A model for teaching English pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different

languages

by

Amin Rahman, aminrahman43@gmail.com

Abstract
Non-Native English speakers face specific problems when learning English pronunciation. If native
Speakers of Language X (NXS) can recognise and overcome these problems in learning English then it
becomes easy for them to develop an “intelligible” English pronunciation.
The first problem is that a few sounds, present in English, may be missing in X. An NXS English learner has
to learn to “conceptualise” these new sounds.
The second problem is that an NXS may interchange different English sounds and not differentiate between
long and short vowel sounds. They should learn to distinguish between these sound-pairs by
“reconceptualising” the relevant sounds.
Next, they must learn to pronounce single and consonant cluster sounds in word initial, medial and final,
positions in English words.
After sorting out these three problems they may use a phonetic alphabet customised to X (XPA) for
learning the correct pronunciation of English words. This phonetic alphabet will employ symbols from X to
represent consonant and vowel phonemes common to both X and English. It will also have a few IPA
symbols to represent sounds not present in X and some combined symbols to represent consonant cluster
sounds. With such a tool it is possible to transcribe English words, following any agreed pronunciation
standard. NXS English learners can learn to read and write XPA with little effort as it will be very similar to
the alphabet of X.
In this paper we show how the four-part English Pronunciation model may be used for designing an English
Pronunciation teaching program for speakers of different languages.
Keywords: English Pronunciation, phonetics, IPA, Non Native English Speakers, Conceptualisation,
Intelligible Pronunciation
A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

Introduction
English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world (Lewis, 2009). It is used as a Lingua Franca
in many countries and teaching English to Non-Native English Speakers (NNES) is a global phenomenon, a
big and lucrative business worldwide.
However, most people need to listen to and speak English, more than they need to read and write in
English. Speaking in English is required, even if someone cannot read and/or write, for taking part in
activities like providing direct or indirect customer service, trade and commerce, travel and tourism,
international cultural, diplomatic and other exchanges, international sporting events, etc. While there may
be a good number of EFL/ESL teachers, both Native English Speakers (NES) and NNES, who are trained and
experienced in teaching the four components of the language, not every English teacher feels confident to
teach English Pronunciation. This is due to the lack of availability of a systematic English Pronunciation
teaching program, with a proven outcome, which English teachers can follow easily and adopt in their
teaching.

Background
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

There are more than 7000 spoken languages in the world (Lewis, 2009). Linguists, more specifically
phoneticians and phonologists, continue to capture as many of the speech sounds from these languages
and incorporate them into different transcription systems. One transcription system, known as the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), was first published in 1888 and its notational standard is maintained
by the International Phonetic Association (International Phonetic Association, 1999). IPA is widely used
and popular among academics and researchers all around the world. IPA makes it possible for
phoneticians to capture speech sounds and transcribe them into characters or symbols so that anyone
familiar with IPA can read the IPA transcriptions of spoken words, phrases etc., decipher the transcriptions
and convert them into their corresponding speech sounds even without knowing the language. That may
be the aim, but can Applied Linguists and ESL/EFL teachers who have undergone training in IPA read IPA
transcriptions of foreign words and pronounce the words just like a native speaker of that language? Can
we teach NNESs to speak English like an NES with IPA?

Comfortably Intelligible Pronunciation

No two persons make a particular sound identically so that the sounds made by the two persons are totally
indistinguishable. Even when two native speakers read out aloud or pronounce the same word in a
language, there will be minor differences. So, if a non native speaker of a language pronounces words such
that both native and non-native speakers understand them without any difficulty that should be enough. If
the various sounds used in forming different words are close enough to native sounds, and intelligible to a
listener, then it should be all right. Kenworthy (1987) termed such pronunciation as “comfortably
intelligible” pronunciation. So in teaching English Pronunciation to NNES, instead of teaching students to
have pronunciation like NES, the aim should be for EFL/ESL learners to attain “comfortably intelligible”
pronunciation. That will be our desired goal in our English Teaching Program for which we have developed
the four-stage model described in this paper.

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

Four stages in an English Pronunciation Teaching Program

In this and the following sections we have sketched out a step by step approach for developing an English
Pronunciation Teaching Program, which is easy to use and effective for teaching “comfortably intelligible”
English Pronunciation to Native Speakers of a Language X (NXS).

start

Stage 1
Learn to identify those sounds which are present in the English language but not
present in language X and learn to “conceptualise” these new sounds

Stage 2

Learn to distinguish between two or more sounds which NXS consider as the same
sound

Stage 3

Learn to pronounce English clusters – word initial, medial and final

Stage 4
Learn a simple customised phonetic alphabet for Language X so that an NXS can get the
correct pronunciation of English words from a Phonetic Dictionary containing phonetic
transcription of English words

continue

Fig.1 Flow-diagram of the four stage English Pronunciation Teaching Program

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

Stage 1
Learn to identify those sounds which are present in the English language but not present in language X
and learn to “conceptualise” these new sounds
In this stage a learner has to go through the following five steps.
Step 1 Know all sounds present in one’s native language X
Step 2 Identify all the sounds present in the English language
Step 3: Compare and contrast the sounds of Language X and English
Step 4: Identify those sounds which are present in the English language but not present in Language X
Step 5: Learn to “conceptualise” the new sounds

Step 1 Know all the sounds present in one’s native language X

Before learning a new language like English, it is worthwhile for the Native Speaker of Language X (NXS) to
be clear about all the sounds present in their native language, i.e., know the accepted standard
pronunciation of the different sounds in Language X. The EFL/ESL teacher for NXSs may ensure this before
proceeding further, as this will help the NXS to compare and contrast these sounds with the sounds
required in speaking English.

Using Set Theory as an aid to comparing two languages

Let us try to represent some of the above concepts mathematically using Set Theory, which allows
systematic comparison of two sets of objects. First, let us get familiar with the basics of Set Theory.
A set is a well-defined collection of objects. The objects known as elements of the set, when written down,
are separated by commas and all the elements of a set are enclosed within curly brackets.
Thus, a set of English vowels can be written as {a,e,i,o,u}
The order of elements in a set is not important. So the above set can also be written as {u,a,i, e,o}.
A set is normally given a name for identification purposes. Thus, if we want to identify the above-
mentioned set as the English vowel set and give it a short name EV, we can write it as shown below.
EV = {a,e,i,o,u}
After such a definition, whenever we mention EV, we will be referring to the set of five English vowels -
a,e,i, o and u.
Now, let us define the set of all the phonemes present in a hypothetical language X. Some may find some
similarities between this language and their language.
This set, which we will call XAP (Language X - all phonemes) can be written as in Equation 1. We have used
IPA symbols to represent the different phonic sounds in language X. We see that it contains 38 phonemes.
XAP = {[ p],[ph ] [b], [ bh ][m], [t], [t̪ʰ ], [d̪], [d], [n], [s], [r], [l], [ʃ], [tʃ], [dʒ], [dʒh] [j], [k], [kh ], [g],[ gh ],
[ŋ], [h], [ɪ], [i],[e], [æ], [a], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ ],[u],[eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ }] (1)
The set of 14 vowel phonemes in language X, which we will refer to as XVP (Language X - vowel phonemes),
may be written as in Equation (2).
XVP = {[ɪ],[i], [e], [æ], [a], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ ], [u], [eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ]} (2)
The set containing the 24 consonant phonemes in X called XCP (Language X - consonant phonemes)is given
in Equation 3.
XCP = {[p],[ph ] [b],[ bh ][m], [t], [t̪ʰ ], [d̪], [d],[n], [s], [r], [l], [ʃ], [tʃ], [dʒ],[ dʒh ], [j], [k], [kh ], [g],

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

[gh ], [ŋ], [h]} (3)

In the vowel set XVP, we have both monopthongs and diphthongs. Let us separate them into two separate
sets, XMP and XDP. XMP represents the monophthong set of Language X as shown in Equation (4),
containing seven monophthong phonemes, and XDP represents the diphthong set of Language X (Equation
5) with five diphthong phonemes.
XMP = {[ɪ], [i], [e], [æ], [a], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ], [u]} (4)
XDP = {[eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ]} (5)

We believe that an NXS who is going to learn English would benefit a lot if they were clear about all the
above-mentioned sounds/phonemes (Equations 2 and 3) in Language X.
Step 2 Identify all the sounds present in the English language
As we did for Language X, let us also define the corresponding five sets for the English Language. EAP
(Equation 6) defines the set of all 44 English phonemes. EVP (Equation 7) is the set of 20 English vowel
phonemes. ECP (Equation 8) is the set of 24 English consonant phonemes. EMP (Equation 9) contains the
12 English monophthong phonemes and EDP (Equation 10) contains the 8 English diphthong phonemes.
EAP = {[p],[b],[m],[f],[v],[w], [t],[d],[n],[s] [z],[r],[l], [θ],[ð],[ʃ],[ʒ],[tʃ],[dʒ],[j],[k],[g],[ŋ],[h], [i], [ɪ], [e], [æ],
[a], [ʌ], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ], [u], [ɜː], [ə], [eə], [eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ], [ɪə], [ʊə]} (6)
EVP = {[i], [ɪ], [e], [æ], [a], [ʌ], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ], [u], [ɜː], [ə], [eə], [eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ], [ɪə], [ʊə]} (7)
ECP = {[p],[b],[m],[f],[v],[w], [t],[d],[n],[s] [z],[r],[l], [θ],[ð],[ʃ],[ʒ],[tʃ],[dʒ],[j],[k],[g],[ŋ],[h]} (8)
EMP = {[i], [ɪ], [e], [æ], [a], [ʌ], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ], [u], [ɜː], [ə]} (9)
EDP = {[eə], [eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ], [ɪə], [ʊə]} (10)

Step 3 Compare and contrast the sounds of Language X and English

For comparing two sets, in this case the sounds of Languages X and English, we will be using some more
concepts in set theory, which we introduce below.
Subsets
The set A is said to be a subset of another set B if all the elements of A are present in the set B.
We know that all the vowel phonemes in Language X, elements of XVP, also belong to the set containing all
the phonemes in Language X, elements of XAP. Thus, we can say that the set XVP is a subset of the set
XAP (Equation 11). Similarly, from Equations 6 and 7 we know that the set EVP is a subset of the set EAP
(Equation 12). In the same way, we can derive other subsets as shown in equations (13) to (18).
XVP ⊆ XAP (11)
EVP ⊆ EAP (12)
XCP ⊆ XAP (13)
ECP ⊆ EAP (14)
XMP ⊆ XVP (15)
EMP ⊆ EVP (16)
XDP ⊆ XVP (17)
EDP ⊆ EVP (18)

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

Equality of sets
Next, we look at the equality of two sets. A set A is said to be equal to set B if A ⊆ B and B ⊆ A. This is
written as A = B. In the above examples, none of the sets are equal.
Set operators
Now we are ready to do some operations on the above sets and apply some set operators to get some
meaningful results, which will help us compare the two languages.
The union operator ∪ (for getting the union of two sets)
Given two sets A and B, the union of sets A and B, written as A ∪ B (A union B), is the set consisting of all
the distinct elements present in the two sets A and B. If the two sets A and B are each represented by two
circles then the union of the two sets can be shown in a diagram form as in Fig 1. We may note that the new
set, resulting from this union, consists of all elements present in the two sets (the red parts). We also note
that some elements are common in the two languages as specified in Fig. 2.

A B

com
mon

Fig. 2. Union of sets A and B

Thus, the union of the set XVP, which contains all the vowels in Language X and the set XCP containing all
consonant phonemes in X, gives us the set XAP (Equation 19). EAP (Equation 21) results from the union of
the set EVP, containing all the vowel phonemes, and ECP, containing all the consonant phonemes in the
English language. Equations 20 and 22 show two more unions of sets for the two languages.
XAP = XVP ∪ XCP (19)
XVP = XMP ∪ XDP (20)
EAP = EVP ∪ ECP (21)
EVP = XMP ∪ EDP (22)
The intersection operator ∩ (for getting the Intersection of two sets)
The intersection of two sets A and B results in a new set that has only those elements which are common in
both set A and set B and is denoted as A ∩ B.
The set resulting from the intersection of the vowel phoneme set of Language X , XVP (Equation 2), and the
vowel phoneme set of English, EVP (Equation 7), is IVP (Intersection- vowel phonemes) shown in Equation
(23). We can represent this as in Fig. 3, where the red section is the new set resulting from the
intersection of the two sets.

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

IVP = XVP ∩ EVP

= {[ɪ], [i], [e], [æ], [a], [ɒ], [ɔ], [ʊ], [u], [eɪ], [aɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], [oʊ]} (23)

XVP EVP

IVP

Fig. 3. Intersection of sets XVP and EVP resulting in set IVP

Similarly, intersection of sets XCP (Equation 3) and ECP (Equation 8) gives us the set ICP (Intersection of
Consonant phonemes) as in Equation (24).
ICP = XCP ∩ ECP
= {[p], [b], [m], [t], [d], [n], [s], [r], [l], [ʃ], [tʃ], [dʒ], [j], [k], [g], [ŋ], [h]} (24)
From Equation (23) we can conclude that 14 vowel phonemes are common in both Language X and English.
Equation (24) tells us that there are 17 out of a total of 24 English consonant sounds which are already
present in Language X. That means an NXS may have little difficulty in pronouncing English words
containing these 14 common vowel sounds and 17 common consonant sounds.
Step 4: Identify those sounds which are present in the English language but not present in
Language X
Finally, we want to be able to represent in set theory notation a set containing all the sounds of the English
language which are not present in Language X. These are the new sounds an NXS will have to learn, to be
able to pronounce English words with an intelligible accent. We can get this list of unknown or new
English sounds for NXS with the help of the “relative complement” operator of set theory as described
below.

The relative complement operator “− ” (for getting the difference between two sets)
The relative complement of a set B relative to a set A is the set of all objects that belong to A but not to B.
It is written as A − B. This is a very important concept for this exercise as by applying this operator to our
two sets XAP (Equation (6)) and EAP (Equation 1) , the resulting set will give us the set RAXE (Equation 25),
which will identify for us those phonemes which are present in English but not present in Language X.
This can be shown diagrammatically as in Fig.3 where the red section is the new set RAEX that contains the
new English sounds.

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

RAEX = EAP – XAP

= {[f], [v], [w], [z].[θ],[ð],[ʒ], [ʌ], [ɜː], [ə],[ eə], [ɪə], [ʊə ]} (25)

EAP XAP

RAEX

Fig. 3. Graphical Representation of relative complement of EAP – XAP

We have identified all the 13 phonemes that an NXS English learner needs to learn for pronouncing English
words. By learning these new sounds, an NXS should be able to pronounce English words with a
“comfortably intelligible” pronunciation. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to devote some time and effort
to teach these 13 phonemes to NXS English Learners.
Step 5: Learn to “conceptualise” new sounds
In step 3 we had identified 14 vowel phonemes and 17 consonant sounds which are common in both
Language X and English. From the 13 English sounds (Equation 25), which are not present in Language X,
we may note the following.
(a) According to the Lingua Franca Core model of Jennifer Jenkins (1998), the two difficult English
consonant sounds, [θ] and [ð], may be replaced by native sounds of other languages which are
close to these sounds and intelligible. These two sounds are close to the native sounds [t̪ʰ ] and [d̪]
respectively in Language X and can be replaced by them without causing any problem in
intelligibility when used in pronouncing English words which contain the English sounds [θ] and
[ð]. That means for an NXS, there are two less consonant phonemes to learn, a total of 11 new
English sounds.
(b) Of the new vowel sounds which are not present in Language X three are diphthongs (Equation 25).
They are [eə], [ɪə] and [ʊə]. The first vowel sound in these three diphthongs are [e], [ɪ] and [ʊ]
respectively, which are all present in Language X (Equation 2). Moreover, the second vowel sound
in each of these three diphthong sounds is [ə] , which is one of the new sounds an NXS has to learn
(Equation 25). After an NXS has learned the [ə] sound, he/she should be able to pronounce the
three diphthong sounds [eə], [ɪə] and [ʊə]. Therefore, If we remove these three diphthong sounds
and the two consonant sounds [θ] and [ð] from Equation 25, the list of eight new sounds an NXS
has to learn will be reduced to Equation 26.
NS = {[f],[v],[w], [z],[ʒ], [ʌ], [ɜː], [ə]} (26)

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Conceptualisation of sounds
Before proceeding further let us learn the term “conceptualisation” of sounds (Fraser,2000). By
conceptualising sounds we mean learning to recognise and make new sounds, which are not present in the
native language of a learner. An NXS may find particular new English sounds quite different from any
sound in Language X. We will call such sounds “distinguishable” or “more salient” (Rupp, 2013) sounds.
On the other hand, a sound which not every NXS can distinguish as being different from all other sounds in
Language X, will be termed “less salient”(Rupp,2013) or “indistinguishable ” sounds.
It is best for EFL./ESL teachers for NXSs to concentrate first in teaching their learners to “conceptualise”
new sounds. If any of the eight new English phonemes identified in Equation 26 are found to be
“indistinguishable” sounds for Language X, they may be separated and taught in stage 2.
Teaching EFL/ESL learners to conceptualise “distinguishable” English sounds is an important step in the
teaching of English pronunciation to an NXS. A good deal of attention and time should be given to this by
both the English teacher and the NXS learner of English. The teacher needs to show to their students the
following:
(1) How these new “distinguishable” English sounds are articulated – whether they are voiced or
unvoiced, their place of articulation and manner of articulation, and how these sounds contrast
with similar sounds in Language X.
(2) Give learners enough English words containing these new sounds in different positions of the
words, with which learners can practise these new sounds.
Learners should practise making these “distinguishable” new sounds regularly so that, like the other
sounds in their native language X, these new sounds, which they did not know before, ultimately become
part of them. They should reach a stage where they do not have to think when using these sounds in
English words and articulate them as mentioned in point (1) above automatically.
When learners have reached the state mentioned above, only then can it be said that they have
“conceptualised” the “distinguishable” English sounds.
We will not try here to show which of the English sounds are “distinguishable” for NXS as they will vary
from one language to another.

Stage 2

Learn to distinguish between two or more sounds which NXS consider as the same sound

Reconceptualising existing sounds

An NXS learner of English may consider two or more sounds in their native language to be
“indistinguishable” because of phonetic similarity. They may also consider some new English sounds to be
“indistinguishable” from one of the sounds in Language X. In both cases these learners need to be taught
to “reconceptualise” these as “distinguishable” sounds.
Learners have to learn to recognise such sound pairs as two separate sounds so that they pronounce them
differently without either (a) inter-changing two native sounds, which are two separate sounds in English
or (b) replacing an English sound with a sound from Language X, which in their perception is close enough
to the English sound. The ultimate objective is for NXSs to be able to pronounce correctly “minimal pair”
English words- i.e., pairs of words which have one sound difference.

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Inter-changing sounds
Let us first look at a few “minimal pair” English words with sounds that an NXS may inter-change as shown
in Table 1. It may be noted that different sounds in an English word may be interchanged in more than
one way. Table 1 shows only a few sample examples.
English word IPA transcription of Possible Sound change
“Received Pronunciation
Pronunciation” of (shown in IPA) by an
word NXS
pin [pɪn] [bin] or [pɪn] [b] for [p], [ɪ} fo [i]
bat [bæt] [bet] [æ] for [e]
pet [pet] [pæt] [e] for [æ]
ship [ʃɪp] [ʃ ip] or [sɪp] or [tʃɪp] [ɪ] for [i] or [ʃ] for [s] or [ʃ] for [tʃ]
same [seɪm] [ʃ eɪm] [s] for [ʃ]
shell [ʃel] [tʃ el] or [sel] [ʃ] by [tʃ] or [ʃ] by [s]

Table 1: Sample English sounds that an NXS may pronounce with a different sound
Note that in the above examples, both the actual sound and the sound with which it was replaced are
present in both language X and in English. Such interchanging of one sound by another in an English word
is bound to cause some confusion to a non NXS listener. The examples in Table 1 have been taken from a
real language, where such interchanges really take place.
Sound-word coupling
It is not an easy task to teach an NXS learner of EFL/ESL to “reconceptualise” “ indistinguishable” sounds,
which are present in both languages. This is because it has been seen that NXSs sometimes relate a certain
sound with particular English words. They may have been doing this from time immemorial and no one
corrected them. For example, in Bangladesh people can pronounce both [z] and [dʒ] sounds, but many
have learned to pronounce the English words “zoo” and “zero” as [dʒuː] and [dʒiro] respectively. In both
cases they relate the [dʒ] sound as the first sound in these and a few other words. It can be confirmed that
they can pronounce the [z} sound by asking them to pronounce words like “rose”, “his” etc. We will refer
to this phenomenon as sound-word coupling and give below an example how learners were taught to
“reconceptualise” such sounds.
The author once asked a group of sixteen youth learners in rural Bangladesh to pronounce the word “zero”.
All sixteen pronounced it as [dʒiro]. They were then told that the word was to be pronounced as [ziro]
with special emphasis on the sound [z] at the beginning. After they tried pronouncing the word along with
the author many times, 11 of them finally succeeded in pronouncing the word “zero” correctly starting
with the [z} sound. But five continued pronouncing the word as [dʒiro]. The author was giving up but as a
last resort asked one of them to pronounce the word “rose”. The learner was able to pronounce it correctly
using the [z] sound. Then he was asked to pronounce the fictitious word “rosero”. This time also he was
able to make the [z] sound at the appropriate place. Next, the author asked him to pronounce the word
“sero”, starting with the [z] sound. Since this was a new word for the learner and he could not relate it with
the [dʒ] or any other sound, he pronounced it as he was told. So when there is such sound-word coupling
a learner has to first “de-conceptualise” or stop relating a sound with particular English words. Only after
that can (s)he “reconceptualise” the particular sound independent of the word in which it appears.

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Before teaching EFL/ESL learners to “reconceptualise” such “indistinguishable” sounds, It may be

worthwhile first making a list of English words which undergo such “sound-word coupling” in Language X.
After studying the list of words some techniques may be developed which can help NXS learners first to
“de-conceptualise “ the sounds which are coupled with particular English words. After that the learners
may be made to “reconceptualise” the actual sounds so that they can pronounce those English words using
the correct sounds.
Replacement of English sounds by native sounds
If a new English sound is not present in Language X, when pronouncing a word which contains the new
sound, an NXS may replace it by a native sound, which in their perception is the same as the English sound.
The replaced sound may or may not be present in the English language. We give some examples in Table 2.

English word Actual RP Pronounced by NXS Sound Replacements

Pronunciation
zoo [zuː] [dʒuː] [z] by [dʒ]

very [ver.i] [bʰer.i] [v] by [bʰ]

wood [wʊd] [ʊd] [w] totally dropped

but [b ʌt] [bat] [ʌ] by [a]

bird [bɜːd] [baːd] [ɜː] by [aː]

think [θɪŋk] [tʰɪŋk] or [sɪŋk] [θ] by [tʰ] or [θ] by [s]

this [ðɪs] [dɪs] or [dʒɪs] [ð] by [d] or [ð] by [dʒ]

Table 2: Replacement of English sounds by native sounds

After NXSs have learned to conceptualise new English sounds, which are not present in Language X,
teaching them to distinguish the old and the new sounds in English words may not come automatically to
them for the reasons mentioned in the previous section on interchanging sounds. Therefore, teaching
NXSs to distinguish new sounds which were previously “indistinguishable” from some native sounds, needs
careful planning and patience from an EFL/ESL Teacher (Levis, 2008). One of the objectives of the teaching
program should be to make NXS learners reconceptualise these indistinguishable sounds so that they
never interchange such sound pairs and do not replace one sound by another native sound. The only
English sounds that NXSs to may replace are [θ] and [[ð] as we have discussed in section Step 5 (a) of Stage
1. These two sounds may be replaced by native sounds which are very near to these two sounds and are
not likely to cause any intelligibility problem when used in English words (Jenkins,1998). Needless to say
plenty of practice is needed to achieve this.

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Stage 3
Learn to pronounce English clusters – word initial, medial and final
Some languages do not have specific clusters at various positions in a word. First, a person whose native
language does not have initial clusters they may pronounce an English word like “start” as [sʌtɑːrt] or
[ɪstɑːrt], the word “school” as [sʌkuːl] or [ɪsk uːl] etc. Speakers of languages which do not have words with
terminal clusters may pronounce English words like “box” as [bɒsk], or [bakə s], “ask” as [ɑːks], “grasp” as
[grɑːps], or [grapəs] “hand” as [hændə] and the word “months” as [mʌnθʌs]. While pronouncing English
words, both with initial and terminal clusters, an NXS may add an extra syllable as we have seen in some of
our examples. In case of terminal clusters two consonant sounds may be interchanged. It is also known
that in some languages the terminal consonant sound is dropped. Thus the words “eyes” and “ice” may be
pronounced as [aɪ].
Some NXS may find it more difficult to pronounce English words with medial clusters. While an NES may
pronounce the words “listen” as [ˈlɪs.ən],”letter” as [let.ər] and “willing” as [ˈwɪl.ɪŋ], in each case dropping
a sound, an NXS may pronounce these three words as [ˈlɪs.tən], [ˈlet.tər] and [ˈwɪl.lɪŋ] respectively. They
may not drop any sound. They may also pronounce medial cluster word like “signal” as [sɪŋ.gəl] instead of
[sɪɡ.nəl ], interchanging two medial consonant sounds.
It is not possible to give in this paper an exhaustive list of different cluster sound types in English and the
different ways NNES may pronounce them, But it is acknowledged by all EFL/ESL teachers that this is an
area that needs to be included in all pronunciation teaching programs.
From the above examples, it is clear that special techniques must be developed to teach EFL/ESL learners
how to pronounce English clusters. One simple technique is to teach EFL/ESL learners to pronounce English
words containing clusters is to start by selecting two different English words, one containing at its end, the
first sound of the cluster, and the second containing at its beginning, the last sound in the cluster. For
example, to teach learners to pronounce the English word “school”, they may be asked to pronounce the
word “bus” as [b ʌs], which ends with the sound [s], the first sound in the cluster. Next, they may be asked
to pronounce the word “cool” as [kuːl] which starts with the second sound [k] present in the cluster. Then
the two words may be pronounced together as [bʌskuːl]. Finally, the learners may be asked to pronounce
the two words together but this time saying [bʌ] silently and then uttering [skuːl] aloud or just drop the
[bʌ] sound, whichever is easier.

Stage 4
Learn a simple customised phonetic alphabet for language X so that an NXS can get the correct
pronunciation of English words from a Phonetic Dictionary containing phonetic transcriptions of
English words
After going through the previous three stages and mastering all the concepts and techniques, an NXS may
be able to pronounce all individual English sounds correctly. However, that does not guarantee that they
will pronounce all English words containing those sounds correctly, particularly words they come across for
the first time. That is because not all English words are spelled phonetically and even Native English
Speakers sometimes may not know the correct pronunciation of many English words (Rahman, 2013)
incorrectly.
Currently, if native English speakers are not sure of the pronunciation of an English word, they may either
ask someone else or consult a dictionary where the pronunciation of the word can be found transcribed in
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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

IPA or some other transcription language. Similarly, NXSs may try to get the pronunciation of an English
word from an “English-to-X” dictionary. Unfortunately, the transcriptions of pronunciation of English
words in such dictionaries use characters of the native language X which, as we have seen, may not have
many of the English sounds. In such cases, the dictionary gives an incorrect transcription using characters
from the alphabet set of X, which stand for sounds the dictionary author(s) think are close to the different
English sounds. So an NXS English learner picks up the wrong pronunciation of those new English words
from such a dictionary. For example, in Language X, there are no consonant sounds [f],[v],[w], [z].[θ],[ð],[ʒ]
(equation (25)). The transcription for English words having these sounds in an “English-to-X” dictionary,
may not give the correct pronunciation as we have seen in Table 3.
It would be ideal to get Native English Speakers or NXSs, who are English Pronunciation experts, as EFL/ESL
teachers for teaching English Pronunciation to NXSs. But this is not always possible. Therefore, the
available EFL/ESL teachers will continue to teach their students. They will teach pronunciation of English
words they learned from their teachers and/or what they got from “English-to-X” dictionaries and pass the
same knowledge to their students, many of whom will be EFL/ESL teachers in the future. Although some
suggest teaching of IPA to English learners (Wells,1996), we cannot expect all NXS English teachers to learn
IPA, which would be quite a formidable task for many, besides requiring a lot of time, effort and money. So
it would seem that we are against a “dead end” and cannot expect every NXS to learn the correct
pronunciation of new English sounds and words.
A phonetic alphabet for Language X (XPA)
To get around this serious problem, instead of teaching EFL/ESL learners the use of IPA, which contains a
lot of new characters, diacritics etc., we are proposing the development and use of a simplified Phonetic
Alphabet for Language X (XPA) to help NXSs break through this barrier. XPA may be an extension of the
existing alphabet set of language X. It can use those symbols present in language X to represent the sounds
which are common between language X and the English language (Equation (24)). It can use additional
symbols to represent new English sounds. According to Equation (26) there are eight phonemes which
NXSs have to learn to be able to pronounce all English sounds. So, an NXS has to learn only eight new
symbols to be able to transcribe pronunciation of English words in XPA and read XPA transcriptions to get
correct pronunciation of English words. This is not a big task.
Besides knowing the correct sequence of sounds present in an English word, to speak English intelligibly
one also needs to know where to put the primary and secondary stresses while pronouncing an English
word and where the syllable boundaries are in a multi-syllable word. Therefore, in XPA, as in IPA, we
should also use some supra-segmental features of English words by using the supra-segmental symbols in
the following table.

primary stress [‘ ]
secondary stress [ˌ]
syllable break [.]
long vowel [ː]

Table 3: Supra-segmental symbols

Teaching learners to understand and use the supra-segmental features will be a big step towards improving
the “intelligibility” of their English speech.
Table 4 shows the transcriptions in both IPA and XPA of some English words which have difficult and/or
unusual spellings. In the XPA transcriptions (columns 3 and 6), all sounds which are common in X and
English have been shown with ‘-‘. The new English sounds, which are not present in X, have been shown

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

using IPA symbols, which can be the new symbols to be added to the character set of Language X to form
the character set of XPA.

English IPA XPA English IPA XPA

spelling spelling
Ache /eɪk/ /---/ beautiful /ˈbjuː.tɪ.fəl/ /ˈ---ː.--.fə-/
Knife /naɪf/ /---f/ once /wʌns/ /wʌ--/
Hour /aʊə / /--ə/ world /wɜːld/ /wɜː--/
Bead /biːd/ /--ː-/ dead /ded/ /---/
Rough /rʌf/ /-ʌf/ dough /dəʊ/ / - ə -/
Through /θruː/ /---ː/ thorough /ˈθʌr.ə/ /ˈ-ʌ-.ə/
Hiccough /ˈhɪk.ʌp/ /ˈ---.ʌ-/ women /ˈwɪm.ɪn./ /ˈ---.--./
Ocean /ˈəʊ.ʃən/ /ˈə-.- ə-/ cello /ˈtʃel.əʊ/ /ˈ---.--/

Table 4: IPA and XPA transcription of some English words

At a quick glance we can see that in the XPA transcription of these English words, very few new symbols
have been employed. From this we may conclude that it should not be difficult for an NXS to learn XPA and
get the correct pronunciation of English words from an available XPA dictionary. Thus, after
“conceptualising” some new sounds, “reconceptualising” some existing sounds, learning to pronounce
English words with clusters in different positions and then learning a simplified and easy to learn phonetic
alphabet like XPA, an NXS can move forward towards his/her ultimate goal- that is, develop a
“comfortably Intelligible” English Pronunciation.
Practical Use of the four-stage English pronunciation teaching model in an Asian country
We may mention here that the above was not designed as a theoretical model for presentation at this
conference only. We have tried out the model in a South Asian country, Bangladesh, the country of origin
of the author, on Native Bengali Speakers. The trial also included developing a prototype Bengali phonetic
alphabet (BPA). The prototype BPA has since been modified after incorporating the comments and
feedback received from different groups of people like English teachers and students at schools and
universities in Bangladesh.
In October 2012, we used this program of teaching English Pronunciation at a rural school in Bangladesh
(Rahman, 2013) to a group of Grade 9 and 10 students, aged 15 to 16, and their four English teachers for 10
days, for a total duration of 20 hours. We found that the participants learned the phonetic alphabet BPA
easily and commented on its usefulness. They remarked that they enjoyed learning English Pronunciation
by going through the various stages of this program, which was completely new to them. The students
prepared a mini BPA dictionary, which contained the BPA transcription of some of the English words (427)
that they had come across during the ten-day (20 hours) training session. They also demonstrated
speaking English with a “comfortably intelligible” pronunciation, which were recorded and can be heard
from the link ozmaint.wix.com/zamosc (Rahman, 2013a).
This unofficial project did not end there. Two keen English teachers in Bangladesh wanted to take it
further. One of them had attended the aforementioned 20 hour English pronunciation training program.
The other is a faculty member of a Government Teachers’ Training College in Bangladesh. Jointly, they
organised a 3-day residential workshop for 12 English Teacher Trainers, which was held from 3rd to 5th Sep
2013 in the Teachers’ Training College in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The participants, mostly English teacher
trainers and had been training other English teachers for many years acknowledged that they had

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A model for teaching English Pronunciation that will apply to speakers of different languages

problems in English pronunciation and made efforts to rectify them by going through the different stages
of the training program, which was based on the model outlined in this paper. They have decided to
organise further follow up meetings and workshops, in different cities, from time to time, to discuss
pronunciation teaching issues and practices in Bangladesh. The results obtained from this workshop and
the follow-up sessions will be reported in future conferences.

Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Ruth Nicholls of University of New England (UNE), my unofficial research supervisor,
for reviewing an earlier draft of this paper and making many helpful suggestions. Thanks are also due to
Geoff Nicoll, Mushfiqur Rahman, Husne Jahan Alam, Geraldine Norris, Zobeda Rahman and Helen Fraser
for their comments and/or encouragement.

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