From Focus on Sounds to Focus on Words in English Pronunciation Instruction

Abstract

The paper addresses a very important aspect of Polish-accented English, namely the issue of frequent phonetic errors made by Polish learners which do not result from their inability to produce foreign sounds correctly, but which stem from various interference factors (e.g foreign pronounced as [fo'rejn]). Following Szpyra-Kozłowska's (in press a) claims that such errors hinder successful communication far more than other segmental and suprasegmental inaccuracies and should thus be treated as a top pedagogical priority, what is suggested is a shift in phonetic instruction from the focus on the production of sounds and prosodies to the focus on the pronunciation of problematic words. Our major goal is to demonstrate how this proposal can be implemented in the language classroom.The authors present a report on the experiment in which a group of 25 Polish secondary school pupils has undergone a special training in the pronunciation of 50 commonly mispronounced words with the use of special, teacher-designed materials. The effectiveness of the employed procedure as well as the pupils' reactions to it are examined and pedagogical conclusions are drawn. Key words:English pronunciation/phonetics, phonetically difficult words, phonetic priorities, teaching English pronunciation Introductory remarksSzpyra-Kozłowska (in press a and b) argues that the traditional focus of pronunciation instruction on segments and prosodies fails to address the issue of phonetically deviant words, known as local errors, which abound in foreign-accented English.For instance, Polish learners of English frequently mispronounce the name Disney as [d'isnej], even though the form [dizni] does not contain any particularly difficult sounds 1 and sound combinations. Clearly, the Polish English version is spelling-based and follows Polish spelling-to-pronunciation rules according to which the <sn> sequence is 1 It should be added that all consonants in this word in Polish have the dental rather than the alveolar place of articulation.

English Word Stress in Polish Learners’ Speech Production and Metacompetence

“…Moreover, Sobkowiak (ibid. ), Szpyra-Kozłowska and Stasiak (2010) and Szpyra-Kozłowska (2015) observe a number of specific "difficult words" in English, which are notoriously mispronounced by Polish learners, including the advanced ones. What questions the idea of plain correlation between word frequency and stress error rate is the fact that a considerable number of these difficult words belong to basic English vocabulary.…”

Learning English pronunciation in and outside the classroom: Psychopedagogic considerations

“…Finally, it ought to be said that even if English teachers perceive the importance of pronunciation, they still tend not to concentrate on goals which are considered strategic. As advocated by Szpyra- Kozłowska and Stasiak (2010), "phonetic instruction should, first and foremost, focus not on segments and suprasegments, but on the pronunciation of whole words, particularly those ones whose distortion might lead to communicative problems" (p. 12). On the other hand, while this general recommendation for teachers of English concerning pronunciation instruction, as well as the suggestion by Wells quoted above, namely 'to concentrate on the matters that most impede intelligibility and to exploit the findings of contrastive analysis to help pinpoint likely areas of difficulty' (Wells 2005: 407), remain perfectly valid in the Polish school context, Polish teachers should also be made more aware of the potential of pronunciation-focused activities included in modern textbooks.…”

Back to Orthoepia – Spelling in Pronunciation Instruction: “Words Commonly Mispronounced” by Learners of Six L1s

“…In the previous paper on the influence of English spelling on Polish learners' pronunciation (Nowacka, 2016) we discussed arguments for regularity of English spelling (Upward and Davidson, 2011;Crystal, 2012), spelling-induced mispronunciations in the latest Polish research (Sobkowiak, 1996;Scheuer, 1998;Majer, 2002;Szyszka, 2003;Szpyra-Kozłowska 2005Szpyra-Kozłowska and Stasiak, 2010;Nowacka et al, 2011;Pęzik and Zając, 2012;Bryła-Cruz, 2013;Porzuczek, 2015;Waniek-Klimczak, 2015 andZając, 2015) and also the notion of local and global pronunciation errors (Sobkowiak, 1996;Porzuczek, 2015;Szpyra-Kozłowska, 2015).…”