IN an ideal English curriculum, all students would have a class dedicated to pronunciation and get systematic instruction in the most useful concepts. But in real life, teachers typically have to squeeze pronunciation into their classwork. Because time is so limited, rather severe decisions have to be made about what's really important.
What should the priority items be? With the requirement that each topic must meet a standard of both crucial utility and teachability, Judy Gilbert lists four crucial concepts. Gilbert is the author of "Clear Speech from the Start" published by Cambridge University Press.
First, the most useful phonological concept about sound distinctions is the difference between stops and continuant. Students must learn to recognize the distinction because of its significance for listening comprehension. These sound cues go by very fast in normal spoken English — mostly because auxiliary verbs are generally said as contractions.
Second, many ESL learners tend to produce extra syllables when speaking English. So both listening comprehension and intelligibility are improved when students learn to notice the number of syllables. All practice with syllable numbers should be accompanied by some physical gesture, such as tapping the table or moving a foot. This physical movement is far more effective than merely taking mental notice.
Third, in English, lengthening has several different functions, most importantly to show the difference between stressed and unstressed vowels. Since we all learn the rhythm of our native language from birth, it tends to be applied automatically to any new language. Therefore, it is important to give students a conscious awareness of the difference and enough practice in this crucial element of the spoken language.
Finally, the most crucial concept of all is to make students figure out which word is most important in a sentence. The focus word in a sentence is "new information" or something especially important and is emphasized so that the listener will notice. Focus emphasis is usually made by changing the pitch and lengthening the vowel on the stressed syllable of the focus word. An especially effective approach is to have students challenge each other to give the appropriate answer, based on which remark the speaker has chosen. This makes a much stronger lesson than simply asking students to read from a script marked for emphasis.
