ASU Tesol Cert #6, Teach English Now! Second Language Listening, Speaking, and Pronunciation
Week 1 Basic Principles of Listening
Blending is a way to reduce two or more words so that the sound of the words run together. I remember my basketball coach would always say,
Yagottawanna! He said it so quickly it sounded like a single word. What was he trying to say? You have got to want it. What did he mean? That in order to win a game, or be successful at basketball, motivation was key.
A morphological reduction means a reduction on the level of word parts. And the most common example of this kind of reduction is a contraction. Contractions are definitely more common in speaking, and can sometimes be difficult for basic learners, who often need to hear each word individually. To illustrate, I will not is easier than I won't for some basic learners, because it is easier to hear and identify each separate word.
Pragmatic reductions are common also. These reductions are also used to increase the speed of conversation by simply leaving out already understood information. My two year old child doesn't say, daddy I would very much enjoy reading a book with you why do you snuggle me, but first, we must find my favorite blanket. Instead, he uses pragmatic reductions. And simply says, daddy read, snuggle, where's blanky?
Ellipses are similar to pragmatic reductions in that they also leave out entire words. But generally, they leave out a phrase in the middle of two thoughts and ask the listener to add in the missing details by once again predicting or relying on context. In writing, we commonly see an ellipses indicated by three dots to indicate that information is being passed over. For example, if someone said, next week...for sure. That seems like a simple sentence, but it is hard to know what will happen next week unless we have more information. Ellipses reduce or eliminates previously understood information, but only helps if you have that information.
Now, let's talk about paralinguistics, performance variables and types of oral discourse. These three are all related in that they demonstrate not variables that reduce language, but variables that add to the complexity of the listening experience.
paralinguistic 副语言 variables, paralinguistics means everything outside of what we normally think of as language. An unusual accent certainly can make things hard, as can stress and tone. Volume and speed can definitely affect understanding. And one huge difference maker, gestures can influence meaning too. Think about how many ways you can play with accent, tone, stress, and gestures to change the meaning of the sentence. paralinguistic elements: stress, tone, accent, Volume, rate of speech, gestures and even how you dress for a presentation.
performance variables: we refer to as repairs, and fillers. When you repair language, you often say things like, my gosh! I'm so sorry, I mean, or what I meant to say was. When you use fillers in the English language you often use words like, well. Or here's a word that barely even qualifies as a word, em..., redundancy
Types of oral discourse, monologue, a presentation, a lecture, a dialogue (a transactional and interactional dialogue).
Oral discourse David Noonan, for example, all the way back in 1991, identified two broad categories, monologues and dialogues. He demonstrated that monologues might include political speeches, lectures, and news reports. Dialogues, on the other hand, involved two or more parties and might be divided in the categories such as interactional and transactional. H Douglas Brown, in 2007, went even further by suggesting that monologues might be both planned or unplanned. And that unplanned monologues might be the trickiest for learners of language because unplanned monologues may feature more fillers, more redundancies saying the same thing more than once. Repeating yourself and adding unnecessary information and distracting information and stuff
regionalisms. In Australia, they say trolley, and in the United States, we say cart.
In England, they say biscuit, and in the United States, we say cracker. Crisps instead of potato chips.
socio-cultural context and cue's. Heady stuff.
Do you know how or when it is appropriate to cut someone off?
Week 2
Requests for clarification and elaboration (to request clarification or elaboration) , waiting to respond and taking mental notes, focusing your attention through repeat viewings, watching online talks or television shows, and using Cornell notes. Suspending or holding off on interrupting is sometimes a useful language learning strategy.
- please hold all questions until the end
- What do you mean by that
- I would love to know more about that
- excuse me I didn't understand what you meant there
- you say that again
In a bottom-up process, students are paying close attention to a particular detail, such as the speaker's tone or attitude. Whereas in a top down process, students are listening for big picture ideas and overall meaning, connecting these new ideas to previous knowledge.
The first time students listen, you might invite them to speak about what they know about the topic already, and then relax and simply pick up the main ideas. This kind of casual, relaxing kind of listening is what is often referred to as top-down processing. When learners listen the second time, you might write a number of questions on the board and tell them that you want them to listen for specific details. This kind of focused attention is a technique common to bottom-up processing. in a bottom-up process, you invite students to play close attention to a particular feature. Please pay attention to the speaker's gestures, please pay attention to tone. Pay attention to the speaker's attitude. In bottom-up processing, you're asking students to pay attention, to notice details. A sense quite similar to Mr. Tortoise's idea of intensive reading because you're looking at specific linguistic items within a listening activity and then you break it down. You might even call it intensive listening.
Conversely, in a top-down process, you might think of it as less intensive and more extensive. A top-down process is more casual, more global as learnings look for overall meanings and piece things together from previous knowledge. In top-down processing, you are seeking for the meaning of a single word. You are searching for the gist of an idea. You can invite students to do this by saying, so, what's this story all about? Why did the author write this story or this article? How is this article similar to other articles you have listened to?
Week 3-4 speaking
- classroom size
- five hour problem
- affective factors: affective factors are positive or negative emotions which influence your ability to speak. These might range from environmental considerations such as, not eating lunch, having a fight with a good friend. Or forgetting your visual aid when giving a presentation, to linguistic and academic factors. Such as, forgetting to study or not knowing how to pronounce a particular word.We humans are easily upset and often the smallest things can make a difference in changing how we feel and as a result how we behave?
- interlocutor 参加谈话者 effects: interlocutor effect for example, the interlocutor effect means that who you are speaking with can affect how you speak. In other words, some people can make you more nervous, more relaxed, more formal or more informal.
- the interaction: The interaction affect has to do how you change, how and what you say because of the real time questions and thoughts the other person or people who will share information back at you half. Have you ever lost your train of thought because someone said something right in the middle of your thought? That made you think of something else? That is the interaction affect, it is changing what and how you speak not only do you have to pay attention to your thinking. But when you interact with others you have to pay attention to what they're thinking as well.
- Imitative speaking
- Intensive speaking
- Responsive speaking
- interactive speaking ( turn-taking, interrupting, social cues such as politeness. And is subject to those pesky, effective, and socio-cultural factors we discussed such as the interlocutor and interactive effects)
Speakers are required to produce short segments of language that demonstrates grammatical, lexical or phonological accuracy.
silent period to denote how some learners simply don't speak at all. And many language professionals feel that it is okay to give learners a certain grace period. A certain amount of space to just listen, read, and learn English in a receptive rather than productive fashion. Getting students to open their mouths requires a particular skill, it requires a knowledge of language ego and your ability to help students relax and find their identity. make speaking easier through Questions, authentic language, feedback and impossible tasks.
Week 5 pronunciation
Pronunciation, while important,
is at least to some degree intrinsically tied to who someone is.
While it might be important to teach your learners different varieties of English
and different sounds, you don't need to get them to lose their accent completely.
The goal shouldn't be speaking like someone else, rather the goal should be
whether or not the accent interferes with intelligibility.
If people can understand you, your accents fine.
I like what Amy Tan says about second language learner accents.
She says that accents are a badge of honor and I completely believe that.
Only those who have studied a second language know just how hard it is.
And when I hear an accent I think of all the effort and
work my learners put into speaking a different language, and
I think learners should be proud of their accents.
It's just so beautiful.
phonemic symbols chart like the one created by Underhill.
Compare, identity, produce.
Minimal pairs are two words that are nearly identical except for the key sound. For example, red and wed, rake and wake, rich and which, and run and one.
Why are bough, though, enough, and through all pronounced differently if they have the same ending
Expressing opinion
https://www.coursera.org/learn/tesol-speaking/lecture/TsbL8/video-2-barriers-to-pronunciation
lexical elision: When I speak fast I drop e in elision when I say lexical elision. Lexical elision I almost eat that e completely
One of the unique phenomena of second language learning is that some people, well, retain an accent. There has been a lot of discussion over the last 100 years as to why some people attain high levels of proficiency, but still retain the sounds and rhythms of their first language, when they articulate speech. One example of someone with a high degree of language proficiency, yet with an accent that didn't quite fit in, is Joseph Conrad. You know that Joseph Conrad who wrote one of the most definitive books in English of all time, the Heart of Darkness? In fact, he was purported to have such a strong Polish accent that his own wife had difficulties understanding him. Now, let's think about this, was this a man that didn't know English well? Absolutely not! His language was pristine! It was amazing. I love that book, but for some reason, as the story goes, his accent remained.
Unfortunately, in society your accent may define how other people perceive you.
In fact, there is a belief that some accents are considered prestige.
Prestige accents.
A prestige accent means that the accent itself carries some sort of message.
Perhaps that'd be a smart, or beautiful, or otherwise, agreeable in some way.
Some people are often stereotyped according to accent.
And this can create problems for
how learners of a second language are perceived.
Several learners over my career,
recognizing that their accent was not a prestige accent have been
quite insistent that they wanted to remove their accent completely, that didn't want people to recognize them as being from their particular culture.
But the truth is that accents carry with them a psycho-social dynamic
that can be difficult for you as a teacher to navigate.
Is your job to remove an accent entirely so that learners feel that they fit in?
Is your job to allow them to keep their accent but make them more intelligible?
These are difficult questions to ask and difficult questions to answer and
prove even more that teaching language is quite simply a complex and difficult task and worthy of serious thought and reflection.
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I think Joseph Conrad kept his polish accent because he couldn't speak English. I want to speak perfect English, but I couldn't do it. As a Chinese, I couldn't pronounce a few sounds no matter how hard I try: for example, vine vs. wine, sat vs. set, fun vs fan, etc.
Accent is the problem that has troubled me all the time. ONLY NOW I am very relieved to hear, I quote from our lecture, "She says that accents are a badge of honor and I completely believe that. Only those who have studied a second language know just how hard it is."
Although I can design the supposed pronunciation moment, it is not an authentic lesson plan. It is because it is beyond my ability. So I would like to skip this section and I hope I can get pass from peer review. Even our teaches design such homework impossible to a non-native speaker. So much for authenticity :)
Language learning involves risks. Every foreign language learner is ridiculed for their poor foreign language skills. To speak and to write in a foreign language is like constantly challenging our fragile ego and ask one question: could I have the courage to face and admit my own shortcoming?
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1. What is the age of the students you are planning this listening passage for?
Chinese High school students
2. Describe your students' language proficiency.
Their English learning starts in elementary school.
3. List the title and speaker(s) or characters (if fiction) of the listening.
Chinese Step Empress who Disappeared from History | Step Empress Ulnara (Nara/Ruyi)
4. Discuss why you think this listening would be appropriate for your learners.
This is an extremely popular drama called The story of Ruyi: 如懿传 乌拉那拉氏 為乾隆生育三個孩子卻「被」消失. This 6 minutes of history speaking in English will connect English with Chinese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRJUk1NYync
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlCtb_7zGeg
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