The book of pronunciation proposals for a practical pedagogy

o It seems that consonant sounds - with the exception of the notorious W sounds - may be particularly important in achieving intelligibility, o A consistent set of distinctions between v

M

ultia w ultia rd

-w in n in g

The Book of Pronunciation

Proposals for a practical pedagogy

Includes Audio CD

From the authors

The story of foreign language teaching in British schools

(which I’m not going to write about here, you’ll be pleased

to know) has had its ups and downs - more downs than ups,

probably - but what I want to write here concerns one of the

ups

I went to primary school in a suburb of Leeds in the 1960s,

and the school I attended happened to be one of those that

took part in a national experiment to introduce French at

primary level

My recollections of this are somewhat vague, as I hope you’ll

understand: it was, after all, half a century ago I don’t even

know whether I did two years of French at primary school,

or just one It certainly wasn’t more than two

Nor do I remember very much about what we did in

our French lessons, or how many we had per week I do

remember that we used pictures a lot, and that the lessons

were primarily (entirely? did we do any writing at all?) oral

Why am I telling you this? Well, the thing is

Our French lessons were taught by our regular class teacher

I don’t know how much French she knew Was she perhaps

just one jump ahead of us? Some of the teachers involved

in the scheme were, apparently, just one step ahead of the

pupils

But I seem to recall very clearly that she had a good French

accent Of course, this is impossible to verify, and I suppose

that at the age of nine or so I didn’t really have much idea of

what a French accent was supposed to sound like, anyway

I can still hear a distant but distinct echo of her voice

speaking the unfamiliar language It still sounds good, even

now

And it was simply the sound of it that appealed to me first

Not the prospect of venturing across the Channel and using

the language - that came later

It was the sound of that familiar teacher’s voice making

those unfamiliar sounds, and the discovery that I could hear

myself somehow managing to at least approximate to the

same sounds myself

So now, half a century later, I think that primary school

classroom was probably the beginning of my enduring

interest in pronunciation - the latest manifestation of which

takes the shape of these pages

Part of my university course was a weekly lecture on Russian phonetics I found the whole business totally unfathomable Like many academic subjects, it was couched in what was, for me at least, impenetrable jargon I had no idea what a

‘voiceless fricative’ was, for example, and no amount of reading and re-reading seemed to shed any light on the matter Perhaps most importantly of all, I simply failed to see the relevance of this strand to the process of learning the language and studying its literature and history

A mystery

Some years later, having drifted into English teaching while

a postgraduate student in Czechoslovakia, I decided to get a formal teaching qualification and, to this end, took a PGCE course specialising in TEFL Again, there was a phonetics element on this course and again, at first at least, I found it complicated and uninspiring

I recall having to describe in minute detail in an assignment what happened to the speech organs during the pronunciation

of the word ‘anglepoise’ (a kind of table lamp) and wondering why anyone should imagine that was useful To

my amazement, I managed to pass this assignment Looking back, I suppose this may have been the first turning point

The words fricative, plosive, affricate and so on were

beginning to make sense, and even my younger, sceptical self could see some relevance in the field of general phonetics.The seeds were sown

After a five-year stint in the Balkans, I got a job teaching EFL

at a language school on the south coast of England Each classroom was equipped with a phonemic chart that, to my relatively untrained eye, seemed to have an intriguing design The more I looked at it, the more it made sense I could also see immediately that it had a clear practical purpose - the symbols were identical to those used in learners’ dictionaries.Students in the classes I observed (and subsequently taught) were not asked to analyse the activity of the speech organs

in the production of the word anglepoise', but they could

identify and use the symbols accurately as part and parcel of every lesson, focusing on those sounds that were particularly problematic for speakers of their own mother tongue and self-correcting in a particularly impressive way

Gradually the fog lifted

The mystery was solved - and I was hooked

From the authors Page 3

Page 7From mouthful of air to stream of sound Page 12

Sounds, symbols, spelling and stress Page 31

P a rt B

1 Introducing

CD Tracks 45-48

2 Sounds

/hi through whispering Page 52

CD Track 49

Sounds and spelling

CD Tracks 50-53

Word stress

Revising vocabulary in a text Page 95

CD Tracks 54-57

5 Connected speech

CD Tracks 58-72

6 Stress, rhythm and intonation

Tonic prominence recognition Page 122

Tonic prominence production Page 123

CD Tracks 73-93

Being right and being wrong Page 152

Page 155

A book of pronunciation

A pronunciation book, in the opinion of the authors, should include:

o ways to begin to incorporate pronunciation into your teaching;

o ways to expand the range of activities at your disposal - even though you already do take pronunciation into account in your teaching;

o answers to your reservations - if you are doubtful about the value of pronunciation work

in your teaching;

o a basic description of the pronunciation of English - which will help you and your learners

understand it better and improve their learning and your teaching.

We hope you will find all these elements, all of them necessary in a book of pronunciation,

present in The Book of Pronunciation.

He Thinks o f Those

Who Have Spoken Evil

o f His Beloved

W.B Yeats (1865-1939)

Reservations and recommendations

We would like to start by looking at some of the reservations, questions, doubts and objections that teachers, in our experience, often raise in connection with pronunciation teaching

*Learners find pronunciation work boring’

If they do, it may be because they are being asked to do the wrong kind of work - work that

isn’t useful for them For example:

o Endlessly repeating meaningless sounds with no real idea of how to improve performance,

o Practising making differences between unlikely pairs of sentences like ‘Keep your hair on’ and ‘Keep your heron’

‘I made it out of a mouthful of air’

W B Yeats said this in, and of, one of his poems Spoken language starts as ‘a mouthful of air’, and every word we utter, every conversation we have, every speech we make, results from modifying and shaping that mouthful of air, blocking it at various points, channelling it in various directions and expelling it in various ways - an amazing example of doing a lot with minimal resources! Every piece of written language, too - every email, every treaty, every poem, every novel - is a representation of these processes, and can be converted back into air

if we breathe life into it by reading it aloud

Pronunciation, although so often neglected by teachers, syllabuses and coursebooks, is fundamental to language - Who could speak without pronouncing?

We think the following principles are important in pronunciation work:

o There should be a manageable level of challenge and a reasonable prospect of success,

o Learners should be able to see the point of what they’re doing,

o They should be given the help they need in order to improve

o They should generally practise realistic and meaningful language (although sometimes it can be useful to practise individual sounds in isolation.)

o There should be at least an element of fun

Of course, these are actually good principles for any kind of teaching!

‘There’s no time for pronunciation ”

There’s so much else to do: grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, tests - and the coursebook has to be finished by the end of the semester It’s understandable that some teachers might feel this However:

o Giving attention to pronunciation will benefit other skills - speaking, most obviously, but also listening, and even reading and writing,

o A lot of pronunciation work can, and should, be integrated into other activities so that it doesn’t actually stretch the required time noticeably,

o If there are separate pronunciation activities, they don’t necessarily need much time Many

of the ones in this book need only a few minutes

0 If you encourage the learners to pay attention to pronunciation, they will begin to notice more reliably for themselves how words are pronounced and how phrases and sentences are spoken, so they won’t need to ask you for so much guidance about pronunciation, and they won’t make so many mistakes - all of which will save time in the long run

‘So when should I focus on pronunciation, then?’

Teaching pronunciation doesn’t mean that you need to plan ‘pronunciation lessons’ in the same way that you might plan Vocabulary lessons’ or ‘writing lessons’ Pronunciation work can usefully appear on three kinds of occasions during your teaching:

1 Dedicated pronunciation spots - where you put the spotlight on a particular point that has been causing the learners difficulty For example:

o If you have noticed in recent lessons that they are having trouble hearing and producing

the distinction between pairs of words such as shoes/choose and share/chair, you might

decide to plan and include in one lesson a short activity dedicated to practising the distinction between the ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ sounds (See page 61 for such an activity.)

o If you feel sufficiently confident and can think of enough suitable example words off the top of your head, you might even improvise such an activity during the course of the lesson where the problem arises

2 Whenever you are planning to introduce new language - whether it’s grammar,

vocabulary, functional language or whatever One of the things to ask yourself is: How is it pronounced? Is there anything about the pronunciation that the learners are likely to find tricky and to need help with? For example:

o In a vocabulary lesson introducing compound nouns such as railway station, town hall,

high street, shopping centre, etc, it will be important for the learners to get the stress right: railway station, high street, shopping centre - but town hall

o In a lesson on the past continuous, it will be important for the learners to recognise and

produce unstressed, weak versions of was and were - eg What were you doing? I was just

making dinner.

o In an advanced lesson on idioms such as once in a blue moon and not in a month of Sundays, it will be important to focus on the stress, rhythm and intonation which are part

Track 1

The Book o f Pronunciation

Jonathan Marks and Tim Bowen

See from page 21 to

the end of this section.

Tracks 45-93

See Part B, starting on

page 37.

Note

The speakers on the CD are

native speakers of English

whose pronunciation is

typical of young people

from the south of England.

When you plan any of these types of lesson, include a focus on pronunciation - and when you teach the lesson, be ready to correct pronunciation and give appropriate help.

3 Apart from such planned activities - when a need for attention to pronunciation arises at any time, in any lesson For example:

o In a multilingual class, Learner A says the whole time without an /h/ sound at the beginning of whole Learner B interprets it as the old time, and is confused because this

doesn’t make sense in the context It might be useful for the two of them, perhaps with help from the others, to try and sort out this misunderstanding for themselves and identify what caused it If they seem unable to do this, or if it’s likely to take too long,

the teacher can intervene to clarify what happened and whyy and give Learner A - and

perhaps others in the class who would benefit from it - some quick impromptu practice

in pronouncing /h/ at the beginnings of words,

o While listening to a recording, the class are confused by something which sounds to themlike 2 ‘a - n - do it tomorrow’ You might write this on the board: _do it

tomorrow, with two gaps to show that two words are missing, and invite suggestions for

filling the gaps Perhaps the learners will be able to provide the first word: I If not, add

it to the sentence yourself and ask what the next word might possibly be If they really have no idea, you will have to provide it yourself Get the learners to listen again and

notice how, in fast speech, I can be reduced to a and can to n They might also like to try

imitating the way the sentence is spoken in the recording, although they shouldn’t be given the impression that they really need to make these kinds of reductions themselves in their own speech They need to be aware of them, though, when it comes to listening

‘What type of pronunciation should my learners aim for?’

If English is a global language, it obviously needs to be internationally intelligible But

it would probably be impossible to describe a type of pronunciation that would always guarantee intelligibility between any two speakers from any two parts of the world

o It seems that consonant sounds - with the exception of the notorious W sounds - may be particularly important in achieving intelligibility,

o A consistent set of distinctions between vowel sounds is important, too, but the total number of different vowel sounds probably doesn’t need to be as large as in standard native types of English

o Word stress is probably important for intelligibility, and perhaps at least a basic intonation distinction between ‘fall’ and ‘rise’

Here, then, is the basis of a way of deciding what to prioritise in pronunciation work, something which can be a difficult thing to do if you get the impression that your learners’ pronunciation is riddled with weaknesses The ‘th’ sounds are often found to be resistant to teaching, but if they aren’t vitally important for intelligibility (and in fact not even all native speakers of English use them) it would probably be advisable not to spend too much time on them, and to use the time on higher priorities - such as word stress, perhaps

There are other factors to consider, however:

o In some parts of the world, there are well-established and widely-used regional pronunciations of English, while in other countries there may be prestige attached to British or American pronunciation, and learners may wish to aim for one of these Indeed, they may even be expected to do so in exams they want to take - and teachers should help them get as close as they can to achieving their aims,

o Accent is, for many people, an important part of identity Some people relish theopportunity to switch into a slightly different identity - a different version of themselves

- when they speak another language, while others resist the prospect of the loss or falsification of identity which they feel would ensue from adopting a foreign accent.Native speakers of English form a minority of the total number of speakers of English in the world, and the majority of learners of English will probably never have an occasion to use

o When we listen to English being spoken, we recognise that one person’s accent carries the

message Vm Australian and another’s Vm Welsh, and so on

o There’s no reason why messages such as Vm Italian or I'm Japanese should not be equally

natural and acceptable

However, if the Italian speaker of English or the Japanese speaker of English wants to aim for one of the native accents of English, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t try, or why we shouldn’t help them in their endeavour

Whatever type of pronunciation learners aspire to acquire in their own speech, it’s

important for them to have experience of listening to - and ‘tuning in’ to - a wide variety of different pronunciations from around the world They can’t possibly prepare for encounters with all possible accents, of course, but at least they can train their ears to expect variety, and

to tune in quickly and notice distinctive features of unfamiliar accents

‘Can I teach pronunciation even if I ’m not a native speaker myself?’

There’s absolutely no reason why not

o If you teach learners who speak the same first language as you, you can be the most inspiring role model for them: as someone who has achieved a high level of proficiency in English pronunciation while retaining your own linguistic identity You will also have an excellent

understanding of the problems they face and what they need to do to overcome them,

o If your learners speak a different LI, or different Lis, from you, you will still be a good model and you will be able to recognise many of their problems

And should you be really concerned that your own pronunciation is ‘not good enough’, bear

in mind the following:

o You can make use of recorded material for pronunciation work

o With your guidance and feedback on their attempts - with your coaching, in fact - your learners can actually achieve a level of pronunciation higher than yours (In the same way,

a tennis player can play better than the person coaching them.)

o Learners learn English - including pronunciation - not only from you but also from films,

TV, songs and so on

7s it easier to teach pronunciation in monolingual or multilingual

classes?’

In monolingual classes, everyone tends to have similar problems and similar successes - something which doesn’t only apply to pronunciation, of course

o The disadvantage is that the learners will be able to understand each other very well even

if their pronunciation has substantial elements of LI interference And so will you, either because you have the same LI, or because - even if your LI is different - you will soon tune into their pronunciation and cease to notice its particular characteristics,

o The advantage is that, as long as you remain aware of those characteristics, you will be able to do directed pronunciation work which is clearly of benefit to everyone in the class.Multilingual classes have the disadvantage that the multiplicity of languages gives rise to a multiplicity of different pronunciation needs This means:

o It’s hard for you to notice and appreciate the needs of all the members of the class,

o If you attempt to give coaching to one or two learners who have a particular LI, you risk wasting the time of the rest of the class

However:

o Quite a lot of pronunciation work will be of benefit to learners of a wide range of Lis - for example stress and unstress, strong and weak forms, intonation, consonant clusters

o Through interaction with each other in their lessons - and not only during pronunciation activities - and in out-of-class conversations, the learners will have opportunities to discover which features of their pronunciation raise barriers to intelligibility, and to experiment with what they need to do to lower those barriers,

o If you do identify a need to do some pronunciation work with, let’s say, three learners

in a class of 18, you can plan to do this while the rest of the class work on a completely different activity which they can do independently,

o If the need does arise from time to time to do some individualised pronunciation

work during a plenary activity, the rest of the class will gain some insight into the

pronunciation problems of one of their peers, and will hopefully appreciate that you will

be equally willing to give them individual coaching when they need it.

‘Will learners think I ’m trying to make English unnecessarily difficult?’

In fact, by including helpful pronunciation work more often and more systematically in your teaching, you will be doing your learners a favour When learners of English are asked about which aspects of language are important for them, it often turns out that they allot a high priority to pronunciation This is understandable:

o Poor pronunciation is an immediate barrier to intelligibility,

o Being able to speak with the expectation of being intelligible is a pre-requisite for

confidence in using an unfamiliar language - for uttering, and not just muttering!

The more awareness learners have of their own pronunciation, the better they will be able to process the pronunciation of other speakers they encounter - to notice significant features

of different accents, and to realise what reinterpretations they need to make in order to understand what they hear

At the same time, they will also be able to develop an ability to judge what features of their own pronunciation they need to adjust in order to make themselves more readily intelligible

to people they meet and with whom they interact

‘Is there such a thing as a pronunciation syllabus?

Do the aspects of pronunciation lend themselves to being ordered in a progression from elementary to advanced, in the same way as is conventionally done with grammar items?This is the fundamental question, and the logical answer is no, because all aspects of

pronunciation are needed right from the start

To make our final point, let’s imagine that the phrase ‘ Where do you live?’ appears in the very

first lesson of an English course Learners obviously can’t say it without pronouncing it, and pronouncing it might face them with difficulties in the following:

o any of the consonants

o any of the vowels

o linking the words together

o the rhythm OooO

o stresses on ‘where’ and ‘live’

o reducing ‘do you’

o putting the main stress with an appropriate intonation on ‘live’

These are all things that the learners will need to revisit constantly and to develop as they learn more and more English Even quite advanced learners may still need to work on the distinction between the vowels in ‘live’ and ‘leave’, or aspects of intonation

We have already used the word ‘pronunciation’ quite a lot, so perhaps we should now consider exactly what we mean by it, and what we need to do to convert our mouthful of air into intelligible English pronunciation.

Describing exactly what we need to do with our mouthful

of air in order to speak English inevitably gets a little

complicated But don’t worry:

• Take a comfortable chair - and sit back

• Take the CD - the first recorded pronunciation model is

on page 2 1

• Take a deep breath

Voicing

In fact, strictly speaking, the airstream that becomes

a mouthful of air originates in the lungs, and the first

modifications are made to it before it reaches the mouth

We can either allow it to pass the vocal cords (note the

spelling: cords, not ‘chords’) in our throat unobstructed,

or we can bring the vocal cords closer together so that

they vibrate as the airstream is forced through them:

• Sounds made without vibration of the vocal cords are

called voiceless (or unvoiced) sounds

• Sounds made with vibration of the vocal cords are

called voiced sounds

When we whisper, we’re speaking without voicing

Note that the terminology is slightly unfortunate: even

when we whisper, we are of course using our voice, in the

everyday sense of the word, but without voicing!

Try this: Put a finger in each ear, and alternate between

whispering and normal speaking As you switch the

voicing on and off, you should hear and feel a buzzing

resonance come and go as the vibration of the vocal cords

is transferred to the bones of the head You can also feel

this resonance if you put your hand on your throat (not

surprisingly, since that’s where the vocal cords are), on the

top of your head and, who knows, maybe on other parts

of your body - something to experiment with, perhaps!

Consonants: stops/plosives

The speech sounds that we call consonants are all made

by blocking or restricting the airstream at a certain point

It’s probably easiest to appreciate this in the case of the

consonants /p/ and / b/, as the obstruction is caused by

closing the lips - this is easy to feel, or to see in a mirror

Note the convention of writing symbols for sounds

between slant brackets Among other things, this

distinguishes them from the letters of the alphabet that we

use in writing - in the case of‘p’ and ‘b’ we use the same

symbols for sounds and letters

Try this: If you say words like ‘super’ or ‘maybe’ slowly, you

can feel that you close your lips together to form the /p/ or

the / b/ in the middle of the words, and then open them,

allowing the air to be expelled suddenly The lips don’t normally stay closed very long, but you can extend the period of closure Trying it may help you become aware of how the sounds are produced by the eventual release of air

At the beginning of a word - in word-initial position, eg

‘pea’ or ‘bee’ - we also produce Ip/ and lb/ by closing our

lips, allowing pressure to build up behind them and then opening them to release the air

At the end of a word - in word-final position, eg ‘sip’ or

‘mob’ - you can release the /p/ and / b/ in the same way

as for ‘super’ and ‘maybe’ But you don’t have to: you can also say such words without releasing the air You can simply block the airstream and then stop, relaxing the lips without opening them and either expelling excess air through the nose, or taking air in through the nose if you need to This has the result of making the words less easy

to recognise, because phonetic information is withheld.Find a willing partner to help you with this experiment

On a piece of paper, write:

1 sip 2 sick 3 sit

These words are identical, apart from the final consonant:

sip /sip/ sick /sik/ sit /sit/

• Speaker A turns away from Speaker B (this is important,

so that B can’t see A’s mouth, which would provide visual evidence of the final consonant sound) and says one of

the three words without releasing the final consonant.

• Speaker B has to say the number of the word they

heard, and may well find that this apparently simple task

is unexpectedly tricky

Normally, of course, we don’t say words in isolation, and the context helps us to decide what we’ve heard For example, if we hear:

I didnt know what was in the bottle, so I just took a tiny si_>

we will interpret the final word as ‘sip’ even if the phonetic evidence is ambiguous This is also a strategy learners will need to adopt

• Because Ip/ and /b / are formed by obstructing, or

stopping, the airflow, they are called stops (or stop consonants)

« Because they are often, but not always, produced with

a sudden release or explosion of air, they are also called plosives (or plosive consonants)

• As regards their manner of articulation (how they

are produced) they are both stops/plosives The terms

‘stop’ and ‘plosive’ highlight two different aspects of these

sounds; ‘plosive’ is used more frequently than ‘stop’, but

it’s important to remember that the air which has been

stopped is not always released

What, then, is the difference between /p / and /b/?

• A common answer is that /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is

voiced This is actually an oversimplification, but one that

teachers find to be of practical use

• In fact, lb/ often has little or no voicing, and it is more

accurate to say that /p/ is a fortis (strong) consonant,

while /b/ is lenis (weak)

This strong/weak distinction refers to the amount of

energy with which the sounds are articulated One effect

of the energetic articulation of /pi is that, unlike /b /,

it is aspirated, ie accompanied by a strong burst of air,

especially at the beginning of a stressed syllable

Try this: Hold a sheet of paper (a slightly higher-risk

alternative is a lighted candle!) in front of your mouth and

say, for example, ‘pin’ and ‘bin’ You should find that ‘pin’

makes the paper flutter (or the flame flicker) but ‘bin’

doesn’t

This aspiration of /p/ and non-aspiration of /b / is actually

more important in distinguishing these two sounds in

word-initial position than the presence or absence of

voicing, and the paper or candle trick is a practical way

of helping learners to tell the difference, if they find this

difficult

So, three parameters - voicing, place of articulation and

manner of articulation - can be used to define the two

sounds:

• Ip/ is a voiceless bilabial plosive (or voiceless bilabial

stop)

• / b / is a voiced bilabial plosive (or voiced bilabial stop)

If you change any of these parameters, you can produce

different words, with different meanings For example, by

varying the voiceless/voiced parameter, you can produce:

pet /p e t/ or bet /b e t/

rip /n p / or rib / r ib /

simple /'s im p j/ or symbol!cymbal /'s im b j/

(The mark before the 1st is a stress mark - see page 21 -

and the mark under the / I/ is a syllabic consonant mark

- see page 15.)

You can also produce non-existent, but possible, words:

tip / t ip / vs the possible word / t ib /

bless /b le s/ vs the possible word/pies/

Phonemes and minimal pairs

Because substituting one of these sounds, /p/ or /b/, for

the other has the potential to create two different words,

these two sounds are called phonemes A pair of words

distinguished only by one phoneme, such as ‘pet’ and ‘bet’,

or ‘rip’ and ‘rib’, is called a minimal pair

It’s important for learners to distinguish between phonemes

in listening and in their own speech, since failure to do so can result in confusion or misunderstanding, especially in combination with other shortcomings or uncertainties about the language For example, there might be

confusion between It’s simple and It's a symbol.

There are two other pairs of stop/plosive phonemes in

English: It/ -161 and /k/ - Igl:

It/ and / k/ are voiceless/fortis.

161 and Igl are voiced/lenis.

For I t/and /d/, the airflow is obstructed by putting the

tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, just behind the top teeth (see the diagram above) so these phonemes are called alveolar:

• /1/ is a voiceless alveolar plosive (or voiceless alveolar stop)

• 161 is a voiced alveolar plosive (or voiced alveolar stop).

Many languages, in contrast to English, have dental

It/ and 16/phonemes - ie the airflow is obstructed by

putting the tip of the tongue against the back of the upper teeth The difference between the dental and alveolar articulations is small, though audible

For/k/ and /g/, the airflow is obstructed by putting

the back of the tongue against the soft palate, or velum, towards the back of the mouth, so these phonemes are called velar:

• /k/ is a voiceless velar plosive (or voiceless velar stop)

• Igl is a voiced velar plosive (or voiced velar stop).

• /t/ and /k/, like /p/, are aspirated at the beginning of words

• 161 and /g/, like /b/, are unaspirated.

Try the paper/candle test with ‘time’ and ‘dime’ or with

‘kilt’ and ‘guilt’

By varying only the voicing parameter, you can produce, for example, these minimal pairs:

toolt\

beat /tu://bi:t/ or do or bead /du://bi:d/

/kreit/ or great/grate /greit/

/'aeQkl/ or angle

tailltale /te il/ or pail/pale /p e il/

dealt /d e lt/ or belt /b e lt/

lapping /'laepiq/ or lacking /'laekir]/

Phonemes and allophones

Apart from phonemic differences (ie differences between

phonemes) there are many other, less significant,

differences between sounds For example:

• /t/ at the beginning of the word ‘tea’ tends to be

pronounced with spread lips

• It/ at the beginning of the word ‘two’ tends to be

pronounced with rounded lips

You can see this in a mirror

But these differences don’t have the potential to change

meanings, and so the two sounds are not separate

phonemes in English, and English speakers don’t generally

notice the difference between them They are allophonic

differences, and the /1/ sounds at the beginning of‘tea’

and ‘two’ are different allophones - different forms of a

phoneme There will be more about allophones later

Consonants: fricatives

Take a deep breath, put your top teeth against the inside

of your bottom lip and breathe out, forcing air through

the gap between the teeth and lips The result should be a

long /f / sound: /ffffffff/ You’re producing a sound not by

blocking the airstream completely, but by forcing it through

a narrow gap and thereby causing audible friction So in

terms of its manner of articulation, If I is a fricative To

give /f / its full three-parameter description, it’s a voiceless

labio-dental fricative (labio-dental = lip + teeth)

Take another deep breath, and then make a long / ffffffff/

sound, switching your voicing on and off, and on and

off, and so on You’ll find that the sound you produce

alternates between /ffffffff/ and /vvvvvvvv/

/v/ is a voiced labio-dental fricative, and /f/ and /v/

distinguish between members of minimal pairs such as

few /fju:/ vs view /vju:/

safer /'seifa/ vs saver /'seiva/

leaf /liif/ vs leave / li:v/

There are three other pairs of fricative phonemes in English:

/©/ - 161, Is/- Izl and /J7 - 1^1 In each case, the first

member of the pair is voiceless and the second is voiced

For IQ I and 161, the airstream is restricted by putting the

tip of the tongue loosely against the back of the teeth -

and not between the teeth, as is commonly taught!

For Is I and Izl, the constriction is made by putting the

tongue-tip close to the alveolar ridge

For /// and 1^1, the tongue-tip is brought close to the roof

Is I is a voiceless alveolar fricative.

/// is a voiceless post-alveolar fricative

161, Izl and iy are the voiced equivalents of IQ I, I si and /J/.

You can alternate between /©/ and 161, between Isl and Izl

or between /J7 and l~$l simply by switching voicing on and off, in the same way as described above for If I and /v/, and

make minimal pairs such as:

mouth (noun) /mau0/ vs mouth (verb) /maud/

rice /rais/ vs rise /raiz/

Consonants: affricates

/tj/ and Idll are affricates - ie combinations of a stop

followed immediately by a fricative Examples:

church /tj3itj7 judge /CI3ACI3/

In each of these words, the same fricative appears both

before and after the vowel.

Consonants: nasals

The sounds /m /, Ini and lr\l (as in sing I sir)/) are made

by expelling air through the nose rather than the mouth This is most obvious in the case of /m /, because the lips are closed; /m / is a bilabial nasal (nasal = nose) In

fact, strictly speaking, it’s a voiced bilabial nasal, but two

parameters are sufficient in this case, because English only has voiced nasal phonemes

• /n / is an alveolar nasal (there is contact between the tongue and the alveolar ridge)

• /q / is a velar nasal (there is contact between the tongue and the soft palate or velum)

As is the case with It I and /d /, many languages have a dental Ini rather than an alveolar one.

Other consonant sounds

/ h / can be described as a voiceless glottal fricative The glottis is the opening between the vocal cords, and the friction results from the narrowing of this opening as the airstream passes through it But / h / can also be regarded

as the voiceless initial stage of a vowel sound (See the

activity//i/ through whispering on page 52.)

A glottal stop is made by closing the vocal cords This sound sometimes appears as an alternative pronunciation

of Itl after a stressed vowel For example:

sit [si?] butter ['bA?a]

The symbol for the glottal stop is like a question mark without a dot

Note that these transcriptions of‘sit’ and ‘butter’ are in square brackets, not slant brackets This is because they are phonetic, not phonemic, transcriptions

Recall that the substitution of one phoneme for another

stop is not a phoneme of English, since it is never involved

in any contrast of meaning:

[si?] and [sit] sound different, but we recognise them

as two different ways of saying the same word, ‘sit’ ['bA?a]

and ['bAta] sound different, but they are not two different

words

® In contrast, although /sit/ and /sik/ also sound different

to each other, we recognise them as two different words:

‘sit’ and ‘sick’ So It/ and /k/ are two different phonemes.

In [si?] and ['bA?a], [?] is an allophone of /t/

Note, however, that the term ‘phonetic’ is loosely but

commonly used to include both phonetic and phonemic

In cases like ['bA?a], where the stop is released, the sound

should logically be called a ‘glottal plosive’ but, unlike

‘glottal stop’, the term ‘glottal plosive’ is not widely used

A glottal stop also often appears in combination with a

voiceless plosive or affricate; this phenomenon is called

glottal reinforcement:

kitchen ['ki?tjan] watching ['wD?tJir)]

Say these words and pause in the middle:

ki tchen

wa tching

You may be able to feel a tension in your throat as you

produce a glottal stop

Even an apparently simple word such as ‘sit’ has a wide

range of possible pronunciations: /t/ can be released

or unreleased, or replaced by a glottal stop, and if the

pronunciation [t] is used, there may or may not be glottal

reinforcement The glottal stop, although not a phoneme

of English, is a frequent and easily audible feature of

English pronunciation

/I/, /r/, /w/ and /]/ (as in ‘yes’ /jes/) are called approximants

In the production of these sounds, there is some narrowing

of the channel through which the airstream flows, but

the tongue doesn’t form a complete closure (as it does

for plosives) or a constriction narrow enough to cause

friction (as it does for fricatives)

/I / is also called a lateral, because the air flows along the

sides of the tongue

Make an / I/ sound and then, keeping your tongue in the

same position, breathe in You should be able to feel cold

air passing along the sides of your tongue

/w/ and /j / are also called semi-vowels, and they have

some of the characteristics of both vowels and consonants:

• In terms of their articulation, they are like short versions

of the vowels /u:/ and /i:/ respectively (see ‘Vowels’ below)

• In terms of the role they fulfil in syllables, they behave like consonants - they appear at the beginning of a syllable, before a vowel sound:

/w/ can appear, for example, before /-eit/, just like other consonants:

bait /beit/ gate /geit/ rate /reit/ wait /weit/

/j / can appear, for example, like other consonants, before

/-es/:

guess /ges/ less /les/ mess /mes/ yes /jes/

Note how the fourth and fifth lines of the Sound Foundations chart (see page 31) show the plosives, fricatives and affricates in pairs, voiceless and voiced, arranged from the articulations at the front of the mouth (bilabial /p/ and /b/, and labio-dental /f/ and /v/) on the left, to articulations furthest back in the mouth (velar /k/

and /g /, and post-alveolar /// and /^/) on the right.

In the bottom line, the symbols for the three nasal consonants are similarly arranged from front at the left to back at the right

Syllabic consonants

The word ‘con-sonant’ means sounding together, and

consonants don’t normally occur on their own, but only form syllables in combination with vowels (see ‘Syllables’

on page 20) However, / 11,1 r/, /m / and / n/ can form

syllables without vowels: see the examples of syllabic /1 / —

‘ankle’ and ‘angle’ - on page 13

Such syllabic consonants are conventionally written with

a small vertical mark under the consonant symbol Otherexamples include:

random /'raendm/ syllabic/m /

button /' bAtn/ syllabic/n/

Hungary /'hAqgri/ syllabic/r/

(The name of the country can be - but is not always - pronounced like this, in contrast to the word ‘hungry’.)Such words can also be pronounced with a vowel sound (‘schwa’ - see below) plus a non-syllabic consonant:

shhh! /// is a way of telling someone to be quiet.

Mmm /m / can express hesitation, agreement,

thoughtfulness, etc

A description of how the sounds of a language are produced, and how they are related to each other, is inevitably rather technical, and the terminology may seem forbidding if you aren’t familiar with it already

You might wonder, in fact, whether it’s all really necessary Well,

A minority of learners seem to have a good natural ability

to reproduce the sounds of other languages without any

guidance, but most people do need a certain amount of

guidance, correction and feedback The practical use of

knowledge about pronunciation is that if we understand

how sounds are produced, we can help learners who

are having trouble with them, especially if we also study

which sounds are used in their LI (first language), and

how these sounds are produced and distributed

LI interference tends to be particularly evident in

pronunciation because, unlike other aspects of language,

learning the pronunciation of an unfamiliar language

entails building new physiological habits, or changing

deeply-ingrained ones

• For example: a lot of languages don’t have /©/ and 161

sounds, and speakers of such languages tend to find these

sounds difficult to acquire

• Another example: some languages have Ivl sounds

which are produced very differently from English, and

sound very different

Knowing exactly how sounds are made can help us teach

learners exactly what they need to do in order to produce

them, and to recognise exactly what they are doing right

and what they are doing wrong The terminology - plosive,

alveolar, affricate and so on - is in no way a substitute

for experience and awareness, but it does provide a

widely-recognised set of labels and generalisations for

the awarenesses that we can acquire by studying how we

produce speech sounds

Even when languages use similar sounds, they often differ

with regard to what positions in a word they allow those

sounds to occur in For example:

• Italian doesn’t generally end words with consonant

sounds So Italian speakers tend to transfer this to English

and to insert an extra final vowel sound into English

words, so that ‘wait’ can sound like ‘waiter’, ‘believe’ can

sound like ‘believer’, and so on

• German has voiced plosives and fricatives, but not

in word-final position (at the end of a word), so that

German speakers tend to pronounce dog/dog/ like dock

/dDk/, eyes /aiz/ like ice /ais/, etc.

A pair of sounds which are separate phonemes in English

may only be allophones in another language For example:

• Japanese doesn’t treat / I/ and Irl as separate phonemes,

but rather as allophones of the same phoneme, so speakers

of this language (among others) find it hard to distinguish

- both in listening and in speaking - between ‘late’ and

‘rate’, ‘play’ and ‘pray’, etc

Languages also differ with regard to the sequences they

allow consonants to occur in - ie which consonant

clusters (see page 20) they permit For example:

beginnings of such words, and pronounce ‘Spain’ as /e'spein/, ‘skill’ as /e'skil / and ‘step’ as /e'step/ However, they have no trouble pronouncing words in which /sp/, /sk/ and /st/ appear in other, non-initial positions

Vowels

In the articulation of vowel sounds, there is no blocking or restriction of the airflow Vowels take their identity from changes in the positioning of the jaws, tongue and lips, all

of which alter the shape of the mouth cavity within which the mouthful of air resonates

Note that the top left-hand quarter of the Sound Foundations chart (page 31) is a schematic representation

of the position of the tongue for the standard British English vowel phonemes:

/ i: / /e / /ae / are front vowels: the tongue-tip is near the front of the mouth

/ u: / I Dll I d I are back vowels: the tongue-tip retreats

towards the back of the mouth (and the lips become rounded)

For / i: / /i/ /u/ /u:/ the tongue is raised towards the palate

For /ae/ /a/ /a: / I d I it is lowered, while at the same time

the jaws open to create a larger space

Take a deep breath and try making a long continuous

vowel sound that glides across the top vowel row from l\:l

to 111 to /u/ to luil and then down the right-hand vowel

column, along the bottom vowel row from right to left, and finally up the left-hand column back to / ii /

Do it again and feel the movement of the tongue on its journey round the vowels

Do it again facing a mirror, and watch how the position of the lips changes as you glide from one vowel to another Now make the same journey in the opposite direction.The symbol /:/ indicates a long vowel This is a useful hint, although the actual length of vowels varies considerably according to their phonetic context: the sounds that precede and follow them, and whether or not they are stressed

Note that, among the vowels so far mentioned, there are none distinguished solely by length

Look carefully at the difference between the / i/ and III

symbols, for example If you emphasise and lengthen the

word ‘big’ in the sentence ‘You’re in big trouble!’, you will

pronounce it with a vowel which could be written as [i:] and which is clearly different from / i:/

(The symbol [ir] has square brackets, not slant brackets, because it doesn’t represent an English phoneme; ‘biiiiiiig’

is the same word as ‘big’, no matter how long the vowel is.)

the middle of this section of the chart, and although the

symbols are different, these two do represent short and

long versions of exactly the same sound, produced with

the tongue in a neutral, relaxed position

The short vowel /a/ is called ‘schwa’ and has a particular

importance: it is the most frequent vowel sound in

English, but only appears in unstressed syllables

Diphthongs

A diphthong (/'difGor]/ - notice the spelling: diphthong)

is a glide from one vowel to another The top right-hand

quarter of the Sound Foundations chart contains the eight

diphthongs, three ending in /a/, three in III and two in lul.

• The starting point for the /au/ diphthong nowadays

tends to be in the region of I d :/, although the symbol /au/

continues to be used

• The /ua/ diphthong is on the decline, and tends

increasingly to be replaced by I d : /, so that ‘sure’ and ‘shore’

become homophones

In contrast to diphthongs, the twelve vowels previously

introduced can be called monophthongs or simple

vowels, but in practice it is common to refer to the whole

set of twenty as ‘vowels and diphthongs’

A sequence of‘diphthong + schwa’ can be regarded as a

triphthong:

tyre /'taia/

tower /'taua/

Many languages have a much smaller number of vowel

phonemes than English Speakers of such languages will

have developed the habit of using only a few combinations

of jaw, lip and tongue positions in order to produce the

vowels of their LI, and when they learn English they face

the task of coordinating the speech organs in new and

subtly different ways, and making fine distinctions between

vowel sounds which they can’t initially distinguish

• If your LI has only one vowel phoneme in the area of

the English /a/, I a: I and /3:/, you will probably need a lot

of practice before you can reliably distinguish between

these sounds when you hear them, and before you can

make them sound distinct from each other when you

produce them yourself

• Even in languages that do have large numbers of vowel

sounds, there may not be many close correspondences

with the English vowels

Although we can’t necessarily give learners such precise

guidance with vowels as we can with consonants, we can

often help to approximate more closely to a certain vowel

sound by telling them, for example:

to round their lips;

or make their mouth more open or less open;

or move their tongue further back in their mouth;

and so on

In sum, the standard southern English pronunciation which is the basis for most teaching material produced in the UK has 44 phonemes, also called segments or, more informally by teachers and learners, simply sounds.There are 24 consonants, 12 monophthongs and 8

diphthongs Some varieties of English have a slightly different number of phonemes

Pronunciation and spelling

The basic idea of an alphabetic writing system is that one letter should represent one sound The spelling of English

is probably the least satisfactory example of such a system:

• partly because there are only 26 letters available for the

44 phonemes;

• partly because the spelling of many words represents the way they were pronounced centuries ago, and they have since changed beyond recognition

(In the case of a few words, the spelling even represents people’s mistaken notions about how the word was once pronounced! For example, the letter ‘1’ in ‘could’ was added in the early 15th century by analogy with ‘would’ and ‘should’; the ‘1’ in the these two words was originally pronounced, but ‘could’ has never had an / 1 / in its pronunciation.)

This state of affairs does have at least two advantages:

1 English spelling preserves a lot of information about the history of the language

2 It shows relationships between words which are not evident in their pronunciation For example:

You sign a document by writing your signature on

it, but the words ‘sign’ and ‘signature’ only have Isl and

In / in common; ‘sign’ has a different vowel sound from

‘signature’, and no Igl.

• Your relations are the people most closely related to you, but where ‘relate’ has /1/, ‘relation’ has ///

But it results in a number of problems for learners of English and also, to varying extents, for native speakers of the language:

1 The same letter or sequence of letters can represent more than one phoneme:

gift /gift/

gist /d3ist/

this Idisl think /0ir]k/

good /gud / food /fu:d / blood /b k d /

2 The same phoneme can be represented by different spellings:

/// in shell, sure, station, special

l3:l in early, first, further, work,prefer, journey

4 There are homophones - ie words with the same

pronunciation but different spellings, such as sign/sine,

right/write, hear/here.

5 There are homographs - ie words with the same

spelling but different pronunciations, such as:

bow /bau/ /bau/

read / ri:d/ (infinitive) /red / (past tense/past participle)

use /ju:s/ (noun) /ju:z/ (verb)

The need for transcription

For all these reasons, it is useful for learners and teachers

to have an unambiguous way of representing sounds in

writing, and this is what phonemic transcription provides

Phonemic transcription is also useful to other users of

the language, including native speakers, because it enables

them to look up the pronunciation of unfamiliar words in

a dictionary Specialised pronunciation dictionaries also

give access to the pronunciations of a large number of

place names, personal names, etc

On the other hand, there is actually a large amount of

regularity and predictability in English spelling One way

to convince yourself of this is as follows:

Imagine how non-existent words might be spelled If

/nist/ was a word, for example, how would it be spelled?

Probably ‘nist’, or ‘nissed’ if it was the past form of the verb

‘niss’ (or conceivably ‘knist’, ‘knissed’, ‘gnist’ or ‘gnissed’.)

• The fact the we can often predict the spelling of a

possible word with some degree of confidence is evidence

that English spelling is less chaotic than it might appear to

the beginner learner In fact, the spelling of most English

words, beyond the most frequent ones, is predictable

to some extent, or can at least be narrowed down to a

small number of likely alternatives (See ‘Possible and

impossible words’ in Part C, page 159.)

• The fact that extremely irregular spellings in the

general vocabulary of English are to found mainly among

common words is good news, because learners will get

plenty of exposure to these words and this will facilitate

the task of learning them, including learning how to spell

them A good example is the word women /'wimin/ The

use of the letter ‘o’ to represent 111 is particularly unusual,

but this is such a frequent word that learners will probably

soon become used to the spelling

Accents of English

English pronunciation is far from homogenous, and it is

commonplace to speak of‘an American accent’, ‘a Scottish

accent’ and so on It is perhaps only to be expected that

English will sound different in different parts of the world

What learners may find more surprising is the extent of

English accents vary very little as regards consonants, but vary considerably in the number and quality of vowels they use For example, many accents of northern England use /u/ instead of /a/; this results in a north-south difference affecting some words but not others:

butter /'buta/ /'bAta/

butcher /'butja/ /'butja/

• Scottish accents do not generally distinguish between

lul and lu:l or between lol and /d: /, so that pull and pool

are homophones /pul/, as are cot and caught / lot/.

These are only a couple of examples of the innumerable ways in which the vowel systems of different English accents vary

Rhotic and non-rhotic accents

However, there is one major division between English accents which involves a consonant sound: the division between rhotic /'rautik/ (from the name of the Greek

letter ‘rho’) and non-rhotic accents.

In a rhotic accent, the letter ‘r’ is pronounced wherever

it appears in the spelling of a word Rhotic accents are characteristic of most parts of North America, as well as Ireland, Scotland and the south-west of England

• In a non-rhotic accent, a written Y is only pronounced immediately before a vowel sound - whether this vowel sound is in the same word or in the following word (The word ‘iron’ /'aian/ is an exception, because the Y is not pronounced.) Regions with non-rhotic accents include Australia, South Africa, Wales and most of England.Compare these examples - the ‘r’s that are pronounced are

Add some water Add some water

Put some water in Put some water in

Where is it? Where is it?

another hour another houranother hour or so another hour or soShould learners aim for a rhotic or a non-rhotic accent? This depends on a number of factors, such as:

Do they aspire to acquire a particular accent, such as standard British or standard American?

- If they are in an English-speaking country, which is the

dominant accent in the area?

Which is the dominant type of pronunciation they hear

from teachers and from classroom recordings?

Which is the dominant type of pronunciation they hear

from other sources such as songs, films, etc?

* Is one type of accent - rhotic or non-rhotic - easier for

them to acquire?

• Are they expected to use one type or the other in oral

exams?

One thing that tends to make rhotic pronunciation more

accessible, or appealing, for learners is that it corresponds

more closely to spelling Rhotic pronunciation can also

help them to be more intelligible

For instance, if someone doesn’t make very clear

distinctions between the vowels when pronouncing words

such as ‘had’, ‘head’, ‘heard’ and ‘hard’, pronouncing the

‘r’s will help a listener to some extent by giving more

information about the identity of these words

/ I / sounds in different accents

There are also differences between / 1 / sounds in different

accents of English In standard British English, there are

two allophones of /I/:

a clear /1 /, in which the front of the tongue is raised in

the position for /i:/

a dark /1 /, in which the back of the tongue is raised in

the position for /u:/

Clear / 1 / is used before a vowel (eg in ‘leaf’); dark / 1 /

before a consonant or a pause (eg in ‘feel’ or ‘field’)

However:

In Irish English there is no such allophonic distinction,

and clear / 1 / is used in all positions

Many speakers of North American and Scottish English,

on the other hand, use a dark / I/ in all positions

Especially in Estuary English (a variety of English

spoken in the London area and along the Thames

estuary, but also influencing other parts of England) the

contact between the tongue and the alveolar ridge in the

articulation of dark / 1 / is lost, and what remains is /w/:

feel /fi:w/

field /fiiwd/

Other kinds of variation

Apart from different accents, there are also differences

between individual speakers For example:

Some speakers tend to affricate / t/ to some extent, so

that it can sound rather like /ts/

Other speakers pronounce /// with very strong lip-

rounding

And so on

Different styles of speaking in response to different

contexts also result in differences in pronunciation

If you are making a speech in front of a large audience, or

delivering an important message down a poor telephone line, you will probably speak more slowly, pause more often, and articulate words more fully and clearly than you do when taking part in a relaxed conversation

Apart from these large-scale differences, there are many differences in the pronunciation of sounds in different phonetic contexts

* An example:

The /r/ sound in ‘rain’ is voiced and non-fricative

The /r/ in ‘train’ is voiceless and fricative

We could transcribe these two Y sounds differently, using phonetic transcription, but in phonemic transcription we use the same symbol: /r e in / /tr e in /.

• Another example:

The vowel / i: / is considerably longer in the words ‘see’/si:/ and‘seed’ /si:d / than in ‘seat’ /si:t/

The shortening or ‘clipping’ of the vowel before a /p/, /t/

or / k/ is a regular feature; whether or not vowels have a length mark /:/, their actual length can vary considerably.However, these differences do not have the potential to create different words Even if the /r/ in ‘train’ is voiced, the word is still ‘train’: it just sounds slightly unusual And

no matter how long or short the / i: / in /si: t/ is, the word remains ‘seat’

The Y sounds in ‘rain’ and ‘train’ are different varieties -

or, technically, allophones - of the phoneme /r /.

The vowel sounds in ‘seed’ and ‘seat’ are allophones of the phoneme /i:/

Knowing about allophonic variation can be important

It helps learners to understand why they find it difficult

to distinguish between English phonemes

It gives them guidance as to exactly what they need to

do in order to produce sounds, especially if sounds which are allophones in their LI are phonemes in English This is the case, for example, with / I/ and / r / in Japanese, or / b / and /v/ in Spanish

These distinctions can be particularly tricky for learners

to make, since people tend not to be very aware of the allophonic distinctions they make in their own language.For example, if your LI is English and you haven’t studied pronunciation before, you might be surprised to discover that the /r/ sounds in ‘rain’ and ‘train’ sound so different, and feel so different when you pronounce them

There are many other, even more dramatic, changes to sounds in a particular environment - see ‘A stream of sound’ (page 22)

Syllables

We use the phrase ‘in words of one syllable’ to mean ‘in short, simple words’ But what exactly is a syllable?

Consider the difference between the words ‘language’ and

‘languages’ If you tap or clap the rhythms of these words,

How many syllables are there in these words?

It isn’t always easy to say exactly where the boundaries

between syllables are Does ‘languages’ consist of

/'Iaer)+gwid 3 + iz / or /'Iaer)+gw i+d 3 iz /, for example? If

we think of the word as ‘language + s’ we might expect

/iz / to form a syllable, but if we listen to the word we

perhaps get the impression that the final syllable is /d3iz/

For teaching purposes, the question of exactly how to

divide words into syllables is probably not crucially

important, but it’s often most effective for learners to

assume that syllables begin with consonants where they

are available: ea-ten, Eas-ter, e-ter-ni-ty, etc.

English has a wide range of syllable types, ranging from

very simple to very complex:

The simplest type of syllable consists solely of a vowel

phoneme Some syllables of this type are meaningful in

their own right, such as:

/a/ a - the usual, weak, form of the indefinite article

I 31 I er- a common hesitation sound

/d:/ or

/a:/ ah

/id/ ear (in non-rhotic accents)

/ea/ air (in non-rhotic accents)

/i:/ the letter‘e’

/ei/ the letter‘a’

/ai/ eye; the pronoun ‘I’; the letter ‘ i ’

/au/ oh; owe; the letter ‘o’

Some syllables have one consonant phoneme before the

A sequence of consonant sounds without any intervening

vowel is called a consonant cluster, or simply a cluster

So the words ‘flaw’, ‘ski’ and ‘grow’ have initial (ie at the

beginning of the syllable) two-consonant clusters

Some syllables have initial clusters of three consonants:

screw

/eik/ ache /D:t/ ought

Some syllables have final clusters (ie clusters at the end of

a syllable) of two consonants:

/ i:ts / eats /eikt/ ached

/0ir)k/ think Some syllables have final clusters of three consonants: /filmd/ filmed

/©aerjks/ thanks Some syllables have both initial and final clusters:

/stri:ts/ streets /©rild / thrilled Some syllables have clusters of up to three consonant phonemes both before and after the vowel:

/skweltjt/ squelched

And, in theory at least, the number of consonants in a

final cluster can be four.

/siksGs/ sixths (eg in the fraction five sixths)

But in practice it’s quite unusual for all four of these consonants to be pronounced: final consonant clusters are often simplified - see ‘A stream of sound’ on page 22.The examples above are all actual words, but some syllables are not words in themselves, although they form part of words:

/fa //to/

/gra/

/fa /None of these syllables is a word in itself but, together, they form the four-syllable word ‘photographer’:

/fa'tografa/

There are also syllables which don’t contain a vowel but which consist solely of a syllabic / 1 /, / m /, / n / or / r / - see

‘Syllabic consonants’ (page 15)

Languages differ considerably with regard to the types of syllable they allow:

• Some, such as Slavonic languages, allow complex consonant clusters

• Others, such as Japanese, restrict themselves to one consonant plus vowel per syllable

• Learners whose LI is of the latter type are particularly likely to find English clusters difficult

But even if a cluster does occur in a learner’s LI, it can still be problematic if it doesn’t occur in the same positions within a word as in English - see the comments about Spanish /sp/, /st/ and /sk/ above Learners tend

to adopt one of two strategies to overcome difficulties in

1 Insert a vowel sound - eg ‘stair’ becomes /si1 tea / or

/I'stea/

2 Delete one of the consonants - eg ‘stair’ becomes / tea/

• Strategy 1 has the advantage that it preserves all the

phonetic information contained in the word, albeit in a

slightly disguised manner

• Strategy 2 simply fails to provide information which the

listener may need in order to identify the word

This is particularly true for less confident and/or less

competent listeners, who need to expend a lot of mental

energy on following what the speaker is saying, and who

may be unable or unwilling to make much use of context

to arrive at correct interpretations In native English:

• Final clusters are often subject to simplification through

elision

• Initial consonants are not

For a list of the most common syllable-initial and syllable-

final English clusters, see page 45

Word stress

When a two-syllable word is spoken in isolation, one of

the syllables is stressed

Say these pairs of words, and hear and feel the difference:

progress (noun) progress (verb)

recall (noun) recall (verb)

The difference between stressed syllables and unstressed

syllables is the result of a combination of factors

Stressed syllables tend to be longer, to sound louder, to

be produced with more energy, and to carry intonation

movements There are various ways of representing stress

in written language The one most commonly used in

dictionaries is this mark' in front of stressed syllable:

progress (noun) /'praogres/

progress (verb) /pra'gres/

recall (noun) /'riikDil/

recall (verb) /ri'loil/

A comparison of these two transcriptions also reveals

a further feature of unstressed syllables: unlike stressed

syllables, they frequently contain the ‘weak’ or ‘reduced’

vowels /a/ or /i/

• /i/ is the same as / i:/ but without the length mark,

because this weak vowel has the same quality as / i: / but is

more fleeting

• In fact, the exact quality of vowels in unstressed

syllables can vary quite a lot between regional varieties

and between individual speakers, and sometimes it can be

hard to decide whether verbs such as ‘recall’ and ‘rely’ are

pronounced with /a/ or /i/

In the classroom, many teachers use more dramatic

means of indicating stressed syllables, such as underlining,

capitalising or putting a square or circle above the stressed

syllable, especially when writing on the board:

progressPROgress

□progress

progressproGRESS

□progressNotice, though, that these conventions, if used with normal orthography, don’t record the reduced quality of vowels in unstressed syllables

Three-syllable words also have one stressed syllable:

banana Iba'naina/

This word is a good illustration of the need for

transcription: the spelling banana suggests that the word

contains three identical vowel sounds, whereas in fact the stressed one has a strong pronunciation while the other two are both reduced to schwa

Some words of more than two syllables have so-called primary and secondary stress:

unemployment /.Anem'pbimant/

disadvantage /.disad'vaintic^/

Notice the symbol for secondary stress: a subscript version

of the mark used to show primary stress

The less strong secondary stress tends to occur on the first

or second syllable

The stronger primary stress comes later in the word, after

at least one intervening unstressed syllable

The pronunciations of words which are given in dictionaries are known as citation forms; these are the pronunciations we use when we are citing or quoting words, as we sometimes do in answer to questions such as:

- ‘What's the past tense of abide?’

the disadvantage of this method of production

Depending on the context, this could be said in many different ways Here is one possibility, which is to be found

on Track 3 on the accompanying CD:

3 the Disadvantage of THIS method of production

Here, the stresses fall on the capitalised syllables, and there

is no stress on ‘-vant-’

In this phrase, too:

3 adVANTages and Disadvantages

there is likely to be no stress on ‘-vant-’ in the word

‘disadvantages’, and ‘dis-’ is likely to be stressed in order to highlight the opposition between the two words

3 but the MAJor disadvantage of doing it like THIS

(This phrase could follow after a number of disadvantages

have already been mentioned.) The word ‘disadvantages’

is not stressed at all, and becomes part of a long string of

unstressed syllables:

or-dis-ad-van-tage-of-do-ing-it-like

And in the following sentence, similarly (although here

again this is only possible way in which it might be said),

the citation form ‘reCALL’ doesn’t appear, and the two

syllables of this word become part of a sequence of

unstressed syllables - re-call-his:

4 i just CAN’T recall his NAME

(Note that the pronoun T is not capitalised in this

example, because it is not stressed.)

In fact, the stresses in the citation forms of words are only

potential stresses, which may or may not be realised when

words are put to use Later, in the section on intonation,

we will see how what we call ‘word stress’ can be described

as part of the intonation system

English has a lot of word families in which the citation

forms of different words have different stress patterns:

Some languages have reliably predictable word stress:

In Czech and Finnish, for example, words are always

stressed on the first syllable

In Polish, they are (almost always) stressed on the

penultimate syllable

English doesn’t have such overall regularity, although

there are helpful regularities in certain types of words -

see page 35

There are rather few differences in word stress between

different accents of English Differences between British

and American English include:

When we read a text such as this one, it is easy for us to

recognise where one word ends and the next one begins,

because there are gaps between them It’s also easy to

recognise what all the words are, because they are all

printed as clearly as each other

identity, with only the main stressed syllables standing out like islands in the stream

The printed equivalent of this would be a text in which some of the words are printed clearly but others are blurred, or partially erased, or have letters printed on top

of one another

So speech is normally connected But the term ‘features

of connected speech’ is widely used by teachers as an umbrella term for features such as weak forms, linking, elision and assimilation It highlights the contrast

between the pronunciation of individual words and the pronunciation of sequences of words.

Linking

If you say‘look up’ at normal speed, you’ll hear that there

is no gap - ie no pause, no silence - between the two words The final consonant of‘look’ is linked to the initial vowel of‘up’ This can have two possible consequences for the unwary listener:

the impression that there is a single word /lu' kAp/ the impression that the phrase consists of /lu / + / kAp/Similarly,‘Look out’ can give the impression of containing the unknown word /kaut/

The process of linking the consonant at the end of a word with the vowel at the beginning of the following word is known as catenation (from Latin catena = chain) You can get a feel for the difference between catenated and uncatenated speech by comparing ‘Pick it up’ at normal

speed with a slow, angry, emphatic Pick it up!

Catenation can produce phrasal homophones such as: picket / pick it

at all / a tall orderwaiter / wait a minute / the way to goSomeone who hears the word ‘picket’ for the first time might assume that they’ve heard ‘pick it’, and struggle to interpret the meaning of this phrase in the context, and

to understand how it fits into the surrounding grammar But it would quite likely be more productive for them

to recognise /' pikit/ as a new word, and try to infer its

meaning or, if possible, to ask ‘What’s a /'pikit/?’

When a word ending in / i:/, /ei/, / di / or /ai/ is followed

by, and linked to, a word beginning with a vowel, there

is an impression of a fleeting intermediate 1)1 sound,

although no linking sound is actually inserted Thisphenomenon is called /j /-linking:

me_and youday_and nightjoy_and sorrowwhy_is it?

Similarly, when a word ending in /u:/, /dul or /au/ is

followed by, and linked to, a word beginning with a vowel,

there is an impression of a fleeting intermediate /w/

sound, although no linking sound is actually inserted, and

this is called /w/-linking:

blue_in green

go_in

now_and then

In non-rhotic accents (see above) there is another type

of linking between other word-final vowel sounds and

following word-initial vowels: a written V at the end of a

word is often pronounced when it is followed by an initial

vowel sound in the next word This is called /relinking:

teacher /' ti:tja / The teacher_isnt here.

/da 'tiitjar iznt hi a/

Where? /wea/ Where_areyou? /w earaiju:/

It’s too far /fa:/ It’s too far_away /its tu: fair awei/

(This doesn’t apply to rhotic accents, where the V is

always pronounced in ‘teacher’, ‘where’, ‘far’, etc.)

A linking /r/ can also appear in non-rhotic accents in cases

where there’s no ‘r’ in the spelling:

law_and order / b:r an /

Chinajn the future /'tjainar in /

This even extends to non-rhotic speakers’ pronunciation

of other languages:

gloria_in excelsis /'gbiriar in /

The inserted / r/ sound is, in this case, often called an

‘intrusive / r/’, a term with negative connotations, because

it isn’t present in the spelling, and some people feel that it

therefore shouldn’t be pronounced

Short cuts in connected speech

Often, when we learn a new routine, such as a route that

we need to take to get to a certain place, or how to use a

machine, we start by carrying out the routine slowly and

meticulously but, as we become more familiar with it, we

start to discover, consciously or unconsciously, short cuts

we can take to reduce the time and effort we spend This

also applies to speaking: there are various ways in which

the speech organs take short cuts in order to reduce the

expenditure of time and energy in speaking

So far, we have generally exemplified - and transcribed

- sounds and sequences of sounds as they appear in the

citation forms of words - ie the pronunciations given in

dictionaries, and which you would use in citing words in

isolation rather than as part of the fabric of continuous

speech

But the pronunciation of words often changes, sometimes

dramatically, in the stream of speech

If Speaker A is trying to decipher a handwritten text and

asks Speaker B ‘ What’s this word? I can’t read it\ B might

answer ‘going’, pronouncing it as /'gauiq/ On other

occasions, though, B might say:

5 I’m going to the shops

pronouncing‘going to’ as /'gaum ta/

5 I’m going bald

pronouncing‘going bald’ as /'gD im bDild/

5 I’m going to see what I can do about it

pronouncing ‘going to’ as /gna/

/'g a u ir|/ is the citation form of‘going’, but when this word actually occurs in speech, its pronunciation can be very different - to such an extent that it’s impossible to recognise, except by reference to the context it occurs in,

as in the third example above Clearly, proficient listeners manage to follow the short cuts that speakers take

The main types of short cuts are weak forms, elision and assimilation

Strong and weak forms

Certain common grammatical words have widely- recognised strong forms and weak forms For example: the word ‘some’ has the strong form /sAm/, as in:

Some day my prince will come

and the weak form /sam/, as in:

You can have some more if you like.

You can find a list of such words on page 35 The basic distinction is:

The strong form is used in stressed contexts

• The weak form is used in unstressed contexts

And because these words are typically unstressed, the weak forms are much more frequent than the strong forms Generally, the vowel in the weak form is reduced to /a / (schwa) or / i/ There are two further important points:

1 Weak forms always have to live with the threat of further reduction, even to the point of elision (‘dropping’, or disappearance) of vowels and/or consonants For instance, the weak form of‘shall’ /Jael / is often transcribed as /Jal /, but is frequently further reduced to /Jl/ For example:

6 What shall I do? [wD?JlA'du:]

or even just /J7

6 Shall we go, then? [Jw i'g a u d e n ]

2 Not only the officially listed ‘weak form’ words are liable

to reduction Any word - any syllable, in fact - which is unstressed is susceptible to phonetic erosion of various kinds: see the example of‘going’ above

As another common example, the word ‘where’ / w e a / is often not listed as having a weak form, but is frequently reduced in a context such as:

7 in the town stadium, where they were going to hold the competition

Here, the sequence ‘where they were’ might be pronounced as /w a d a w a /.

which have subsequently been elided (noun: elision,

verb: elide).

The spellings ‘knight’, ‘castle’ and ‘daughter’, for example,

contain a ‘k’, a‘t’ and a ‘gh’ which were once pronounced

but have been permanently elided:

• There is no longer any option of pronouncing them, no

matter how clearly and carefully we want to utter these

words

• They have become silent witnesses to earlier stages in

the history of the language

There are also many words, however, where elision is in a

state of flux:

• Some speakers elide but others don’t

• The likelihood of the elision of a sound depends on

how slowly and deliberately a word is uttered

Schwa, which is, in any case, a weakly-articulated sound, is

a prime candidate for elision:

perm(a)nently

delib(e)rately

The bracketed syllables of these words are sometimes

pronounced (as schwa /a/) and sometimes elided If

they are elided, the result is that the words have one less

syllable than the spelling suggests

Sometimes, elision of schwa results in ‘illegal’ (yes, that’s

the official term!) consonant clusters For example:

• In their citation form, English doesn’t permit words

which begin with / bn-/, /tm-/, /pt-/ or /fn-/

• In normal speech - ie speech which is not especially

slow or careful - pronunciations such as these appear

Among consonants particularly susceptible to elision are

/t/ and /d/ in the middle of word-final clusters:

/enz/ for /endz/ ends

/ la:s 0irj/ for/la:st 0ir)/ last thing

/stop da/ for /stopt da/ stopped the bus

/ fae ks / for / f ae kts / facts

In this way,

1 Consonant clusters are often simplified, with a

consequent reduction in the amount of information

about the identity of words affected

2 Specifically, distinctions between infinitive/present and

past forms of regular verbs are often disguised, as the

‘stopped’ example above illustrates

3 Homophones are created, eg facts/fax.

prefix ‘in-’ is used to form the opposites of innumerable adjectives, but the opposite of‘possible’ is ‘impossible’ Why? Why not ‘inpossible’?

The sounds Ini and / t/ are both alveolar, so in order to

produce the sequence /nt/ in ‘intolerant’:

The tongue makes contact with the alveolar ridge while the /n/ is produced nasally

The tongue is then released with aspiration to produce /t/

Now try to say ‘inpossible’ In order to get from /n / to /pi

you need to move the tongue away from the alveolar ridge

and then close and open your lips to produce I pi This is

by no means impossible to do, but what happens instead

is that the lips are put together earlier, so that the nasal sound produced is bilabial /m / and not alveolar /n /, and this is recorded in the spelling ‘im-’

Now consider the phrase ‘in town’ Although this consists

of two words, it is usually pronounced as a continuous uninterrupted sequence of sounds, including /nt/, as in the word ‘intolerant’

The phrase ‘in Paris’, though - like the hypothetical word

‘inpossible’ - contains /np/, and here too this sequence is typically produced as /mp/ (‘im Paris’) The speech organs anticipate the next sound they are going to make, and produce a sound which is more similar to this following sound, thereby achieving economy of effort

This process is called assimilation, and operates, as we have seen, both within words and across word boundaries:

• Within words, assimilation is sometimes recorded in spelling

• Across words, it never is

But the process is the same in both cases

The assimilation /np > /mp/ takes place at the front of the mouth and is easy to feel, and even to see in a mirror Let’s find an example further back in the mouth:

• The word ‘credible’ begins with the velar plosive Ikl Its

opposite is ‘incredible’ and, in order to avoid having to switch between an alveolar closure for /n/ and a velar one for /k/, we often substitute a velar nasal /r)/, so that the

tongue is already in the position needed for Ikl, resulting

in /iq 'k re d ib j/ - again, an effort-saving shortcut, though not a mandatory one It’s also quite possible to say /in 'k re d ib l/, and the choice between the two versions is partly a matter of speed and style of speech, and partly

a matter of general differences of pronunciation among individual speakers

• The word ‘ink’, on the other hand, is probably universally pronounced /ir]k/, and this is the citation form recorded in dictionaries, although the spelling might suggest /in k /.

Assimilation, then, as its name suggests, has the effect of

making adjacent sounds similar to each other Sometimes

they even become identical:

/n m / > /m m / on_Monday

IsJ/ > /JJ/ this_shelf

Here, the result is a single, lengthened /m/ or /// sound

respectively

If the first sound is a ‘stop’ (this term is more accurate

than the alternative ‘plosive’ in this case) it is not released,

and forms an extended period of closure before the

second one is released:

/tk/ > /kk/ start_counting

/dg/ > /gg/ hard_graft

Here are some other common cases of assimilation:

/tp/> /pp/ hot_potato (like‘hop potato’)

(The first /p/ is not released.)

/tg/ > /kg/ art_gallery (like‘ark gallery’)

(/k/ is not released.)/d b / > /b b / saidjbefore (The first /b/ is not released.)

/dk/ > /gk/ sad_case (like ‘sag case’)

(/g/ is not released.)/n b / > /m b / injbed

/n g / > /rjg / ten_groups

In a form of assimilation called coalescence, a /t/, /d/,

/s/ or Izl plus a following l]l combine to form a single

affricate or fricative:

/tj/ > /tj/ got_you (The informal spelling ‘gotcha’

records this coalescence.)/d j/ > 16^1 would_you

Is]/ > /JJ/ this_year

lz\! > /33/ those_years

All the examples of assimilation so far involve changes

in place of articulation; assimilation particularly affects

alveolar consonants, but can affect others too:

/ m g / > / q g / rm_going

(bilabial + velar > velar + velar)

As well as causing changes in place of articulation,

assimilation can eliminate differences of voicing in

adjacent sounds For example:

The final Izl of‘these’ is voiced and the initial /f/ of‘four’ is

voiceless, but in the phrase ‘these four’ the voicing tends to

be switched off prematurely, so that ‘these’ becomes [di:s]

Similarly, in ‘have to’, the /v/ of‘have’ tends to lose its

voicing under the influence of the following Itl.

Sometimes elision and assimilation combine to

dramatically alter the pronunciation of words or phrases

Handbag becomes /'haembaeg/ because /d / is elided from

the sequence /n d b /, resulting in /n b /, which undergoes

assimilation to /m b /.

Sandwich often becomes /'saemwit//

(/n d w / > /n w / > /m w /).

And the same processes occur across word boundaries:

I hurt my handjbecause /haembi1 kdz/

the wind_was blowing/'wimwaz/

Assimilation has at least three implications for learners:

1 Except in the citation form of words such as ‘ink’ or

‘impossible’, assimilation is optional, and learners should not be made to feel that they have to produce as many assimilations as native speakers

2 However, they may find that assimilation helps them

to produce sound sequences which they otherwise find difficult For example, they may find it easier to say ‘said_ before’ with /bb/ than with /db/

3 In any case, assimilation is important from the point

of view of their listening It is one of the factors that

conspire to disguise the identity of words, especially in combination with elision, and if they understand the principle it will help them to make intelligent guesses about the words they hear when they listen to speakers who make use of assimilation options

Assimilation generally involves a sound becoming in some way more similar to a following sound, but there are two important cases where it operates in the other direction:

a sound adopts the voicing or voicelessness of the sound which precedes it:

stop + ‘s’ > Isl stops sound + ‘s’ > Izl sounds

• In ‘stops’, the ‘p’ is voiceless, and this voicelessness is

maintained throughout the sequence Ipsl in ‘stops’.

• The word ‘sound’, on the other hand, ends with a voiced

sound, 16/, and the voicing is maintained for the ‘-s’ ending, which is therefore pronounced Izl in this case, laugh + ‘d’ > III laughed

love + ‘d’ > Idl loved

• In ‘laugh’, the final sound IV is voiceless, and this

voicelessness is maintained throughout the sequence /ft/

in ‘laughed’

• The word ‘love’, on the other hand, ends with a voiced sound, /v/, and the voicing is maintained for the ‘-ed’

ending, which is therefore pronounced Idl in this case.

This type of assimilation is clearly important because it takes place in the context of basic areas of grammar:

• plural forms of nouns - eg pubs, sounds, bags

• present simple 3rd person singular form of verbs - eg

loves, sails, ends

• past tense and past participle forms of regular verbs - eg

loved, hummed, edged

Intonation in the fabric of speech

One view of intonation is that it’s nice to have if you can

get it, but most adult learners can’t get it Or at least, it’s

only realistic for them to aim for after they’ve had lengthy experience of learning the language - a kind of‘optional extra’ that will make them sound more sophisticated, but isn’t really a priority

intonation, which is notoriously slippery and resistant

to teaching - and they can always console themselves by

thinking ‘They'll pick it up as they become more familiar

with English’ or ‘It’ll keep till later on This involves quite

a leap of faith, and the evidence is that learners, except a

minority, can’t be relied on to simply pick it up as they go

A rather different and ultimately more tenable view is that

intonation is basic to the very fabric of speech:

Without it, learners will never take the vital step from

mouthing words to speaking confidently, intelligibly and

meaningfully

Children, if they start young enough, generally manage

to take this step without too much help, but adults can’t

be relied on to do so

The best time to start work on intonation is right at the

start - from the very first lesson, in fact

Many elementary speakers of English have a word-by-

word, staccato style of speaking:

Excuse-me-is-this-seat-free?

I-would-like-to-book

Do-you-want-tea-or-coffee?

Room-six-is-on-the-left-at-the-end-of-the-corridor.

The words are all present and correct, and maybe they’re

all pronounced fairly accurately - and that is already a

significant achievement — but the impression a listener gets

is, nevertheless, of a horizontal list of words rather than

an expressive utterance What’s missing is the bundle of

features sometimes called the ‘music’ of English: phrasing,

pausing, linking, rhythm, melody and variation in speed

Chunking, pausing and tone units

If you can only speak English as fast

as this, you’ll probably want to be able to speak

it faster, and with practice you’ll probably find that

you do in fact speed up But it isn’t simply a matter of

speakingasfastasth is.

• You obviously need to pause for breath, and to give

yourself time to formulate what you want to say

• Your listener also needs your pauses in order to

recognise how you are packaging what you say - which

words belong together, and where units of information

begin and end

So instead of saying:

Roomsixisontheleftattheendofthecorridor

you can help yourself and your listener by saying:

8 Room six is on the left / at the end of the corridor

or:

8 Room six / is on the left / at the end of the corridor

and saying each chunk at speed, but pausing as long as you need between the chunks Developing fluency and

‘speed’ of articulation is actually a question of producing continuous chunks of speech at a reasonable speed, and pausing between them in appropriate places

In fluent speech, the frequency and length of pauses is controlled by the speaker

We might say: Excuse me, and then pause to give the addressee time to notice us and react before continuing Is

this seat free?

• We might ask - on another occasion, perhaps if we’ve

already established eye contact: Excuse me, is this seat free?

without pausing between the two parts

But even then - even though there’s no actual silence between ‘me’ and ‘is’ - there’s a lowering of energy level at that point in the utterance, which allows us to recognise two chunks of speech:

9 Excuse me / is this seat free?

Similarly, in fast speech, there may not be an actual silence

between on the left and at the end of the corridor, but it’s

still likely that two chunks will be recognisable

These chunks have been given various names One of the most popular, and the one we will use here, is tone units The reason for the use of the word ‘tone’ will become clear

a little later

Islands in the stream - prominence

Within each tone unit at least one word - sometimes two

- is given prominence - ie spoken with extra energy and volume, so that these words stand out like islands in the stream of speech This is the phenomenon often called

‘sentence stress’, but that term is misleading because it’s actually a feature of tone units rather than sentences Also:

1 A tone unit is often less than a sentence -eg at the end

of the corridor In fact, even a single word can form a tone

Here, the speaker is adding information in a piecemeal fashion as she goes along, rather than trying to produce sentences

• The commas in this transcription are used to mark boundaries between the speaker’s tone units

• One of the most common uses of commas in English is

to indicate where there might be tone unit boundaries in a

text if it was spoken rather than written

A speaker can choose to give prominence to any word, but

some choices are more likely than others:

is on the LEFT

at the END of the CORRidor

These ‘content words’ convey the most important parts of

the message Prominence is much less likely to given to

‘function words’ such as ‘the’, ‘on’, etc.

Speakers normally give prominence to words, but if the

word is multisyllabic, the prominence is carried by one

syllable This is why only the first syllable of‘corridor’ is

capitalised

Dictionaries tell us that the first syllable of‘corridor’ is

stressed, and if a speaker chooses to give prominence to

this word, it will appear on that syllable

But in some contexts, such as:

Are you sure this corridor leads to the exit?

the word ‘corridor’ may not be prominent, and in this case

the potential stress on its first syllable is not realised as

prominence:

11 are you SURE this corridor leads to the EXit

In this example, the words ‘sure’ and ‘exit’ are selected for

prominence

To summarise:

If a word is said in isolation, it forms a tone unit in its

own right In this case, since there is no alternative, it must

be made prominent, and the prominence is realised on the

syllable which is stressed in its citation form - eg heLLO,

fanTAStic

When a word occurs in a longer tone unit, it may

or may not be made prominent Speakers select words

for prominence in order to highlight them (For those

who speak the language well, this ‘selection’ is generally

automatic and instantaneous.)

‘Stress’ is a feature of a word in its citation form

‘Prominence’ is a feature of a tone unit

Prominence and tone

People often comment that certain foreign languages

What gives rise to this impression of musicality? Probably

the rhythm of speech to some extent, but also certainly the

rise and fall of the voice - the melody of speech

Our voices are constantly rising and falling as we speak

- we tend not to notice this in our own language, but try

speaking on a monotone, and notice the difference! But

‘tone’ refers to the particularly dramatic pitch movement that takes place, or begins, on some prominent syllables

If there’s only one prominent syllable in a tone unit, this is

the tonic prominence - ie the syllable that carries the tone:

12 is on the \ LEFT

If there are two prominent syllables in a tone unit, the

second is the tonic prominence:

13 at the END of the ^ CORRidor

The tonic prominence is underlined The tone begins on the syllable immediately after the arrow, and continues through subsequent syllables - if there are any

As with all aspects of intonation, tone is hardly ever entirely predictable, but these phrases are here marked with falling tones, because this is the tone typically used for communicating new information It contrasts with the rise and fall-rise, which are typically used for information which is already known, shared, or assumed, but nevertheless important - and therefore prominent.This contrast is particularly clear when people correct or contradict each other:

14 it isn’t on the V LEFT / it’s on the \ RIGHT

or:

14 it’s on the \ RIGHT / not the T LEFT

If there are unstressed syllables after the last prominence

in a speech unit, they form the tail of the tone unit, and the tone continues through those syllables:

15 A: i THINK the hotel’s in the ^ OLD town B: it isn’t exactly V IN the old town / but it’s ONIy a couple of ^ MINutes away

Notice that the pronoun T is not prominent and therefore not capitalised, and that there are no full stops or other punctuation Here:

A’s tone unit has a one-syllable tail:

‘min-’ and continues through ‘-utes away’

If there are two prominent syllables in a tone unit, the first one is a non-tonic prominence, which carries prominence but no tone - ie the pitch of the voice does not rise or fall

on this syllable:

at the END of the \ CORRidor

i THINK the hotel’s in the \ OLD town but it’s ONIy a couple of V MINutes away

• People sometimes get the impression that such syllables

as these have a rising tone, because they are very often at

a higher pitch level than the preceding syllables - in this

case at-the, f and but-it’s - but there is no change of pitch

on END, THINK and ON- themelves

• What happens is simply that at the is spoken on a low

pitch and end follows immediately on a higher pitch The

voice has to jump up to reach this higher pitch, but there

is no rising tone involved

We can look at some alternative ways in which the I think

sentence could be said:

It could be divided into two tone units, or even three:

16 i V THINK / the hotel’s in the \ OLD town

17 i V THINK I the hoV TEL’S / in the \ OLD town

• The first version might be used to emphasise

tentativeness or incompleteness - this is another common

implication of the fall-rise: / think, but Vm not sure.

• The second version might be used if the speaker

feels a need to re-highlight hotel because it hasn’t been

mentioned for a while

These alternative versions provide just a glimpse of how

speakers manipulate the intonation system to express

themselves more precisely

Old or new?

We often rephrase old information instead of repeating

the exact words:

18 A: it’s ^ FREEZinq in here

B: \ YES / it V IS / a bit T CHILLv

Here, ‘chilly’ functions as an approximate repetition of

‘freezing’ and is therefore given a rising tone

18 A: it’s V FREEZinq in here

B: V YES / it ISn’t exactly V WARM

Here, ‘not warm’ reiterates the idea of‘freezing’

19 A: it MUST have cost a FORtune

B: well it WASn’t exactly V CHEAP

And here, similarly, ‘fortune’ and ‘not cheap’ are treated

as equivalent, even though one is a noun and the other an

adjective

Sometimes we only talk about part of the old information:

20 A: i thought that film was REAIIy \ GOOD

B: i thought the V MUSic was good

Here, B is probably implying two things:

1I assume you thought the music was good, and I agree

with you on this.

2 But I didn't think other aspects of the film were equally

good.

This is only a very basic introduction to the idea of‘old’

imply more than the actual words they use Nevertheless,

it provides some useful guidelines for learners as they begin to listen to English and to produce it themselves:

• If they can pick up elements of chunking, prominence and tone by ear and intuition, so much the better

• If they can’t, they can be helped by focused listening to contrastive examples and drilling, as well as predicting the intonation of exchanges such as:

21 A: How was the match?

B: The first half was quite good, but the second half was really good.

21 A: How was the match?

B: The first half was quite good, but the second half was terrible.

Same or different?

Some learners - and some teachers, as well! - find it hard

to identify falls, rises and fall-rises reliably What is most important, though, is being able to identify the difference between them, even if you can’t tell which is which This is much less demanding and can, if necessary, be trained by using exercises such as Same or different?:

(The second half was terrible.)

Intonation and gramm ar

The relationship between intonation and grammar is not straightforward It’s often thought, for instance, that statements and w/j-questions have falling intonation while

yes/no questions have rising intonation, but this is by no

means always the case Intonation depends on all sorts of things - such as function, context, a speaker’s intention(s), the relationship between speakers, and so on

Nevertheless, there are some tendencies that can help

learners An example: Narrative We often use the past continuous to give background, scene-setting information, and the past simple to recount actual events:

I was doing the shopping the other day, and I met an old

friend o f mine.

Typically, the background information takes a rise or fall-

rise, and the events take a fall:

25 i was DOing the V SHOPPing the other day / and i MET

an old \ FRIEND of mine

Notice that this generalisation remains valid if we reverse

the order of the clauses:

25 i MET an old \ FRIEND of mine / when i was DOing the

/ SHOPPing the other day

The result is a statement with rising intonation

This kind of compound intonation pattern is common

in various composite structures with a main clause and a

subordinate clause Another example: Conditionals

26 if we SET off at V SIX / we’ll be THERE by V TEN

26 we’ll be THERE by ^ IE N / if we SET off at T SIX

When teachers give models of such structures, they

probably model these intonation choices automatically,

but it’s a good idea to draw learners’ attention to them and

practise them as an integral part of the new grammar:

• One benefit is that learners will acquire a way of

speaking structures which is typical, although not

universally valid

• Another benefit is that they are more likely to notice

typical intonation patterns when they hear them

elsewhere in spoken English

The major distinction is between tones which fall and

tones which rise The distinction between the rise and the

fall-rise is less important, although excessive use of the

rise rather than the fall-rise can contribute towards an

impression of unfriendliness, uncooperativeness, etc

Intonation and word stress

In the section on word stress, we saw that the stress pattern

of the citation form of a word is subject to modification

when the word is actually used in a longer stretch of speech

We will now return to this and re-examine it in the light

of what we have said about intonation

Even a single word spoken in isolation forms a tone unit:

This one has both a tonic prominence (VAN) and a non­

tonic prominence (DIS), and a two-syllable tail (ta-ges)

A description in terms of word stress would say that the

primary stress is on ‘van’ and the secondary stress on ‘dis’

But it has exactly the same pattern as a phrase such as:

IN the V DARK ages the Disadvantage of V THIS method of production

This tone unit has tonic prominence on THIS, non-tonic prominence on DIS, and a long tail

31 adVANtages and * Disadvantages

Here, the tonic prominence is on DIS, and there is a non­tonic prominence on VAN

32 but the MAJor disadvantage of doing it like V THIS

Here, none of the syllables of‘disadvantage’ is made prominent, and this word forms part of a long string of unstressed syllables in between the prominences

33 i just CAN’T recall his NAME

Here too, the word ‘recall’ is not selected for prominence.The question of where to put prominence is a speaker’s choice In the case of some words, once the choice is made there is only one syllable available to carry the prominence:

baNAna PROgress (noun) reCALL (verb)

In the case of other words, there are two syllables available, and either one or both may be made prominent: DISadVANtage EcoNOmical PHOtoGRAPHic UNemPLOY ment

Intonation and conversation

There are many common fixed or semi-fixed phrases, conversational routines, discourse markers, etc, that have typical, characteristic intonation patterns For example: ,you / SEE

34 I was in a hurry, you see.

V ANYway,

35 Anyway, I went across the road .

V SUDDenlv

36 and suddenly, all the lights went out.

and ‘listening signals’ such as:

37 T REAIIy /D ID you T WAS it

T SOrry

38 that’s fan * TAStic that’s \ GREAT that’s V AWful

If we say Excuse me in order to attract someone’s attention,

it typically sounds like this:

39 ex V CUSE T ME

If you experiment with different intonation patterns for this phrase, you’ll find that they tend to change the meaning, and could give unintended offence

The typical - perhaps stereotypical - response to How are

you? is:

40 \ FINE, / T THANKS / and T YOU

41 V BYE

or:

42 V SEE you

When we tag the word thanks onto the end of an

utterance, it typically sounds like this:

43 I’m just \ LOOKinq T THANKS

Vm sorry, I cant help you and Vm afraid I cant help you

might seem to be interchangeable, but their intonation

patterns are significantly different:

44 i’m V SORRv / i CAN’T \ HELP you (two tone units)

i’m aFRAID i can’t ^ HELP you (one tone unit)

Once again, although we should always remain aware

that intonation choices are never 100% predictable, it

makes sense to associate such phrases as these with their

typical intonations, and to encourage learners to use these

patterns rather than just mouthing the words

No matter how elementary our learners are, we can help

them to move beyond simply uttering words and to gain

confidence in speaking, by paying attention to intonation

right from the start

We can give them graded exercises in which they have to

identify pauses, tone units, prominences and tones - and

then reproduce these features

• We can help them - whenever they struggle to produce

an utterance fluently - by pointing out where to pause,

where to put prominences and what tones to use

As they progress and gain experience in listening to

English, learners will become increasingly able to make

these choices for themselves

And as well as teaching an awareness of the significance of

tone choice in presenting information as ‘old’ or ‘new’, we

can teach the typical intonation patterns associated with

many lexical phrases and some grammar structures

• Listen critically to your elementary learners

If they’re saying the right words in the right order, you

might think ‘Great - they've got it right!’

But listen again Does it still sound like a horizontal list

of words?

If so, they need to pay attention to aspects of intonation

Din and tonic

The nature of the intonation system helps to explain why

listening to English can be so fraught with difficulty

• The prominent syllables, and especially the tonic

prominences, are uttered most clearly; they tend to be

relatively loud, and long, and the vowel sounds in them

are not reduced

• They emerge clearly out of the relatively undifferentiated

din of the other syllables, which are uttered less loudly,

Learners are often recommended to ‘listen for the most important words’, without any guidance as to how to identify what the most important words are What is probably meant by the recommendation, and what learners probably try to do, is to identify the prominences Unfortunately, this is often not enough:

1 Prominence is actually a property of syllables, not words, and sometimes learners might only identify the prominent syllable of a word, which might not give them sufficient evidence to identify the word

2 Even if they do manage to identify the most important words, this might still give them no more than a very rough understanding of the topic, with little clue as to what the speaker is actually saying, because, even if some

of the words are ‘the most important’, this doesn’t mean that all the other words are entirely wmmportant

The approach to intonation outlined here is based

on the work of David Brazil - whose surname, by the way, is pronounced BRAzil /' braezil /, unlike the name

of the country braZIL (To find out more: Brazil, D

Pronunciation for Advanced learners of English CUP 1994.)

An earlier version of the intonation section here appeared

as Jonathan Marks’ article ‘Intonation right from the start’

in Modern English Teacher 16 (4) October 2007.

A lot of this knowledge is of a kind that you will probably never want to pass on directly to your learners but, as we

said earlier in these pages, the more you understand about

the pronunciation of English the better you will be able

to understand their difficulties - and help them to bridge

the gap between what they are attempting to say and what they actually produce

As you can imagine, there’s a lot more to learn about pronunciation This has only been a brief overview, and you can find some suggestions for further reading at the

end of Part C of The Book of Pronunciation.

On the following pages you will find some more detailed reference information, with further examples, about some of the points introduced above - beginning with a schematic representation of how the phonemes of English are related to their places of articulation.

Sounds, symbols, spelling and stress

Sound Foundations chart © Adrian Underhill (1982 and 1994) Reproduced with permission

The vowels are organised in the top left-hand section in three

rows of four columns This section is a very simplified ‘map’ of

the mouth, with the front of the mouth on the left and the back

on the right.

o The close vowels - where the jaw is in a relatively closed

position - are at the top (eg / i : / and /u :/)

o The open vowels - where the jaw is more open - are at the

bottom (eg /ae/ and /a/)

o Those vowels produced with the front of the tongue raised

(eg / i: / ) are on the left of the vowel section,

o Those produced with the tongue raised further back are on

the right of the vowel section (eg /u :/).

The diphthongs - in three rows of three columns - show the

diphthongs ending in /a /, / i / and / u / respectively.

The consonants occupy the bottom three rows - in the first

two rows, the phonemes are arranged in pairs:

o voiceless on the left o voiced on the right

For example: / t / and /d /, / f / and / v /

The intonation arrows in the top right-hand corner can be

used to cue intonation patterns:

o You can point along the downward arrow for a falling tone,

o You can point along the upward arrow for a rise,

o You can point halfway along the downward arrow and then along the upward arrow for a fall-rise

o You can point along the horizontal arrow, if necessary, for a

level tone such as is used in hesitating: eg ‘er

The two marks to the left of the arrows represent primary

stress (upper) and secondary stress (lower) To indicate the

pronunciation of the word ‘afternoon’, for example:

o Point to the secondary stress mark,

o Point to the symbols forming ‘after’, then the primary stress mark, then the symbols forming ‘noon’.

When pointing to symbols on the chart, it is always advisable for you or the learners to use a pointer rather than a finger, so that the person doing the pointing can stand to one side and not obscure anyone’s view.

From

spelling to

sound

Only the commonest spelling-sound

relationships are listed here

There are others, and there are

individual exceptions, so that it

is often advisable to check the

pronunciation of words in a

dictionary

Bear in mind that vowels in

unstressed syllables, however they

are represented in spelling, are often

reduced to /a/ or /i/

o The word factory:

It looks as if it has three syllables

-fac-to-ry - but the vowel in

the third syllable is often elided,

resulting in /'faektri / (only two

syllables),

o The word necessary:

It looks as if it has four syllables

- ne-ce-ssa-ry - but the vowel in

the third syllable is often elided,

resulting in /'nesasri/ (only three

ear /3I/ early

ough /u:/ through

ough /Af/ enough

Spelling Sound Examples

Here are some examples of common words with silent letters:

g design, foreign, sign

gh daughter, eight, high,

thought, through

h hour, honest, white,

why

k knee, knife, know

1 could, half, should,

w answer, two, write

Apart from these citation forms, many other sounds represented in the spellings of words are lost - or, more accurately, fail to appear - as a result

of elision in connected speech

(See page 24.)

From sound to spelling

Only the commonest sound-spelling relationships are listed

Some very frequent words show untypical relationships Examples:

people (eo represents /i:/) women (o and e both represent III)

Sound Spelling Examples

and /aend/ /and/ /an/ /n/

are /a:/ /a/

been / bi:n/ /bin/

could /kud/ /kad/

from /fr o m / /fra m /

had /haed/ /h ad //ad //d /

has /haez/ /h az/ /az/ /z/

shall /Jael/ /Jal/

should /Jud/ //ad/

some /sAm/ /sam/

their /dea/ /da/

them Idem/ /dam /

there /dea/ /da/

us /as/ /as/

would /wud/ /w ad //ad //d /

o These are /ar/ all we’ve got

o I met her /ar/ at work.

Even weak forms are often subject

to further elision and assimilation

Examples:

o any can be: /ni/

eg in Have you got any more?

o can can be: /kq/

eg in We can go now

o for can be: /fr/

eg in for a long time

Apart from words regarded as having weak forms, the unstressed syllables of any word are vulnerable to reduction in fluent speech

Examples:

o apart can be: /pa:?/

o syllable can be: /'silbj/

o vulnerable can be:/'vAnnabl/I

Word stress - some rules

of thumb

The stress patterns of words in English are often thought to be totally random and unpredictable It is understandable that this might be the first impression of someone starting

to learn English and meeting words such as:

MONday eLEven toDAY proNOUNCE INterview pronunciAtion

In fact, the stress pattern of the majority of English words is reliably predictable in accordance with general principles - although it has

to be admitted that most of the unpredictable ones are to be found among the most frequent words in the language!

This section is subheaded ‘some rules of thumb’ because it consists

of generalisations that are valid most

of the time but not always - you will

find exceptions to most of them

Should teachers actually teach these

rules of thumb to their learners?Well, it depends on various factors, such as:

o What’s their level?

o How analytical are they in their approach to learning?

With most classes, it will probably

be more effective to draw attention

to regular patterns from time to time by showing learners a set of words they have learned and asking them to notice any similarities of pronunciation Examples:

o because begin behind believe belong between

o be- is not stressed in any of these

words

it Examples:

o because begin behind being

believe belong between

o BEing is the exception.

Learners will gradually develop a

sensitivity to such regularities, and an

ability to predict the stress patterns of

words they encounter in written text

Two-syllable nouns and adjectives

very often have stress on the first

syllable Examples:

mother table window wooden

Compound nouns most often have

stress on the first element Examples:

container depot letter box

fishing rod take-away

review committee timetable

subsistence allowance workplace

In two-syllable and three-syllable

words - especially verbs - with a

prefix such as be-, con-, dis-, en-, ex-,

in-, pre-, re-, un-, the prefix is not

usually stressed Examples:

belong confusion display endure

exhaust install presume review

unbeaten

However, some of these are subject

to stress shift when they occur at the

beginning of a phrase Example:

an UNbeaten REcord

Certain words can be used as either a

noun or a verb (or in some cases as a

noun or an adjective),

o When such a word is used as a

noun, the stress is on the first

syllable,

o When it is used as a verb or

adjective, the stress is on the second

syllable

Examples:

content decrease object permit

produce suspect record

The two different stress patterns are

often accompanied by differences in

vowel sounds:

Note that in the case of pairs of

opposites such as import/export and

increase/decrease the above rule can be

overridden for contrastive purposes:

We used to EXport coal but nowadays

we IMport it.

W ords w ith suffixes

The following suffixes don’t usually change the stress pattern of the words they are added to:

-able rely > reliable-age percent > percentage-ance convey > conveyance-ancy consult > consultancy-ant defend > defendant-cy decent > decency-dom martyr > martyrdom-er condition > conditioner-ful fancy > fanciful

-hood neighbour >

neighbourhood -ish fifty > fiftyish-ism consumer > consumerism-ist defeat > defeatism-ise/-ize character > characterise/ize-ive deceive > deceptive-less value > valueless-ly proper > properly-ment manage > management-ness blissful > blissfulness-or inspect > inspector-ous humour > humorous

In words with the following suffixes, the stress is usually on the syllable before the suffix:

democracy-cracy

-eous erroneous-ety society -graphy photography

memorabilia consequential Arthurian appropriate accessible academic

-la-ial-ian-iate-ible-ic-ical

-ient efficient-ify personify-inal criminal-io portfolio-ion intonation-ional international-ious industrious

In words with the following suffixes,

the stress is usually two syllables

before the suffix:

-acy literacy-ary vocabulary-ate separate-ator invigilator-graph seismograph-mony testimony-ory allegory-tude altitudeThe following suffixes are stressed:-ade

-aire-cratic-ee-eer-ese-ette-ivity

lemonadequestionnairebureaucraticrefugeepioneerTaiwanesevinaigrettenativitySome words in this last category are subject to stress shift:

a TAIwanese Visitor

sociological

The Book of Pronunciationhas, we hope, supplied you with enoughinformation by now to enable you to approach the activities that follow with confidence They are divided into six chapters - but the chapters, and the activities in each chapter, are not intended to be worked through in sequence Feel free to pick and choose, according to the needs and interests of your classes.

T h e class

Your learners will sometimes benefit from taking a rather studious, analytical approach to pronunciation, but in the work they do with you they should constantly be reminded that

pronunciation is, in the final analysis, a physical process based on training that ‘mouthful of

air’ to behave in certain ways

It often helps, therefore, if pronunciation activities, and indeed any speaking activities, are done with everyone standing up, if this is feasible

Standing helps learners to get a sufficient amount of air into their lungs to begin with, to speak at a sufficient volume, to put expression in their voices and to gesture and even walk around as they do so, if the classroom layout permits this

Standing helps in building confidence in speaking an unfamiliar language - in contrast to always doing activities seated at a desk with a pen in one hand, and mumbling half-audibly because your other hand is supporting your chin and you can’t open your mouth properly.And when we say ‘everyone standing up’, we mean everyone That means you, the teacher, too

So when you are teaching pronunciation: stand and deliver You will all be more sucessful.

The recordings can be used either in addition to, or as an alternative to, the teacher’s voice

The recordings have a dual purpose: learners can use them to practise listening for details of pronunciation and/or or as a model to approximate towards in their own pronunciation

The procedures for each activity indicate the options - if there is a recording, this doesn’t

automatically imply it is needed in order to do the activity.

The boxes with the track numbers indicate the recordings - what is in the box is what is

recorded There is no separate tapescript Sometimes the recording is the handout for the learners to work with; sometimes the recording is the key to the activity.

Obviously, we hope that you will find the pronunciation activities in this part of

the book useful - wherever you are teaching and whoever your learners are Equally obviously, we don’t know where you are teaching or who your learners are - their

strengths and weaknesses, their motivations and aspirations, and so on

We have incorporated two rough guidelines for each of the activities in Part B:

Duration: activities that are short _ or longer Q Q

Difficulty: activities that in our experience might be less or more of achallenge to learners in general

But, of course, we cannot know the specific details of your classes or how long they will take to do the activities, nor the adaptations that you might wish to implement

In many of the activities, furthermore, the material in the boxes is intended only as an example, and this is stated in the Procedure

So how can you produce versions of the activities that will be relevant to the needs

of particular classes you teach? Let us simply suggest here three examples - three activities for you to consider from the perspective of your own teaching context

1 Choose a sound (it could be a vowel or a consonant) which is in some way difficult

for your class.

2 Collect a set of words which contain this sound and which are known to the class You can do this:

o by looking through their coursebook and/or other materials they have used in your lesson;

o by consulting an online dictionary Many dictionaries allow you to search for words which contain a particular sound, and you can then sift through these and pick out the ones which your learners know

3 Using the dictionary examples, the coursebook examples and your own intuition, find or construct phrases or sentences in which two instances of words containing your target sound appear in prominent positions

4 Split the phrases/sentences and jumble them - to form the basis of your activity

1 Choose two sounds that you know your learners find hard to differentiate - in speaking and/or listening

2 Using a ‘dictionary search’ function (see above), find minimal pairs involving these two sounds

o These minimal pairs should ideally consist of words known to the class,

o However, you might need to go beyond these to find a sufficient number of pairs

3 For the final stage, prepare sentences containing both members of each pair

H ow many syllables? (page 77)

Notice which -s and -ed forms your class have trouble with (ie they pronounce them

with the wrong number of syllables):

o You can include these in your handout

o You can also include one or two -5 and -ed forms your learners don’t yet know - to

see whether they can pronounce them correctly

To raise awareness of the scope and importance

of pronunciation, as well as the learners’ own ambitions,

For a class who share the same LI (except at high levels) it is probably advisable to translate the questions into the LI, so that limitations of English won’t be a barrier to discussion

Procedure

Hand out the questionnaire and allow a few minutes for the learners to consider their responses and make notes

Q Circulate and clarify as necessary

• The learners discuss the questions in small groups

• They report back for a plenary discussion

O Comment on anything they seem to have overlooked

2 What does it include?

3 How have you learned English pronunciation so far?

4 What have you found difficult about English pronunciation?

5 What have you found easy?

6 What are the main differences between English

pronunciation and the pronunciation of your language,

and any other languages you have learned?

7 How important do you think pronunciation is?

8 Why do you think so?

9 How well would you like to pronounce English?

10 What can you do to improve your pronunciation?

the phonemic chart

Proposal

To help the learners learn the phonemic symbols,

via a phonemic chart.

Duration Ongoing Difficulty ^

Preparation

You need a copy of a phonemic chart If you don’t have

one, you can make your own, using a sheet of A3 paper (or

larger) There is large example of a chart on page 31 and a

smaller version opposite as a reminder

Be prepared to limit the number of new phonemes presented

in a single lesson or part of a lesson to around five

Procedure

O First, point to the consonant sounds which are, broadly

speaking, equivalent to letters of the English alphabet

Remember that they are pronounced differently from the

letters of the alphabet:

/m/, for example, is not pronounced /em/

Symbols which are likely to be recognisable are:

/m / / n / /p / / b / Irl / I / / w / /h /

Is/ Izl It/ 16/ Ikl / g / If/ Iwl

O Introduce the remaining consonant sounds:

/J / as in ship / rj / as in sing

/tj/ as in church /0/ as in thing

/d3/ as in bridge Idl as in this

/3/ as in television /j/ as in yes

Q Elicit further examples of words which contain these

consonant sounds, eg:

wash shop chips watch jump young

judge revision treasure thing working

O Indicate the section of the chart that contains the vowel

sounds Point to one example: eg /i:/

O Give a clear model then ask the learners to repeat

O Place the sound in context by making a series of words

containing the I rj sound by pointing to the appopriate

phonemic symbols For example:

/m i:t/ /si:t/ / pli:z/ /t/i:p/

O Ask the learners to repeat chorally and individually as

you point to the sounds

O Repeat for three or four other vowel sounds

O Repeat the process over a series of lessons until you have

1 As you introduce more sounds, you can invite the learners

to come to the chart and point first to sounds and then to

words that you call out Later, you can ask them to call out

words themselves for other learners to point to

2 As the learners become more familiar with the phonemic symbols, draw their attention to other features of the organisation of the phonemic chart:

o In the first two lines of the consonant section, the

phonemes are arranged in pairs - first voiceless, then

voiced (eg/t/ and /d/, /f/ and /v/)

o The vowels are organised with close vowels - where the jaw is in a relatively closed position - at the top (eg /k / and / u:/); and the open vowels - where the jaw is more

open - at the bottom (eg /ae/ and /a/)

o Those vowels produced with the front of the tongue

raised (eg / i:/) are on the left of the vowel section, ie at

the front; those produced with the tongue raised further

back are on the right of the vowel section (eg lull)

o To introduce diphthongs, ask the learners to produce

a slow, continuous sound which glides from /e/ to III

When they can do this, they should speed up to a

natural speed to produce lei I They can then follow the

same procedure with the other diphthongs,

o In all the diphthongs, the first element (eg le i in le i I)

should be pronounced more strongly than the second

The starting point /a / for I a il and /au/ is close to /ae/, but slightly more open, /au / is the conventional way of transcribing the diphthong in words such as ‘no’ and

‘grow’, but the starting point nowadays is closer to Id I.

PS Conventionally, phonemic transcriptions are enclosed

in slant brackets However, this is often unnecessary in writing transcriptions on the board - eg tjiip is obviously

a transcription On the other hand, it might sometimes be important to write / j/, for example, in order to distinguish

CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCING

the phonemic symbols

This activity is complementary, or perhaps an alternative, to

Introducing the phonemic chart.

You will need a blank version of the phonemic chart (there is

a chart on page 31) - just the empty grid without any of the

symbols - on cardboard or stiff paper which will stand a fair

bit of wear and tear

If you can, put up the grid in a convenient place on the

classroom wall where you can leave it for the duration of the

course If not, bring it with you to each lesson and display it

Procedure

O Write the symbols in the grid, one or two at a time, lesson

by lesson, as they become needed For example, assuming

the class know the words be leave feel field ski, write them

on the board - like this:

be leave feel field ski

Q Ask the class how the underlined parts are pronounced

You may need to help by saying the words yourself

j The class should conclude that all the underlined sections

are pronounced identically

O Explain:

o In English, sounds are spelled in various ways in

different words,

o It is therefore useful to have a set of symbols for

showing pronunciation clearly

O If you are teaching a monolingual class whose language

has an alphabetic writing system, you might want to

point out, with examples, that their language is either

similar to English (eg French) or different from English

(eg Czech) in this respect

O Write the symbol i: in its correct place on the chart and

say that it represents the underlined sound in the words

on the board:

o You can now write up transcriptions of other known

words for the class to pronounce, providing the other

symbols are easily interpretable - eg si:t, i:ts, ri:d, gri:n.

o You can also say the words yourself, and invite the class

to write the transcriptions on the board

O In a subsequent lesson, assuming your class know the

words shop machine sure station special, write them up:

shop machine sure station special

O In the same way, introduce the symbol J and put it in its place on the chart

O If the learners are familiar with the Roman alphabet - and depending on sound/spelling relationships in their

LI - there will be some symbols that you can add to the chart without any introduction - e g p b t d f s m n

0 Gradually, lesson by lesson, the chart will be filled in completely

Prolongation

1 As soon as your chart contains a few symbols - a mixture

of consonants and vowels - you can start using other activities from Part B Spend a few minutes on such activities in every lesson, to revise pronunciation and vocabulary, gradually adding more symbols as they become needed

2 You can also begin to use phonemic transcriptions in introducing vocabulary and correcting pronunciation mistakes For example:

o Let’s say you want your class to learn the word feast,

which appears in a text they are reading You could begin by writing the transcription - fi:st - asking them

to pronounce it and then to find it in the text,

o Let’s say you want to correct a mispronunciation

of scene - as /ski:n/ - you could write the correct

transcription - /si:n / - on the board This is often more effective than giving a model for repetition

3 The learners could make, or be given, their own blank chart of a convenient size, which they fill in as new symbols are introduced

4 They could, with your guidance, colour-code their chart

to highlight symbols for sounds they find problematic

5 As soon as it is feasible, start asking the learners to begin

to use a dictionary (one which uses phonemic symbols) to find and check the pronunciations of words

PS Some learners - and even some teachers! - may find phonemic symbols intimidating This is a way of introducing them gradually and accessibly to your class, and making it easy for you yourself to learn them, too

See also the Postscript on page 40 concerning the presentation of the symbols