Problems in

Mary Tay

Teaching Pronunciation

Wan Joo

Nanyang University, Singapore.

1. Introduction.

Very often in ESL classrooms, teachers encounter many- problems

attempting to teach the pronunciation of English. The problems
are particularly acute in the case of tertiary-level students who may
have studied English as a second language for as many as ten years
but whose pronunciation of the language is far from what teachers would
describe as satisfactory.
In the absence of clearly defined objectives, teachers try to solve
this problem in various ways. But unfortunately, as students seem to
in

make innumerable mistakes, and as the curriculum is often crowded

out with equally pressing demands for more reading and writing, the
actual teaching of pronunciation may be confined to a short two-week
stint at the beginning of each term or 5 minutes at the beginning of
eachlesson. Under such circumstances, the teacher has to be very
selective as to what he teaches. Quite naturally, many choose to
teach only such very simple distinctions as minimal pairs in the hope
that if the student can hear and make these minimal sound distinctions,
he is on the road to successful pronunciation. Other teachers, less
confident about removing mistakes in pronunciation allow students
to talk freely in the hope that so long as a student can produce a string
of utterances, satisfactorily enunciated or otherwise, fluency has been
achieved.
Both these methods are somewhat simplistic. In the first place,
there is the need to lay down specific objectives for the teaching
of pronunciation and from these objectives to determine priorities.
Secondly, pronunciation should not be treated as an isolated component but should be integrated with other language skills. It is with
these two needs in mind that this paper is written.
-

The students referred to in this paper are adults whose first language
is Chinese. Hence, some of the statements may be applicable only
to such students. In general, however, the principles laid down should
be of wider application.
2. Theoretical Foundation.
An eclectic

ical

approach
possibilities - seems

one

best.

which takes the best of various theoretThis approach accounts for what may
1

seem

to be otherwise

strange mixture of

approaches

discussed in this

paper.
I would like to adopt as the basis of this paper one of the implications
of Transformational Grammar for language teaching, that is, that
language should be treated as an integrated whole, unlike the structuralists who treated as separate the features of phonology, morphology
and syntax. What this means in the ESL classroom is that the teaching
of pronunciation should not be regarded as a separate and isolated
component but should be integrated with the teaching of such other
aspects as word form, sentence structure and the meaning of these
forms. Such an integrated approach is not only theoretically neat
but should also produce the most fruitful results for the reason discussed in the-following paragraph.
,

There is the need to teach students how to communicate

somedifferent
from
and
situations
drills
thing quite
merely repeating specific
in a meaningless way. (See Bowen, 1972: pp. 83-94). Teaching in a
meaningful way is particularly important in the case of adults who,
unlike children, will not put up with imaginary or unrealistic situations.
If the teaching of pronunciation is integrated with the teaching of other
aspects of the language, the students will be better motivated for they
will feel that they are learning to communicate which is so much
more realistic as a goal than mere parroting with native-speaker
-

accuracy.
If effective communication is to be the aim of an English course,
the value of contrastive analysis cannot be denied. Making out a
case for contrastive analysis is unnecessary here as it has already
been done by many scholars (see, for example, Nickel, 1971). Suffice
it to say that a knowledge of the specific differences in the phonology
of the students L1 and L2 helps to account for some, even if not all,
of the deviations which produce difficulties in communication.
On the other hand, the student may produce aberrations which
explained by contrastive analysis and this is where error
analysis fills the gap. A record of errors made by a homogenous
group of students over a number of years and a systematic analysis
of these errors have direct relevance to the teaching of English pronunciation.
cannot be

3.

Discussion of Problems.
A

common

misunderstanding

about the students

linguistic back-

must first be clarified. This problem which is

aside all too lightly is: Just what is the students first

ground

often brushed

language?
this question

multilingual. society like Singapore, the answer to

very complex and no attempt at an answer will be made
a

here.

In
is

It must be pointed out, however, that it is misleading to assume

that the main medium of instruction in schools is also the students
first or main language. For instance, in Singapore, Chinese-educated
students are educated in Mandarin and are taught English as a second
language. But most of these students are not native speakers of
Mandarin and they make mistakes in Mandarin which no native
speaker of Mandarin would make.
Although the so-called Chinese dialects have much in common in
their phonological systems, they are different enough to create difficulties
when one is learning to speak another dialect. Take for example, the
sibilants in Mandarin. There are three sets of such sibilants: the
retroflex /t,%/,/ts/,/~/ and /s/; the palatals /9/, /tg/, and Itl and
the dentals ~/ s / , / ts / and. / ts / .. All of these are in phonemic contrast
in Mandarin. In Hokkien, however, only the following sibilants are
found: /ts/, /ts/ and /s/. As a result, many Hokkien and other
South Chinese speakers do not make all the necessary distinctions
when they speak Mandarin. As a second example, speakers of
Mandarin make a distinction between /f/ and /h/ but many Hokkien
speakers use only /h/ in speaking Mandarin as /f/ is not found in
Hokkien. Again, although Mandarin makes clear distinctions between
final n and ng, Teochew has only ng.
These examples should be sufficient to show that in learning to
speak English. Hokkien speakers have different problems from Cantonese
and Teochew speakers. As there are very few native speakers of
Mandarin in Singapore, a contrastive analysis of Mandarin and English
is of limited use. It assumes that students have mastered Mandarin
pronunciation whereas in actual fact they have not. It would be much
better to undertake a contrastive analysis of English and the predominant
dialects such as Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese.
The main problem, however, which the English teacher faces in
teaching pronunciation is just what he should do with the many errors
he finds in his students speech. Should he try to eradicate all these
errors? In a multi-lingual society (where the number of errors is
multiplied several times because the students have different mother
tongues), none but the ultra-courageous and unrealistic would attempt
this. If he cannot eradicate all these errors, which should he attempt
to eradicate?
To answer this question satisfactorily one should consider three
factors: (a) the effect of the error on communication or intelligibility,
(b) whether the error can be eradicated with ease, with difficulty or
not at all and (c) whether the error is cumulative, i.e. whether an error
in pronunciation also affects the grammaticality of an utterance.
If the aim of teaching students oral English is to enable them to
communicate effectively in English, then priority should be given to
3

the eradication of those errors which interfere most with intelligibility.

From this point of view, minimal pairs often create minimal difficulties.
The failure to make distinctions between words such as see and she,
light and right, lip and dip does not seriously interfere with
intelligibility because relatively few contexts in real life would permit
both words. On the other hand, rhythm, stress and intonation play
a much more important part in communication and it is these aspects
of pronunciation which should be given priority in teaching. Various
native speakers of English have said to me at various times that what
really makes the speech of some Chinese speakers hard to understand
is not that they call a doctor a loctor or that they say, sollv, long
lumber instead of sorry, wrong number but their strange rhythm,
stress and intonation.
Some errors can be eradicated only with great difficulty and after
In the case of adults, many errors just cannot
a long period of time.
be eradicated. Recognizing this fact for what it is is very important.
How often have teachers tried to teach the d / or 1/r distinction with
little success. Perhaps after hours of drilling they can get the students
to say the minimal pairs correctly, lead-read light-right, load-road.
But the moment the student enters into free conversation, he forgets
all he has leatnt. The frustrations which teachers feel in such situations
are largely self-inflicted and quite unnecessary.
To spend a phenomenal
amount of time trying to eradicate one out of many errors is something
which many teachers cannot afford to do.
In general, then, the teaching of isolated sounds is to be discouraged
but attention should be paid to distinctions which are important grammatically. For example, the s at the end of an English word is a
source of difficulty for Chinese students in speaking and writing English.
Yet, it cannot be by-passed for it marks various grammatical distinctions
and consequently has a high functional load. For example, when
attached to a noun, it could make the noun plural and plurality in
turn determines the choice of the verb in a sentence. It could . also
make a noun a possessive, c.f. John and Johns. Attached to a
pronoun or a noun, it could indicate that it is short for is as in &dquo;Hes
coming or has in &dquo;Hes gone home.&dquo; Attached to a verb, it indicates
that the doer of the action is the third person singular. Intensive drills
on such uses of s would also save the students from making such ungrammatical utterances as &dquo;He coming&dquo; and &dquo;He gone home&dquo; and
&dquo;He come.&dquo; Similarly, the final t and d which mark past tense or.
the past or passive participle should be given priority in teaching..
The teaching of minimal distinctions, then, should be confined to
those which signal not just distinctions in sound but also distinctions
in the grammar of English. On the other hand, the teaching of larger
*

units of

speech
top priority.
As rhythm

such

as

rhythm,

is the most

stress and intonation should be

neglected aspect

in the

given

teaching of

pro-

nunciation, it will be dealt with first. The distinction between syllableand stress-timed rhythm, terms first coined by Pike
and
(1946:35)
adopted by other phoneticians like Abercombie (1967:
which
could be usefully adopted in teaching. Briefly,
is
one
97),
the distinction is this: In languages which have a stress-timed rhythm,
such as English, stressed syllables recur at equal intervals of time but
unstressed syllables are unequally spaced in time. On the other hand,
in languages which have a syllable-timed rhythm, all syllables recur
at equal intervals of time, stressed or unstressed. Arthur Lloyd James
in Speech Signals in Telephony (1940:25) used the terms machine-gun
rhythm for syllable-timed rhythm and morse-code rhythm for
stress-timed rhythm. Though less sophisticated, his terms have the
advantage that they convey the idea more simply to those who may
lack the necessary training in linguistics and phonetics.

timed

rhythm

Why should this distinction be taught? There are a number of

interrelated reasons. If a student is used to speaking with a syllabletimed rhythm, he will employ this in speaking English and when he
does this, he will not use reduced forms, like /wz)z/ for /woz/ was,
/aim/ for /ai lem/ I am, and he will not use sentence stress, all of
which are important in communication. And, of course, rhythm cannot
be taught by giving examples of individual words but only of sentences,
i.e. it calls for an integrated approach.
Before

whether there is

need to teach this distinction,

speak English with a syllable-timed
a
stress-timed
or
rhythm
rhythm. If the former, then there is the
need to teach the distinction; if the latter, there is no such need.
one must

deciding

on

test whether the students

Where there is a need to teach the distinction, how can it be taught?

First of all, the students should be made to feel, not just hear the
incorrect rhythm they use. In Singapore, for example, I have noticed
that many Chinese students, probably because of the tradition of reading
aloud in a recitative way, speak English with a syllable-timed rhythm.
Students can be made to feel the rhythm they use by tapping with a
pencil on a hard surface as they speak. Ask them to tap on every
syllable and it will be found that the taps on each syllable will be
equally spaced in time. Try the following sentences:

Good
Good
I

am

mor

ning

tea

cher.

aft
sit

ter

noon

tea

ting on
is speaking

chair

in

cher.
the

class

room.

with a syllable-timed rhythm, he takes

As the student
the same length of time to pronounce each syllable. Thus he finds it
5

difficult to use reduced forms such as /m/ for /3em/ am, / ona l
for /on ei/ on a. Besides, sentence stress cannot be heard clearly.
The students can now be made to listen to English spoken with a
stress-timed rhythm and asked to tap. If he taps each syllable, he
will find that they are unequally spaced, but if he taps only the stressed

syllables, they
Good

are

equally spaced.

morning, teacher.

Good afternoon, teacher.

Im sitting on a chdir in the classroom.
At this point, the students attention should be drawn to the stress
pattern of the sentence. For instance, if the stressed syllables sit,
chair and class are to be isochronous, the vowels in on a and in the
will have to be reduced as these syllables are said much quicker than
sit, chair and cliss.
Rhythm is not very easy to teach but it is worth teaching because
it affects intelligibility. A marked improvement in rhythm results in
a marked improvement in intelligibility whereas improvements in
segmental features like the distinction between /I/ and /d/ results

improvement in intelligibility.
rhythm, stress at word and sentence level is the next most
important part of pronunciation to teach because a word wrongly
stressed could seriously affect intelligibility. Two examples are given
below. Once a native speaker found difficulty understanding a certain
utterance in which the word individual was wrongly stressed as
individual instead of individual. Another native speaker on another
occasion had difficulty with a sentence in which the word development
was stressed as development instead of dev6lopment.
Stress at word level is best taught in relation to word forms. Contrasts in stress could be pointed out between the pair: ec6nomy (noun)
and econ6mic (adjective) in such sentences as:
The ec6nomy of Singapore is pr6sperous.
The economic situation of Singapore is 6xcellent.
Or between confirm (verb) and confirmation (noun) in
in little

After

Please confirm this fact for me.

His confirmdtion enc6uraged him.
As Chinese students often confuse word forms, using adjectives
for nouns, adverbs for adjectives and so on, it is essential to give them
plenty of practice on the different usages of these different word forms
in sentences. And what better way than to show that in many cases
there are differences in stress patterns between these parts of speech.
In other words, if the student realises that economic is always econ6mic
and not economic, and that it is always used as an adjective and not
as a noun, he should stop producing ungrammatical sentences such as
The economic of Singapore is very stable.
6

teaching of stress at word level should also help to

strengthen important contrasts between the different parts of speech.
The teaching of stress at sentence level has to be related to meaning
for &dquo;as a general rule, it may be said that the relative stress of the
words in a sequence depends on their relative importance. The more
important a word is, the stronger is its stress.&dquo; (Jones, 1960: 262).
Vowel reduction in words needs special emphasis as the failure to use
this results in differences in rhythm which create breakdowns in
Thus the

communication.
Teaching intonation to speakers of tonal languages such. as Chinese
should be a comparatively simple task in that such speakers are much
more aware than others of pitch changes in speech.
Difficulties arise,
however, because the Chinese speaker is accustomed to hearing changes
in pitch over small units (tone at syllable level) whereas in English,
pitch changes are found over a much longer stretch (intonation at
sentence

level).

Thus the concept of the rising and

falling tunes in English must

demonstrated to the students. In English,
may cover a considerable number of words
in a sentence, but in Chinese, it seems best to describe rising and
falling tunes in terms of the perturbation of one syllable only, the
final syllable. (For other features of intonation in Hokkien, see Tay
1968: 66-70).
In teaching intonation, the teacher should start with the most basic
and functional contrast, e.g. between statements and yes-no questions.
If time permits, he may later proceed to more sophisticated differences
in expressive intonation, i.e. intonation patterns which express differences in the moods or attitudes of the speaker.
carefully defined and
rising and falling tunes

be

4.

Conctusion.

The preceding paragraphs have suggested that the teaching of pronunciation to adults can be improved along the following lines:
1. The objectives in teaching pronunciation should be clearly
stated. These statements would have to consider the language
situation in the country, the educational institutions own requirements and needs, the background and motivation of the
students, the training and abilities of the teaching staff and the
syllabi and hours of instruction.
2. A system of priorities should be set up because in most situations, students make many errors and time does not permit the
eradication of all of them. Priority should be determined by
the effect which a mistake has on intelligibility. Mistakes
which create serious problems in intelligibility should be handled
before mistakes which do not create such serious problems in
7

intelligibility. (Intelligibility has been deliberately left undefined

for it has to be defined differently in different situations,
depending on the objectives laid down in 1. In some cases it
may be sufficient to ensure intelligibility to another educated
but non-native speaker of English in the country. In other
cases, a more rigorous standard may have to be insisted upon.)
3. As stress, rhythm and intonation affect intelligibility seriously,
they should be given priority over such minimal distinctions
as for example between / 1 and /d/ and /I/ and /r/.
4.
Pronunciation drills should be contextualised and made as
meaningful as possible in an integrated approach which also
considers such factors as grammaticality.
If all these improvements could be made, students should find their
language classes more meaningful.
.

REFERENCES

..

Abercrombie, David. 1967. Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press.

Bowen, J.Donald. 1972. "Contextualizing Pronunciation Practice in the ESL
Classroom" in TESOL

Chomsky, Noam and

& Row.

Quarterly.

Vol. 6 No. 1. March 1972. pp. 83-94.

Halle, Morris. 1968. The Sound Pattern of

English. Harper

Fudge, E. C. 1969. Syllables. Journal of Linguistics. Vol. 5 pp. 253-286.

Cambridge University Press.
Jones, Daniel. 1960. An Outline of English Phonetics. 9th edition. Heffer,
Cambridge.
Kratochvil, Paul. 1968. The Chinese Language Today. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.,
London.

Nickel, Gerhard. 1971. "Contrastive Analysis and English Language Testing".

English Language Testing, Report of the RELC Fifth Regional Seminar
(Bangkok 25-30 May 1970), SEAMCO-RELC, Singapore, pp. 85-94.
Nickel, Gerhard. ed. 1971
sity Press.

Papers in Contrastive Linguistics, Cambridge Univer-

English. Ann Arbor.

Tay, Mary W. J. 1968. A Phonological Study of Hokkien. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation. University of Edinburgh.
1969. Hokkien Phonological Structure. Journal of Linguistics
Vol. 6. 81-88. Cambridge University Press.
Pike, Kenneth.

—.

1946.

The Intonation of American