ENG514 Final Term Notes Set 2

Lecture: 8-23

Speaking is a complex skill and more than to form grammatically correct sentences; it rather covers broad areas of mechanics, functions, pragmatics and social interaction.

The speaker has to retrieve words and phrases from memory and assembles them into syntactically appropriate sequence

Classifications of speaking

1. Monologue - focuses on giving an interrupted oral presentation
2. Dialogue - focuses on interacting with other speakers

Functions of speaking

1. Transactional (transfer of information)
2. Interactional (maintenance of social relationships)

Characteristics of Spoken Language

Frequently displays ellipsis Negotiation of meaning is common Interruptions and overlapping are normal Speech uses many formulaic expressions Interlocutors give and receive immediate feedback

Levels and fields of research into speech and conversation

1- Organization and behavior

Pragmatics Pschoand socio-linguistics Discourse and conversational analysis

2- Structure

Phonology Morphology Syntax and grammar Lexical studies

3- Sound

Phonemics Phonetics Prosody/intonation studies

Aspects · Spoken discourse · Written discourse · Production aspect

Dynamic Static Oral Visual Transient Non-transient Unplanned Planned Contextualized Decontextualized

Social aspect

Primary Secondary Informal Formal Rhetorical Logical Interpersonal Contractual

Lecture: 8-24

Pronunciation - the articulation of individual sounds and the distinctive features of sounds like voicing, aspiration, stress and intonation.

Phonological loop - the brain saying a word or phrase over and over to itself in order to keep it in working memory or to help it move into long-term memory.

Criteria to typify a good pronunciation

1. Intelligibility
2. Identity
3. Ease of learning
4. Acceptability by parents and the educational administration
5. Availability of teachers and materials to support the wanted pronunciation

Nativeness principle - sets a native-speaker goal for learners

Intelligibility principle - accepts accents and sets understanding as the goal

Factors Affecting the Learning of another Sound System

Learners’

1. Age
2. First language
3. Current stage of proficiency development
4. The experience and attitudes
5. The conditions for teaching and learning

Competing explanations of the cause of the relationship b/w age and accent

Physical explanation - there are physical changes in the brain as a result of age that affect the learning of a new sound system and other aspects of the language.

Intellectual explanation - learners have already learned the sound system of their first language and this increasingly disrupts their perception of a second language.

Psychological explanation - pronunciation is a part of our personality and as we become older we become more protective of our personality and unwilling to change it.

Three reasons why learners might have difficulty in learning new sounds

1. They overlook some feature
2. The learners sound bad to themselves when they copy well
3. The learners become anxious about making the sounds

Lecture: 8-25

Learning New Sounds: A Procedure

Before teaching or correcting a sound, certain information is needed. Then the teacher can follow several steps to teach the sound.

Necessary Information:

Does the learner have the wanted sound in the first language? What is the nearest sound?

What sound does the learner put in place of the wanted sound?

Does the learner make this mistake in initial, middle, and final position?

What is the difference between the wanted sound and the unwanted sound?

Teaching the Sound

Teach the learner to hear the wanted sound by using distinguishing and identifying activities. Distinguishing should come before identifying.

Slurring and bracketing

In slurring, the tongue or another part of the mouth is slowly moved from one position to another. This is done several times with the learners copying the teacher. Then the movement is stopped a part of the way between the two sounds so that the wanted sound is produced.

Correcting Pronunciation Mistakes

When a learner makes a pronunciation mistake teacher can do any of the following things:

The teacher repeats the word correctly several times with ordinary stress and intonation until the learner selfcorrects by copying the teacher The teacher repeats the word correctly giving extra stress and length to the part where the learner made the mistake. “Not lice but rice.” The teacher writes the word on the blackboard correctly and underlines the part where the learner made a mistake. The teacher just says “No” and lets the learner find the mistake without help.

Stress-timed languages - languages where the stressed syllables are said at approximately regular intervals, and unstressed syllables shorten to fit this rhythm i.e. English language

Syllable-timed languages - languages where the length of each syllable remains more or less the same as that of its neighbors whether or not it is stressed i.e. French, Spanish, and Cantonese.

Intonation - the variations in the pitch of a speaker’s voice at sentence level (f0) used to convey

Differences between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages lie in:

Syllable structure (syllable length varies more in stress-timed languages than in syllable-timed languages) Vowel reduction (stresstimed languages are more likely to use centralized vowels in unstressed syllables and vowels may be shortened or omitted) Lexical stress (stress-timed languages usually have word level stress)

Teaching Word Stress

In English, one part of a word is usually said with greater strength, stress, than another part. Strong stress often goes with an increase in the length of the syllable and a change in intonation. Stress can be taught in the following ways:

The teacher taps the stress pattern of a word, with a hard tap for the stressed syllables and soft for the others. The learners say the word. When the teacher provides a model she can make the stressed syllable longer than usual and the unstressed ones very short. The learners are given a list of words. The teacher reads them and the learners underline the stressed syllables.

Teaching Sentence Stress

The place of stress in an English sentence depends on the relative importance of the different words in the sentence. Usually nouns, adjectives, certain pronouns, main verbs and adverbs are given strong stress