PTLC2005 Raimunda Cesoniene English Phonetics and Phonology: Course for Future Interpreters: 1

English Phonetics and Phonology: Course for Future Interpreters

Raimunda esonien, Kaunas University of Technology
1. Introduction. Being an interpreter requires high intelligibility of a foreign language in order to fulfill the task of communicating a message properly. The usual working environment would include the situations when you cannot ask for repetition or clarification of the information you hear. Consequently, students aiming at this specialty should also aim at developing both their productive and, even more important, receptive skills in language learning. Most writers in the field emphasize that knowledge of phonemic system of a foreign language as well as awareness of the processes in connected speech help learners to improve ability to listen actively and produce accurate and correct speech, i.e. enhance intelligibility of the language they are learning (Cruttenden, 2001; Kenworthy, 1990; Roach, 2000; Underwood, 1990, etc). Having noticed a relatively poor pronunciation of future interpreters and translators of technical language, a new course in Phonetics at the Faculty of Humanities of Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania) was introduced. Since it was a new course, there was a need for a pilot survey to evaluate its implementation and impact on the students abilities to produce correct English. At the end of the course students were asked to fill in a questionnaire, the questions of which addressed gained knowledge in the field, attitude towards the topics covered, the means of presenting information, the quality of teaching, and suggestions for course improvement. The aim of the article is to present an overall view of the course using students evaluations and tutors observations as a point of reference; and indicate the most problematic areas faced by Lithuanian students when learning English Phonetics and Phonology. The methods used involve survey (qualitative) analysis and empirical observations. 2. Description of the Course. The course was introduced having the following objectives: - to provide students with theoretical background concerning the sound system of the English language; - to help students identify their own pronunciation errors and give them advice in terms of how to improve in this area; - to introduce suprasegmental features of the English language to students and enable them to improve their production of connected speech. The course lasts for one semester (16 weeks) and there are 5 academic hours per week. One hour is devoted to theory and the remaining four are intended for practice. The course consists of two main parts: the first deals with phonetics of the foreign language and the second with phonology. This division was based on various linguists choice to differentiate between phonetics as a science of physiological features of sounds and

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phonology as a science of sound organization in a particular language (Roach, 2000; Davenport & Hannahs, 1998). The main textbooks chosen for the course were English Phonetics and Phonology: a Practical Course by Peter Roach (2000) and Practical Phonetics and Phonology by Beverley Collins and Inger M.Mees (2003). Separate sounds and sound pairs were practiced mainly using dialogues from How Now, Brown Cow? by Ponsonby (1987). Other teaching means included listening and repetition of sounds, words and phrases, transcription, online tutorials (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/tutorials.html), recording students speech and correcting it (analysis was carried out either by the tutor or by students themselves). Students were assessed by oral performance, tests, homework, and written assignment analysis of another students speech. 3. Participants. 21 first-year students attended the course. Needs analysis at the beginning of the semester revealed that on average, they have been learning English for 10 years in secondary school and only two girls have been to English speaking country. However, even 9 students were sure that their English pronunciation was very good. They had no prior knowledge of phonetic or phonological differences between English and Lithuanian, yet their motivation to improve their pronunciation and make it as close to a native one as possible was very high. The major concern for students was fluency, sounds, and intonation (in order of priority). As it was noticed later, they indicated the problematic areas very precisely, since weak forms, linking of words into sense (intonation) groups, and different phonetic features of sounds in two languages caused most of the difficulties during the learning process. 4. Results. 4.1. Segmental level. The first part of the course focused on production and articulation of English sounds as well as their specific features. The comparison of phonemic systems of the two languages is beyond the scope of this article; therefore only the main difficulties experienced by the students would be indicated. Students were asked to specify the consonants and vowels that were the most difficult to articulate. The majority of students listed the phonemes which do not appear in the Lithuanian language as causing problems: /S/, /C/, //, /M/ (an allophone of /n/ in Lithuanian), /?T/, /29/. Having observed students performance during lectures, it should be noted that although the above mentioned consonants seem strange, students learned to articulate them easier than those, which are close to Lithuanian phonemes yet differ in one phonetic feature. For example, English alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/ were incorrectly pronounced as dental plosives (which is true in Lithuanian); one more common mistake was wrong articulation of voiced palato-alveolar (post-alveolar) approximant .. which appears as voiced alveolar trill /r/ in students native language; finally, voiceless glottal fricative /h/ would be almost always pronounced like voiced velar fricative /F/ (in Lithuanian it only appears in international words, besides it is also assimilated to /x/ before a voiceless consonant (Pakerys, 1995)).

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Considering vowels, nobody indicated them as problematic items, possibly due to a variety of the phonemes in Lithuanian (12 pure vowels and 9 diphthongs). The major problem was a closing diphthong /?T/ which tended to be wrongly articulated as /ou/. Other mistakes were caused by the influence of other Lithuanian dialects or foreign languages (American English, Russian) on the students. To sum up, only two students felt that there was too little work done on the articulation of separate sounds. The rest were satisfied and indicated that they had just the right amount of practice. The most complicated yet the most useful topics for the students seemed those on phonemes and allophones and consonant classification; whereas rather difficult and the most boring was the lecture on the vocal tract. 4.2. Suprasegmental level. The second part of the course focused on various phenomena of connected speech which create the melody of a language: word and sentence stress, weak forms and rhythm, assimilation, elision, linking and intonation. As phoneticians maintain that some phonological processes (such as weak forms, accentuation, linking, etc) are more vital for foreign learners to be mastered than others (such as assimilation, juncture, etc.) (Cruttenden, 2001; Roach, 2000), the major focus in the syllabus was on the difference between function and lexical words, weak and strong forms of function words and linking of words smoothly into sense groups. Preconceived lecture plan coincided with principal drawbacks noticed during lectures in learners speech. First, students did not divide their talk into intonation groups. Their attention was mainly on speech which, in their opinion, would help them sound more fluent. Due to that, mispronunciation of words and wrong articulation of sounds occurred. The second problem was students unawareness of weak forms caused by discrepancy in the melodies of English and Lithuanian: English is stress timed whereas Lithuanian is syllable timed. As a result, students would place sentence stress applying the rules of their native language. Assimilation of sounds, although considered of secondary importance, had to be practiced more than intended since types of assimilation in English and Lithuanian differ. Students would use regressive voice assimilation whenever the consonants of different voicing meet in their speech under the influence of their language. Therefore, it was necessary to introduce sound assimilation rules of the English language and enhance students perception of possible mistakes. As concerns intonation, mainly tonality and tonicity were addressed during the practice sessions as the issues related to accentuation. Nuclear tone changing was only introduced in theoretical lecture as this topic was impossible to explore and practice in detail because of time limit. The students were really surprised to learn about suprasegmental features that help them sound more fluent and more English-like and their motivation to learn the new things was extremely high. No topics were indicated as boring or unimportant ones. 4.3. Methods of teaching/learning The material was practiced through repetition of sounds and phrases, dialogue reading, transcription (which also included transcription of BBC news report), exercises on the

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Internet, homework tasks related to the theory covered (3 homework assignments), recording and analysis of students own speech. Students were asked to indicate whether a method was useful or gave no results and to comment on their answers. There was a unanimous opinion that some means of learning/teaching gave no results only due to the lack of practice on them. They suggest that the repetition of sounds and phrases would be more useful if there was a possibility to exercise it in small groups. This observation corresponds to the tutors opinion that the major downside of the course was a large group of students and no possibility to practice various phonetic and phonological phenomena in groups of 4-5 students. Learners felt there was too little of teachers correction on their production of speech whereas small groups would be a great opportunity both for a teacher and for students to interact more. Transcription was chosen as a means to realize the difference between pronunciation of a word found in a dictionary entry and that in a real context. Moreover, future interpreters aiming at high acceptability in RP should become aware of how native speakers usually perform their talk (Cruttenden, 2001; Lecumberri, 2000). Only two students indicated this activity as pointless because of the time limit. It should be noticed that a tutors mistake was to introduce transcription only in the middle of the semester, after all the phonemes had been presented. The students could have practiced more if they had started transcribing at the very beginning of the course. Web tutorials were considered a funny way of learning, where one gets the answer fast, deepens knowledge in the new material and which is not monotonous. Yet sometimes a poor quality of the Internet connection encumbered the learning process and it was noticed by the students as a negative aspect. 5. Conclusion Overall impression was that students were satisfied with the course despite its complicated theoretical material and considerable amount of time spent for individual work. They acquired knowledge and understanding of the different phonemic systems of languages, of the processes in continuous speech and their effect on fluency and became capable of identifying their own mistakes in pronunciation. Further analysis and observation is necessary to be undertaken to improve the course, eliminate the material of secondary importance and avoid tasks that confuse learners and carry no practical usage. Reference list Cruttenden, Alan (2001) Gimson's Pronunciation of English. Sixth edition. London: Edward Arnold. Davenport, Michael & Hannahs, Stephen J (1998) Introducing Phonetics and Phonology. Arnold Publishers. Kenworthy, Joanne (1990) Teaching English Pronunciation. Longman. Lecumberri, Luisa Garcia M & Maidment John A (2000) English Transcription Course. Arnold Publishers Pakerys, Antanas (1995) Lietuviu bendrines kalbos fonetika. Vilnius: Zara. Roach, Peter (2000) English phonetics and phonology. Third edition. Cambridge University Press. Underwood, Mary (1990) Teaching Listening. Longman.