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If they understand the why, they will accept the
how. by Kendall As most of us know, learning English as a second language
is much like learning a foreign language abroad. Anyone who has studied
a foreign language as an adult can recall the difficulty of pronouncing the
new language, that feeling of trying to talk with mashed potatoes in your
mouth, that trapped feeling of words in our heads that just won’t come out of
our mouths correctly. We all have many stories of frustration and faux pas
caused by less than perfect pronunciation. I once said, in Spanish, “I
have a man,” instead of “I am hungry,” and told an amused Parisian, “the
machine eats my token,” while pointing at the coin washer. I have
struggled for years to save students from similar fate and time and time
again, I have failed in a variety of ways and with many different techniques. One of the standard techniques has been minimal
pairs in which words that have only one phoneme shift are repeated over and
over: ship – sheep, ship – sheep; bit – bite, bit – bite; chew –
shoe, chew – shoe; and on and so forth. Not only have I found them
rather boring, I have not found these kinds of exercises to be very effective
and in the end students will still utter a vulgarity instead of saying,
“sheet” or “beach.” Another method I have used is the Sesame Street
method of adding one phoneme at a time. So for trying to get them to
say “ship,” I would go through this exaggerated procedure: Say “shhhh,” and they repeat “shhhh.” Say “eh,” and they
repeat, “eh.” Say “puh,” and they repeat, “puh.” Now say “sh eh,”
and they say “sh eh.” Now say “shehpuh,”
and they say, “shehpuh.” And finally, now say “ship,” and they say
“sheep.” The students repeat each step perfectly until we get to the
word “ship,” and then, oops! we’re right back to
beginning. I thought that maybe not seeing the word would help; so, I tried not writing it on the board and yet the
moment they visualized it, they made the error. Some part of the brain
goes into automatic and the students speak the sounds that they have learned
from their mothers. After lots of thought I realized that I was working
against “muscle memory,” long ingrained habits, the inflexibility of the
mouth, an inability to hear sounds, and even Mom, all for nil. After years of struggle, I finally found fun answers
in music. In 2000, I took up music and began to study trumpet and then
voice. From these lessons I came to understand a new language and a new
weltanschauung. I learned about air, embouchure, control, flexibility,
and much more. Most important, I began to approach my problem with
teaching pronunciation from a new paradigm. As my music and voice
teachers were teaching me, I began to think of the body as an
instrument. It needed training and exercise. It needed to learn
new behaviors. Speaking a language is much the same! I came to
realize. I began to use preparatory exercises (warm-ups and such) from
music. I worked on breathing, stretching the tongue, massaging the
muscles around the mouth, flapping the lips, and making the mouth form new
shapes. Students were a bit reluctant and felt silly but I spent time
explaining the comparison to music and the rationale for the exercises and
even the oldest and shiest eventually came around. Once they were warmed up and more flexible, I would
begin to work on having them become personally aware of how sound is made
within their bodies. I explained about air, diaphragm, vocalization,
flow and we would practice just controlling air making simple silly sounds.
Then we would work on pitch and volume. I asked them not to visualize words or even sounds
but visualize the inside of the mouth, shape it, place and move the tongue
inside it with precision, and to use their instruments to control air and
make sound a variety of noises and utterances. And so, they came to see
their bodies as sound makers and spoken language is after all sounds. We would exercise and visualize and then quickly I
toss in a word. If they repeat it well we move on. If not, we go
back to the sounds and exercises. I may work in some tongue twisters if
they are doing well and throw in some of those old minimal pairs. But
the moment they slip back to their old habits, I drop back to the unique,
non-sense sounds. When we initially begin these exercises, students
giggle and cover their mouths a lot and they are self-conscious. Of
course they are reluctant to do what they think will be embarrassing or
demeaning. However, with persistence and clear explanation of why we
are doing these seemingly silly activities, the vast majority of students
come around and see the efficacy of the silly. So this is reason I say: If
they understand the why, they will accept the how. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ P.S. This term, while I helped a student prepare the
media for a presentation, I had another student lead the rest of the group
through the exercises. Now, most of my students do not say, “Sank jew
berry mush.” |
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