidly and to each sound of a sequence or to the text.
In the phonetic method practice of producing correct sounds is very important. The teacher can also take the help of different material aids in teaching pronunciation through this method.
Subsidiary Method: In addition to the above there are various other methods also that can be used to teach pronunciation of words. These are as follows:
1. Singing songs in chorus as well as individually
2. Reciting poems.
3. Analysing long and difficult words.
4. Debating.
5. Dramatising.
6. Conversing.