emilychen
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Learning of Pronunciation
1) Do you think pronunciation is important in learning a second/foreign language?
2) Based on your learning experience, which pronunciation goal or goals do you think is/are more difficult to achieve? How do you think the use of technology can help you achieve your pronunciation goal(s)? Please give specific reasons and examples.
Note: Groups 5, 6, 7, and 8 are required to respond to these two questions.
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11/1/2004, 3:39 pm
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louise17
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 Re: Learning of Pronunciation by Group 5
Good day, everyone. We are group five: Louise, Sam, Janet, Joanne, and Christian.
Q1: Do you think pronunciation is important in learning a second/foreign language?
Our group members all agree that pronunciation is important in learning a second/foreign language. The purpose of learning second language is to communicate. If learner's pronunciation is not intelligible, it's hard for people to catch and understand what exact words the learner said. Unclear pronunciation will misunderstand the listeners.
One single word that is pronounced falsely can cause a huge misunderstanding. For instance, when pronouncing numbers, some people often pronounce “fifty” as “fifteen.” Because “ty” and ”teen” somewhat sound a little the same, we always mistake both of them if we pounce them very quickly. This is a big deal when we are talking about money. If a banker has made a mistake on fifty-thousand to fifteen-thousand, he/she will lose 35,000 dollars immediately.
Taking another example that Louise has offered about her students learning English in cram school always pronounce wrong consonants with “thin” and “sin”. Most of them all feel that is difficult to identify “th” and “s” sounds.
According to the text the instructor provided, speaking is viewed in the larger context of communication with the focus on the speaker’s ability to take in messages, negotiate meaning and produce comprehensible output. Therefore, pronunciation plays an important role of communicating with foreigners.
Q2: Based on your learning experience, which pronunciation goal or goals do you think is/are more difficult to achieve? How do you think the use of technology can help you achieve your pronunciation goal(s)? Please give specific reasons and examples.
Our group members think that there are two pronunciation goals that we think they are the most difficult to achieve: the functional intelligibility and the increased self-confidence.
First, functional intelligibility means speakers can completely understand what foreigners said. From our points of view, when speaking the second language, we are stuck in the cultural differences. Because we don’t have enough about culture of the second language we’re learning, it is sometimes difficult to understand completely what the speaker really means. As a Chinese speaker, we can only understand maybe 50 or 70 percent.
Second, as second language learners, what we need most and what we are lack of is self-confidence. Because we are not the native speakers, we couldn't produce as well as they can. We always feel fearful and doubtful if the foreigners cannot understand.
Sometimes, technology can help us feel ease, without the feeling of scare when talking to foreigners. For example, audiotapes can help learners not only listen what exactly the pronunciation is also speak along with the audiotapes. The important thing is learners don’t feel embarrassed even though they speak or pronounce falsely. On the other hand, Learners can use technology such as listening to second language learning programs and texts on the Internet, TV, or radio to help them to follow the speakers’ pronunciation to speak out loud. In this way, learners can potentially enhance their willingness and courage to practice speaking with foreigners. Thus, when learners know how to pronounce the words, they would feel self-confident to speak it out. Once their speaking skills are good enough, they probably will have more confidence.
In addition, use technologies can allow learners to learn second language whenever they want and anywhere they want to be. For instance, if we learn English only in school or cram school, sometimes our body condition is not good then we may feel sleepy; it will damage learners’ the learning condition. If learners have learning equipments, they can learn second language when they are in good condition.
Above are our groups opinion, thank you for your kind reading! ^^
Have a nice weekend!
Wish everyone's exam all pa pa! ^%^
Posted by Louise
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11/6/2004, 2:45 pm
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kacey0121
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Re: Learning of Pronunciation by group 6
Hi! This is group six!
Our members are: Kacey,Romina,Claire,Marina,K and Ryan.
1. Do you think pronunciation is important in learning a second/foreign language?
A: Our group members agree that pronunciation is important, since learning a language also consists not only of reading, writing, or listening skills, but also of speaking skills. To be able to communicate well, pronunciation is also an important element. Incorrect pronunciation may sometimes lead to misunderstandings. For example, Chinese students always have a hard time knowing the difference between a short vowel and a long vowel (ex: ship and sheep), since we do not have this kind of confusion in the Chinese language. As a conclusion, these second language learners may cause some misunderstanding.
Still, pronunciation is not the main objective of language learning. And in many cases, because language learners are more familiar with their own language pronunciation, they may no be able to pronounce a foreign sound correctly. So there are still many people who can read, write, listen and speak a second language very fluently, but not be able to pronounce some sounds correctly. They still can be seen as “successful language learners”.
2. Based on your learning experience, which pronunciation goal or goals do you think is/are more difficult to achieve? How do you think the use of technology can help you achieve your pronunciation goal(s)? Please give specific reasons and examples.
A: The sounds in Chinese are not relevantly the same as in English. We may have some sounds in Chinese pronunciation that doesn’t exist in English pronunciation and vice versa. This is one of the goals that are hard to achieve unless you are used to the language.
The use of technology is definitely a way to achieve out pronunciation goal. Technology provides tools to help us learn a new language efficiently. For example, by using “My English Tutor” we can improve our pronunciation using the play and record function. We can first listen to American teachers say the sentence, and then record our own. The panel bedside shows us how correctly we have pronounced the sentence by using a 100 point scale. Also by using computers and the internet, there are many other language learning activities such as the BBC language learning website. There is a section where you can learn about pronunciation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/multimedia/pron/index.shtml
In all, the use of technology really does help us achieve our pronunciation goal.
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11/6/2004, 9:02 pm
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pigdodoo
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 Re: Learning of Pronunciation
we are group 7. The members are Kelly, Ella, Stacey, and Caca.
1. Do you think pronunciation is important in learning a second/foreign language?
Learning a second language is sometimes very difficult in many parts. Having a good pronunciation is one of them. We cannot speak like the native-speaker unless we grew up in abroad. Otherwise, we will have our own accent. In our opinion, we do not think the pronunciation is very important. But we do not mean that we can speak the second language totally wrong. We think it is not important for us to speak like a native speaker. It is good enough for us if we can communicate with others effectively and without misunderstanding. However, it is also important to pronounce correctly and it is ok for the accents.
2. Based on your learning experience, which pronunciation goal or goals do you think is/are more difficult to achieve? How do you think the use of technology can help you achieve your pronunciation goal(s)? Please give specific reasons and examples.
Through my learning experience, I think that the most difficult goal of pronunciation is speaking like a native speaker. That is, the accuracy of pronunciation. One of my friends had an experience of talking to her foreign friend. Her foreign friend found that she said the word “plan” and “plane” in the same way and he told her that those words could be very confusing for the foreigners. However, my friend did not think it is important to make clear difference of those words. Because those words just sound alike and it is hard for us to pronounce them perfectly. Since we are not the native English-speaker, it is very difficult for us to speak just like them. There is nothing to do with the accent. The matter is that we have different pronunciation system from the foreigners. I think the only thing that the technology can help is giving us listening training. We can listen to the CDs, News, and programs from a native speaker and we can imitate them. We listen to the native English more often, we can know how they pronounce the words and sentences. Only had we tried to speak like a native speaker, we can improve our accuracy of pronunciation.
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11/7/2004, 1:41 pm
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Rolf99
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Re: Learning of Pronunciation
Group 8.
Charlotte, Rolf, Erica, Maureen, Fanny
1.Do you think pronunciation is important in learning a second/foreign language?
Yes, we think it is very important in learning a second/foreign language. It is because that in most cases, pronunciation is the main fact to decide if a conversation is successful or not since the meanings you convey will be completely different if you pronounce your words wrong. Your pronunciation decides the effectiveness of your speech mostly. Also, pronunciation are often will be judged to see if you learn the target language well or not. If your pronunciation is poor, people may not consider you are an advanced learn though you may have learned the languages very well and for many years. So pronouncing your target language well, you could be recognized as a high level learner, and could enhance your self-confidence, therefore fostering your interests in learning the language. So we think pronunciation is very important to learners in learning a second/foreign language.
2) Based on your learning experience, which pronunciation goal or goals do you think is/are more difficult to achieve? How do you think the use of technology can help you achieve your pronunciation goal(s)? Please give specific reasons and examples.
To speak the target language with a native-speaker like accent is most language learners’ ideal goal, but it’s also the most difficult part of language learning. Different languages have their own unique pronunciation, thus the points of articulation are diverse, too. For example, there is no retroflexion in Japanese and as a result it’s difficult for most Japanese to pronounce the sounds of l and r. Some Taiwanese do have the same bottleneck since they also rarely pronounce retroflexion.
According to the reasons above, we can conclude that to utilize the correct articulators and methods plays an important role in language learning. As the old saying goes, "To acquit oneself well of one's task, one must first sharpen one's tools." If we can clearly know with which parts of articulation and method to pronounce a certain word or letter, it must be much efficient in achieving or at least approaching the native-speaker like accent. The website, Sounds of English (http://www.soundsofenglish.org), assists English learns in English pronunciation with detailed descriptions of how to make some sounds and plain graphic formats. With the pictures of the inside of our mouth, we can definitely recognize which articulators help us to make the sounds. In case some people think the pictures of the inside of the mouth are abstract, this website also provide close-up facial photos that expose how the mouth looks when we say sounds.
Except pronunciation courses, the website, “Sounds of English”, also has the training for listening. It divides its listening training into three items: English word stress, English sentence stress and intonation, and Pronunciation exercises and activities. Each gives related explanation to its subject with specific charts and audio files. Learners can contrast the charts while listening.
With all these assistance above, it’s much easier for non English-native speakers to achieve the ideal goal of pronunciation.
Last edited by Rolf99, 11/8/2004, 9:31 am
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11/7/2004, 9:24 pm
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