ADDING MUSIC TO THE WORDS CONCEPT 1 Pronunciation is related to listening comprehension

Following are two tasks for dictation: Task 1 Write these two sentences. Ill say each one twice. 1. ___________________________________________________________________. (We have a lot of money) 2. ___________________________________________________________________. (We had a lot of money) The difference is between segmentals, that is, the final consonant sounds of have and had. Is this segmental difference important? Yes, of course. But there is the other component, suprasegmentals. If you emphasize had in the second sentence, you are implying that (regrettably) this situation has changed. Emphasis on other words would suggest different meanings. Task 2 Write these sentences. a.______________________________________________________________. (John said, The Boss is an idiot!) b.______________________________________________________________. (John, said the Boss, is an idiot! Who was speaking? Would practice distinguishing the individual sounds have helped understanding the difference in meaning? Intermediate students understand written punctuation, but they also need to recognize spoken punctuation -- the musical signals which show how words are grouped. This is significant both for intelligibility and for effective listening comprehension.

Alexander Graham Bell, who was concerned with hearing, wrote

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

One of my TESL trainees explained this way in his report at the end of our methods class. He wrote,

When I began the class, I expected to learn techniques for teaching the individual sounds, but now I believe pronunciation is bigger than that. Now I think trying to teach

somebody pronunciation without paying attention to the suprasegmentals is like teaching somebody to dance, only without a partner, and without music, and standing still.

And the great novelist E.M. Forster put it in briefer form in A Passage to India.

A pause in the wrong place, an intonation misunderstood, and a whole conversation went awry.

That is my theme today: How to teach our students to use rhythm and melody to keep both the speaker and listener on the same track. English uses suprasegmentals to help the listener to follow the thoughts of the speaker to know which words are important and how they are connected. Other languages tend to use other means to signal emphasis and cohesion, but spoken English relies mainly on intonation and timing the music.

CONCEPT 2 The syllable is the basic unit of rhythm

Babies learn the rhythm of their first language in the first months of life, and thereafter unconsciously apply that rhythm to any new language. It is therefore strategic to bring the system of English rhythm to students conscious attention. Here are some listening tasks, each with a few sample items to suggest how you can expand the exercise. Listening work is then followed by speaking tasks. Task 3 How many syllables are there in these words? This task would be very difficult for many students. sandwich ________ Send a witch.________ Wednesday ________ laboratory ________ a lemon tree ________

Task 4 Students make columns on paper or the board. Then they listen to three words, which they dont see but just hear. One word is different. They put a checkmark for the different one. 1. 2. 3. X ___ ___ ___ Y ___ ___ ___ Z ___ ___ ___ (sit, sit, city) (pep, Pepsi, pep) (cola, coal, cola)

Task 5 Ask students to listen and raise one or two fingers to represent the number of syllables they hear. This listening exercise is based on the difficulty many students have with consonant clusters, which are not allowed in many languages:

sit school steam sport cracked

city a school esteem support correct

Task 6 Ask students to listen and say Past or Present, depending on which word you say. This exercise relates directly to grammatical distinctions. Lower level students can say Every day or Yesterday.

plant start fade load

planted started faded loaded

Task 7 Ask students to tap a hand, foot, or a pencil as they say each syllable. After several listening tasks, this task now calls for speaking. It also includes an active physical enhancement. The examples are of typical errors from different language backgrounds.

tastes prayed school closed

taste test parade a school close it

Task 8 Call on one half of the class to say the first part of a set of contractions, They. Then the other half says the second part, Have. Then the whole class says the whole contraction, IM). The teacher conducts with sweeps of the hand to keep the exercise going right hand for the right half of the class, then left hand for the left side, then both hands sweeping together. If this is done in a chanting, rhythmic way, the students are swept along together. Choral work gives students psychological support.

Because auxiliaries are difficult to learn, and because they are commonly contracted in the spoken language, they tend to be a serious barrier to listening comprehension; the learner has difficulty recognizing the contracted element. This choral task focuses attention on the way contraction affects the rhythm of a sentence.

THEY, HAVE, THEYVE

I, AM, IM

SHE, IS, SHES

HE, WOULD, HED

CAN, NOT, CANT

CONCEPT 3 Stress patterns help identify words

This a lemon tree class. ??????

This is the sort of remark that baffles the listener. The problem is word stress. English speakers tend to store words according to their stress pattern, and therefore misplaced stress is one of the major sources of conversation breakdown. RULES FOR STRESS: 1. One syllable in each word has the primary stress. 2. A stressed vowel is lengthened

ban a na

umbr e lla

a tomat o mic

l e mon
/ /)

3. An unstressed vowel may be shortened and made less clear (schwa

b nan

mbrell

lem n

sandw ch

Schwa is the most common vowel sound in the language, but there is no letter for it, so it doesnt show in print. This makes it a stealth sound, which in turn makes it. a major problem in listening comprehension. That is why schwa should get serious attention. Students dont actually need to be able to produce the reduced vowel sound (a difficult goal), but tasks like the following help with reception that is, help students to recognize the function of reduction. Task 9 Ask students to say these words using a rubber band. This task asks students to say these words, stretching a wide rubber band between their fingers ONLY while saying the stressed syllable. This is a strong kinaesthetic analogy to saying the vowel longer.

b nan mbr e ll a t m-- t o m c (Note: the # of syllables)

s a ndw ch l e m n treee l m e ntry

Task 10 Eyebrow raising, hand raising, chair rising The stress patterns of the same words can be practiced a number of times, but with different actions. Have students volunteer other vocabulary. banana English muffin Canada lemon instant coffee elementary

Task 11 Pair Work: the speaker challenges the listener. When one student is called on alone, the other students tend to let their minds wander. A pair work task puts everybody to work, using precious time more efficiently. The speaking partner challenges the listening partner to respond. The answer depends on whether the speaker chose to say the a. or b. version of the question. This type of pair work requires both speaker and listener to be responsible for the outcome, and thus mimics a real conversational task. 1.a. b. 2.a. b. 3.a. b. Whats in the dessert? Whats in the desert? Is it elementary? Is it a lemon tree? Whats foreign. Whats for rain? Sugar. Sand. No, its advanced. No, its an orange tree. Another language. An umbrella.

CONCEPT 4 Intonational emphasis signals the focus of information.

Each thought group (a short sentence, clause or phrase) has one most important, or focus, word. This is the word that the speaker wants the listener to notice. Unlike most languages, English depends mainly on intonation to help the listener notice the focus of attention. Approximately 90% of the time, this word is likely to be a content word. Content words, such as nouns, main verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, generally carry the most information, which is why they are usually the focus of meaning. Emphasis is made by changing the pitch on the focus word in each thought group. This change of pitch occurs on the primary stress of that word, and it is made more noticeable by lengthening the vowel in the stressed syllable. On the other hand, structure words, such as pronouns, prepositions, articles, to be verbs, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs, are usually NOT emphasized. In fact, they tend to be systematically de-emphasized in order to make a contrastive background for the focused words. The de-emphasis is made by reducing/contracting the less important words, mainly by shortening the vowels to schwa. This contrastive use of highlighting and backgrounding through suprasegmental signals is the way English draws attention to the focus of information.

Other languages use other means, e.g. a post-particle, word order, or something else which doesnt depend on intonation. There are other reasons why students fail to catch on to the musical system. For one thing, students tend to think each word is important, so they emphasize them all. Or, conversely, students sometimes tend to speak in a monotone because they are concentrating so intently on

grammar, vocabulary, etc. Whether they emphasize too much or not enough, the result is damage to intelligibility. For all these reasons, direct instruction in intonational emphasis is necessary.

Note: Structure words like the article the or the auxiliary do, are just the kind of little words typically missing from students speech. That may be in part because they are so hard to hear. They are hard to hear because they are typically obscured in the spoken language RULES FOR EMPHASIS 1. At the beginning of a conversation, the last content word in a sentence is usually the focus . Were all WAITing for you. Could you lend me some MONey? 2. After the beginning of a conversation, ANY word can be the focus. I COULD lend you money. (But I WONT.) 3. Emphasis is signaled by extra length and a change of pitch. 4. New information, or special meaning, is systematically contrasted with old information.

Example: Toronto is the capital of CANada. (Canada is the focus of attention)

No, OTTawa is the capital. Example: X: Y: X: X: Y:

(Ottawa is the new focus. Canada is now old)

I lost my umBRELLa. (umbrella is the focus of attention) What KIND of umbrella? (kind is the new focus. umbrella is now old) A SMALL one. What COLor small one? GREEN. Green with STARS.

Task 12 Which words are the focus of each remark? 1. X: Y: X: Y: X: I want some shoes. What kind of shoes? The beautiful kind! Black or brown? Neither. Im tired of black and brown. I want red shoes. Shiny red shoes!

2.

X: Y: X: Y:

What are you doing? Im studying. Studying what? Math or English? Im sick of math and English. Im studying nutrition, because Im always hungry.

Notice in the last clause of this dialogue that either always or hungry could be chosen for emphasis. As a matter of fact, both words could be emphasized, if the speaker wishes to be especially emphatic.

This task could be said just with the voice humming the melody, but it is more fun if you can find cheap plastic kazoos. A kazoo is a toy which amplifies the vibration of the vocal cords. This vibration is what makes the humming sensation of voiced sounds. A kazoo strips away all the distractions of grammar, vocabulary and segmentals and just leaves the voicing.. Note: If you blow into a kazoo, there is no vibration so theres nothing to amplify. If you cannot find a kazoo, you can sing the melody with a continuous vowel sound /a/. The advantage of this instrument is that it is louder, and helps focus attention because it is amusing.

Task 13 Kazooing. Student X: Choose to say or kazoo a) or b). Student Y: Answer. 1. a) I wanted a cup of SOUP. b) I wanted a CUP of soup. 2. a) Its a big DOG. b) Its a BIG dog. 3. a) I asked for potato SALad. b) I asked for poTAto salad. 5. a) I think that hamburgers MINE. b) I THINK that hamburgers mine. Not COFFee? Not a BOWL? No, its a WOLF. No, more MEDium-sized. I thought you wanted SOUP. I thought you wanted toMAto. No, THIS one is yours. Arent you SURE?

When students have a clear understanding of the function of intonation for signaling emphasis, they can use this intonation to verify information, or get clarity about something they didnt understand. Possession of this skill could have helped the new employee who failed to understand a supervisors instruction. Its valuable to know how to clarify something not well understood, by simply repeating what it sounded like only with a rising intonation at the end. Even better is to be specific about which parts of the remark were not understood, as in Did you say schussel the wozzick? or What does schussel mean? or Whats the wozzick? These responses let the speaker know that something specific needs clarification, and serve as a kind of insurance against a potentially serious misunderstanding.

IN CONCLUSION, The signal system between speaker and listener is unique to each language, and people often dont know what signals theyre missing. We probably cant ensure perfect pronunciation., but we CAN give our students the key to fixing breakdowns. When they are misunderstood, when conversation gets frustrating and muddled -- if students understand what kind of errors they tend to make, music can be the key to smoothing the way. REFERENCES Celce-Murcia, M. D. Brinton, J. Goodwin, (1996) Pronunciation, Cambridge University Press Dalton, C. & B. Seidlhofer, (1994) Pronunciation, Oxford University Press, London Gilbert, Judy. (2001) Clear Speech from the Start, Cambridge University Press, New York (2005) Clear Speech, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, New York Gilbert, Judy, and Rogerson, Pamela, (1990) Speaking Clearly, (British pronunciation), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge McNerney, Maureen, and Mendelsohn, David. (1992). Suprasegmentals in the pronunciation class: setting priorities. In P. Avery and & S. Ehrlich, (eds) Teaching American English Pronunciation. Oxford University Press, 185-196.