Directions in Self-Access Language Learning

Developing Pronunciation Skills through Self-Access Learning

CHAPTER 9 Developing Pronunciation Skills through Self-Access Learning Pamela Rogerson-Revell and Lindsay Miller, Department of English, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong INTRODUCTION Interest continues to grow in creating materials to promote independent learning and in developing self-access centres (SAC). There are many examples of successful SACs around the world (Harding-Esch 1982; Dickinson 1987; Riley et al. 1989; Sheerin 1989; Miller 1992). The decision of what type of system to use in the SAC (Miller and RogersonRevell 1993) will determine the type of material and the way in which the material is classified, organized and presented for the learner to use. With the receptive skills: reading and listening there are fewer problems in developing and organizing the material than there are with the productive skills: speaking and writing. This paper looks at some of the considerations that have to be made in helping learners to develop their pronunciation skills through self-access. This paper first clarifies what is meant by 'pronunciation' and gives some brief background to the development of pronunciation teaching and learning. Then it describes some materials and activities for the development of pronunciation learning strategies and provides a guide to some of the most popular pronunciation teaching materials. Finally, some recommendations are made for setting up pronunciation in a SAC. DEFINING TERMS In this paper 'pronunciation' is used to refer to a broad range of phonological features including segmentals, suprasegmentals and voice quality features which are also referred to as voice-setting features (Pennington and Richards 1986), voice quality settings (Laver 1980) and paralinguistic features (Brown 1977). 90 Pamela Rogerson Revell and Lindsay Miller BACKGROUND TO PRONUNCIATION TEACHING From the 1940s to the mid 1960s, pronunciatIOn teaching was considered an important component of English language teaching, both through the audio-lingual and the situational teaching methodologies. Pronunciation teaching emphasized accuracy at the segmental level, for example, minimal paIrS practice and the repetition of controlled dwlogues. During the 1970s, with the development of the 'communicative' approach , pronunciation teaching went out of favour, partly because the emphasis shifted to 'communication' rather than ,lccuracy, and partly because teachers no longer knew how to teach pronunciation as part of communicative language learning. The 1980s saw a growth of research showing the significance of pronunciation as a tool for communication, particularly at the level of interaction (Brown and Yule 1983). Currently, there seems to be a growing awareness by teachers and materials writers of the importance of pronunciation and this has led to a renewed interest in this area. However, there seems to have been httle systematic attempt to promote a holistic, 'top-down' approach to pronunciation teaching; judging from the majority of current materials available. For example, even seemingly 'communicative' cour~es like the Headway Pronunciation series (Bowler and Cunningham 1991), although containing some useful exercises on stress, rhythm and intonation, are still predominantly 'segmental' in their approach. There has now been a shift towards learner-centredness in language teachmg and learning which emphasizes the role of the learner as active participant rather than passive recipient. This trend, together with the renewed interest in pronunciation has led to an interest in how pronunciation skills can be developed through independent learning strategies. MATERIALS AND ACTIVITIES This section looks at some of the considerations that have to be made when developing pronunciation materials and activitIes for self-access. Pronunciation learning strategies exist at different levels, these are: awareness, explanation, recognition, production, and self-correction. The first task is to raise learners' awareness of how pronunciation affects communication. Pronunciation can affect communication at two levels: global and specific. The global level is when the learner is aware that people speak English differently in different situations. The specific level is when the learner is consciously aware of the particular type of errors that can be made at both the segmental and prosodic levels. " We can begin 10 sensili~e learners 10 Ihe importance of good pronunciation by encouraging them 10 make decisions about the steps they will take to overcome pronunciation diffkulties they may have (Fig. I). Ellis and Sindair (1989) and Kenworthy (t 987) arc twO sources from which to gather ideas about the type of questions that could go into a general pronunciation questionnaire. Figure 2 is a sllor! example of such 3 questionnaire. As can be seen from the questionnaire, the first three questions deal with pronunciation 31 the segmental level, the nexl three ask questions about...