Teaching American English Pronunciation

Preface Introduction: Preliminary considerations in the teaching of pronunciation - Biological factors - Socio-cultural factors - Personality factors - The role of the native language - Setting realistic goals PART ONE: The sound system of English 1: Spelling and pronunciation - The English spelling system - Sound-spelling correspondences - Spelling in other languages - The phonetic alphabet - Exercises 2: Individual sounds of English - How speech sounds are made - Consonants and vowels The description of English consonants - Place of articulation - Manner of articulation - Voicing - Summary The description of English vowels - Tongue height - Frontness/backness of tongue - Tenseness/laxness - Lip rounding - Phonetic symbols for vowels - Complex vowels (dipthongs) - The vowel /ar/ - The consonant /h/ - Semi-vowels (glides) - Exercises 3: English sounds in context Positional variation - Contrastive sounds of English - Non-contrastive sounds of English - Implications for teaching - Conclusion Grammatical endings - The regular past tense - The plural, possessive, and third person singular - Grammatical endings in the pronunciation classroom - Exercises 4: The shape of English words - Syllable types - Consonant clusters - Exercises 5: Word stress and vowel reduction - What is stress? - Schwa - Major and minor stress - Placement of word stress - Exercises 6: Connected Speech Rhythm, sentence stress, and intonation - The stress-timed rhythm of English - Placement of stress in sentences - Intonation Modifications of sounds in connected speech - The pronunciation of function words - Linking - Deletion of consonants - Assimilation - Summary - Exercises PART TWO: The identification and correction of specific pronunciation problems Introduction 7: Common pronunciation problems - English vowels - English consonants - Stress, rhythm, and intonation 8: Problems of selected language groups - Arabic - Chinese - Farsi - French - German - Greek - Hindi and Punjabi - Italian - Japanese - Korean - Polish - Portuguese - Spanish - Vietnamese PART THREE: Classroom activities Introduction 9: A communicative approach to pronunciation teaching - Introduction - Consonants and vowels - Connected speech - Suprasegmentals - Monitoring - Conclusion 10: Pronunciation syllabus design: a question of focus - The zoom principle - Assessing learner variables - Collection of speech samples - Diagnosis of speech samples - From diagnosis to syllabus design - Monitoring progress - Appendix: Student diagnostic profile 11: Suprasegmentals in the pronunciation class: setting priorities - Introduction - Stress/unstress - Stress and rhythm - Major sentence stress - Intonation - Linking and pausing - Palatalization - Conclusion 12: Pronunciation-based listening exercises for the multi-level class - Introduction - Minimal pairs - Stress assignment - Function words - Intonation - Conclusion 13: Teaching pronunciation: an inventory of techniques - Introduction Individual sounds - Minimal pairs - Visual aids - Stress, rhythm, and intonation - Developing fluency - Conclusion 14: Developing self-correcting and self-monitoring strategies - Introduction - Self-correction - Self-monitoring - Conclusion 15: Developing natural and confident speech: - Drama techniques in the pronunciation class - Introduction - Articulation - Pitch, volume, and rate - Variety - Conclusion 16: Unintelligibility and the ESL learner - Introduction - The receiver - The sender - Conclusion Glossary Further reading Bibliography Contributors Index