我就喜歡這樣的妳

Due to the spread out of CoronaVirus, we have the chance to access online teaching or online workshop. I had joined a few workshops online which were really good, and as long as we have a steady quality of Internet, we can connect to the world. 

I joined one workshop and the topic is, "The Power of Pronunciation" 

 The outline of the workshop

1. ONLINE APP: CLICKMEETING

2. STORY - CONNECTED SPEECH - PRACTICAL IDEAS - FINAL THOUGHTS 

Notes of the workshop 

 STORY 1 

A Chinese sentence, “Wo xiang qu tian an men guang chang" 

Feedback: why the taxi driver can't understand the sentence? Due to the TONE

Moral meaning - The importance of pronunciation 

  STORY 2 

A Foreigner took the local airline in China. When the flight attendant made an announcement in English, his mother can't quite understand the meaning and got confused sometimes? 

Why foreigners can't get the flight attendant even though he or she is speaking English?  Due to the Robot tone. 

Moral meaning: teachers spent too much time on vocabularies (60%) and Grammar (35%), and they only used a few time on pronunciation (5%)

Pronunciation is essential to be understood but it can be ignore in teaching.

Why pronunciation is less easy to be understood?

1. Vocabulary – based teaching method: pronunciation should be taught in authentic material which means we should use real reading input while teaching pronunciation. Take Pete the Cat for an example. It’s a nice series that taught vocabularies and pronunciation. Also, Dr. Seuss book is a top model for teaching pronunciation.

2. L1 influence (mother tongue): the following examples show how great the first language has influence the second language.

For example, we have different sentence structure in different languages. As for English, Chinese, and French, they use S V O sentence structure; meanwhile, in Japanese, Korean and Indian, they use S O V sentence structure.  In addition, Grammar and Syntax which included tenses, pronouns, subject and Verb agreement and time markers are usually make students confused.

Take individual sounds for another example. In Chinese, we don’t have the sounds like “v, b, p, ᴈ, ծ, դ, and Ө” so that we need more practice in these sounds.

First of all, students must have the ability to tell the different of two similar sounds, then they can acquire new sounds. Secondly, authentic input is very important as well. Teacher can introduce a picture book and invite students to circle the sound you want to teach. Then, we can do read along or read aloud activity. Finally, teacher can design some kinesthetic activity with reading practice in the end.

3. Prosody influence

Prosody, or the tune and rhythm of speech, affects the interpretation and comprehension of sentences. In general, prosodic boundaries usually influence attachment decisions, as they are seen to reflect syntactic structure, while pitch accents relate to the focus and information structure of a sentence. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00150.x )

Stress & Rhyme vs Intonation are totally two difference things.

  Stress timed :  _______  __ __  ________ ( English) 

           Syllable timed : __ __ __ __ __ (Chinese ) 

 Linguistic map 

( photo credit : https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/post/173330255968/rythmic-patterns-isochrony-stress-timed

 more examples of stress timed language : English as an example 

What do you see?  ( 2 stress 

apples and oranges ( 2 stress : some sounds disappeared in a sentencd 

I am eating an apple. ( Ә mi tiդә nӕpel)

 connected speech - sound foundation 

1. visual aids : diferent size of blocks 

2. Jazz chants are fantastic for feeling the stress of Enlish

Jazz chant by carolyn Graham https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_nPUuPryCs

3, Kinethetic movement - using tai chi to teach Ss rhythm  "what are you doing?"

4. Focus on stress and rhythm : teach sentence or lexical chunks and let your students to find the beat by using different senses. ( Exposure is the key.)

For example, Hum the sentence and let students repeat the hum and then add words as you did with blocks.