English pronunciation guidelines: Musical pronunciation

English pronunciation guidelines: Musical pronunciation - Teaching the production and perception of English prosody

Navigating the rhythms and intonations of a new language is often a complex journey. From our earliest moments, even before birth, we are surrounded by the distinct rhythmic patterns of our native language, tuning our ears to its unique prosody. This early immersion means that when we start learning a second language, our first language's prosodic traits tend to persist, seeping into our new linguistic endeavours. This overlap often affects our clarity in the new language and can lead to misunderstandings among listeners.

For English language educators, this phenomenon of prosodic transfer is a familiar challenge. However, less understood is the most effective way to assist students in grasping and replicating the prosodic elements of English. A key focus is helping them to recognize and understand English intonation patterns, combat 'stress deafness,' and identify specific strategies that can enhance their clarity and overall proficiency as English speakers.

During our 2023 Pronunciation conference I attended the two plenary and four sessions and am delighted to share the key points with you in this blog.  

Before I begin let me share a definition with of Prosody. Prosody is the study of intonation, stress and rhythm of a language. These elements are collectively known as the suprasegmentals. Prosody does not include the individual phonetic segments such as vowels and consonants.

In simple terms this is often referred to as the music or melody of a language. Prosody, in English, reflects the nuanced emotional features of the language where a certain emphasis on words or groups of words convey different meanings which are unrelated to grammar or vocabulary.

THE POWER OF MUSIC IN ACQUIRING THE ASPECTS OF ENGLISH CONNECTED SPEECH

Plenary speaker: Dr. Giedrė Balčytytė is an associate professor at the Department of English Philology of Vilnius University, Lithuania.

In the diverse world of languages, Lithuanian offers valuable insights for those aiming at accent reduction and learning how to improve English pronunciation.

Lithuanian stands out with its distinct characteristics, particularly in how its vowels retain their full sounds, unlike the more fluid and variable English vowels. This absence of vowel reduction, along with minimal assimilation and a complete lack of elision, makes Lithuanian a language where sounds remain clear and distinct.

Moreover, it's a syllable-timed language, where each syllable is given equal weight, contrasting sharply with English's stress-timed rhythm, where syllable length varies to create rhythm peaks. These linguistic variations pose a significant challenge, especially when it comes to understanding fast, connected speech in English. But here's where the magic of music and singing plays a pivotal role, as highlighted by Dr. Giedrė Balčytytė.

Music isn't just about melody and rhythm; it's deeply intertwined with language. Both share essential elements like stress, rhythm, and intonation, and are powerful tools in sound production. The integration of music in language learning isn’t just effective; it’s also enjoyable. It breaks classroom monotony, fosters a sense of community, and evokes emotions and experiences, enriching the learning process.

The parallels between music and language extend further. They both carry meaning and adhere to structures and rules - think of grammar in language and chords, notes, and symbols in music. Learning through music is authentic and natural, enhancing the fluency of connected speech. Songs, with their continuous flow of sounds and words, provide an ideal environment for mastering this aspect of language.

Interestingly, our connection with music is deep-rooted. Even before we start speaking to our babies, we sing to them. This innate musical aptitude, unfortunately, often remains underdeveloped due to limited exposure. Yet, students with a stronger musical background tend to excel in English pronunciation and stress patterns.

From a neurological perspective, this synergy between music and language is even more fascinating. The left hemisphere of our brain, known for analytical and sequential processing, and the right hemisphere, responsible for holistic processing, both engage when we combine music and language. This interaction enhances our learning capabilities.

So, why not embrace singing in our classrooms? It’s not just a teaching tool; it’s a bridge between cultures, languages, and learning styles.

Let’s sing our way to linguistic proficiency!

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY HEAR? LEARNING MELODY, TEACHING TO HEAR

Speaker: SUSANNE M.E. SULLIVAN studies neuroscience around listening and pronunciation in on-native adult learners, including developing a speechstream exercise to amplify abilities in fluency.

Diving into the intricacies of language learning, particularly in mastering English pronunciation, reveals some fascinating insights. One striking observation is that if you can effectively mimic the 'melody' or the musicality of English, your proficiency in the language is often perceived as higher than it actually is. This phenomenon acts as a 'cloak of pretence', overshadowing shortcomings in grammar, with listeners often overlooking these errors due to the pleasing rhythmic quality of your speech.

This relationship between language perception and brain function is a key area of study for computational neuroscientists and language researchers. They've discovered that our brains are constantly engaged in a complex process when it comes to language: sampling spoken language, dissecting it, reassembling, and then decoding these speech signals into recognisable words. This intricate process swiftly translates these words into meaning. Remarkably, this isn't just a function of one part of the brain; both hemispheres, the left and the right, are actively involved in this process, each playing a critical role in how we interpret and understand language.

When it comes to adults learning a new language, the journey differs significantly from that of children. Adults often rely on explicit, conscious learning strategies. This approach, while methodical, tends to be slower, as it involves learning the language word by word, a stark contrast to the more intuitive, immersive methods typically employed by children. This explicit learning process might be more deliberate and paced, but it offers adult learners a structured pathway to mastering a new language, one step at a time.

A PRODUCTION APPROACH TO TEACHING STRESS AND REDUCTION

Speaker: Dr Piers Messum now does teacher training and materials development for Pronunciation Science Ltd.

Understanding the nuances of teaching English pronunciation can be challenging, as highlighted by Dr. Piers Messum. He emphasises two primary approaches: the first involves listening and attempting to replicate the teacher's speech, and the second, the articulatory approach, focuses on the precise movements of the four key speech articulators: the jaw, lips, tongue, and voice. This latter approach can be as complex as learning to play an unseen guitar or kick an invisible football. To aid in this, just as dancers use mirrors for self-correction, English pronunciation exercises often require tools or methods to help visualise what happens inside the mouth, which is typically unseen.

Dr. Messum also sheds light on the differences in speech breathing between children and adults. Children, up to the age of six to eight, have more flexible chest walls. This anatomical difference means they must actively engage in inhaling and exhaling to produce stressed syllables, a contrast to adult speech patterns. He notes that by the age of three to four, native-speaking children start to adopt stress-timed breathing, a skill not inherently required by French-speaking children.

Incorporating nursery rhymes is one of Dr. Messum's recommended English pronunciation exercises. These rhymes, with their regular stress patterns, are particularly beneficial for French speakers who are not accustomed to stress-timed languages. Engaging with nursery rhymes helps learners acclimatise to hitting the rhythmic beats of English, serving as an effective bridge between the basics of English pronunciation and more authentic, conversational language use.

THE POWERPOINT NOTATION BOARD TO TEACH INTONATION ONLINE

Speaker: Dr. Leticia Quesada is the director of the Bachelor's degree in Applied Modern Languages at Nebrija Universitya.com/en/bachelors-degrees/applied-modern-languages/ (Madrid, Spain). Her research focuses on pronunciation teaching to EFL/ESP learners.

Dr. Leticia Quesada's insights into the challenges faced by Spanish and Catalan speakers in mastering English pronunciation are enlightening, particularly in the context of stress and intonation patterns. She points out that both Spanish and Catalan are syllable-timed languages, which often leads learners to incorrectly stress syllables in English. Additionally, these learners typically find it difficult to adjust sentence stress to create emphasis or contrast, a natural skill for native English speakers. In contrast, Spanish and Catalan, similar to French, rely more on grammatical structures to convey these nuances.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Quesada innovatively developed a PowerPoint notation board, designed specifically to aid in teaching English pronunciation, with a focus on intonation, in synchronous remote learning environments. This tool was crafted to enhance both student-teacher and student-student interactions, making the learning experience more engaging, motivational, and enjoyable. Such innovations are essential for learners seeking how to improve English pronunciation, especially in a remote learning context where traditional methods of pronunciation teaching are challenged.

USING MOVIES TO TEACH CONTRACTIONS AND REDUCTIONS

Speaker: ALINE WERNECK MEDEIROS COUTINHO

Many learners at lower English proficiency levels often remark that the English taught in traditional classrooms differs significantly from the language used in everyday life. Addressing this gap, Aline explores contemporary language learning techniques, harnessing the power of technology and authentic materials. She delves into resources like YouTube videos, podcasts, TikTok, and movies, utilizing these platforms not only for exposure to real-world English but also as effective tools for teaching contractions, reductions, and providing practical English pronunciation exercises.

Aline employs her innovative 'orchestra listening' technique to help learners tune into the nuances of English pronunciation. She focuses on four key areas that are both fun and educational for her students:

1.     Twin English consonants: understanding and practicing pairs of consonants that often appear together in English.

2.     Stop English consonants: learning how certain consonants create brief pauses or 'stops' in speech.

3.     Flap Ts: mastering the pronunciation of the 'T' sound when it occurs in the middle of words.

4.     Needy English vowels: identifying and correctly pronouncing vowels that require more attention due to their unique sounds in English.

By providing examples and exercises in these areas, Aline helps her learners grasp the subtleties of English pronunciation, bridging the gap between classroom English and the language as it's spoken in everyday contexts.

TEACHING ENGLISH INTONATION: APPROACHES AND PRIORITIES

Plenary speaker: Jane Setter is Professor of Phonetics at the University of Reading, UK. Jane's research interests include speech prosody in children from atypical populations, teaching and learning English pronunciation, and features of the suprasegmental phonology of global varieties of English, such as Hong Kong and Malay speaker English. Her latest book: The Cambridge Handbook of Phonetics (2021)

The fascinating world of language acquisition and pronunciation becomes evident from the earliest stages of life, as we can often distinguish a baby's language group from their cries. Professor Setter's enlightening YouTube clip of English-speaking twin boys engaging in communication exemplifies how intonation is acquired from a very young age. Understanding these nuances is essential for anyone looking to learn how to pronounce English words correctly.

Professor Setter delved into the concepts of Tonality and Tonicity. Tonality, which refers to the chunking of tone units in speech indicating grammatical differences. Fascinating for me since in my voice work, I use Tonality as a synonym of emotion!

Tonicity, on the other hand, focuses on sentence emphasis, broken down into Marked and Unmarked Tonicity. Marked Tonicity stresses a specific word, while Unmarked Tonicity places stress on the last content word of a sentence.

Four concepts introduced to me have been particularly insightful:

1.     Nuclear stress in compound nouns, where emphasis is on the first noun.

2.     Contrast checking, a technique not commonly taught in textbooks.

3.     Event sentences, often indicating a misfortune, where the focus is on the subject, like in "The dog's escaped."

4.     Final adverbials, which place focus at the end of a sentence, such as "He flew in from Tokyo on Monday."

MY KEY LEARNINGS

Reflecting on this pronunciation conference, my key learnings are:

• Prosody's complexity and the vast amount I still have to learn.

• The wealth of academic research that we, as practitioners, might not be fully aware of.

• The lack of prosody teaching in French and Belgian-French schools. However, given that segmentals (English vowels and consonants) are also not taught, they remain my primary focus due to the misunderstandings they cause. Jenkins (2000) and Setter (2023) echo the sentiment that while tonality might not be crucial to teach, it's important for teachers to be aware of it.

Thinking back to my experience teaching English to primary school children through songs, I realise now the inadvertent yet significant role this played in introducing them to connected speech and prosody. My approach was initially to introduce new vocabulary and expose them to complex grammatical structures. The children's enjoyment of this method was evident. However, I hadn't fully appreciated the importance of learning the melody of the language. Looking forward, if I return to teaching this age group, my focus will shift to emphasise the melody of English more, encouraging the singing of English nursery rhymes as a foundational step in understanding English prosody.

If you are looking to discuss your company’s Business English communication needs (including Pronunciation support) or Presentation skills, I offer free 30-minute consultations through my site. I’d love to meet you.