What ’s Phonetics Got to Do with Language Teaching?
DISCUSSION
The tutoring project was very time consuming and stressful for me to organize as well as for those participants paired with volunteers who didn’t keep appointments. However, the novice teachers reported that it was a worthwhile activity.
The journal data show us that the novice teachers in just a few cases demonstrate good understanding of the KAL regarding phonetics and phonology that had been a fundamental component of their introductory linguistic course. The participants also did not assimilate well the pedagogical recommendations for applying this knowledge in the classroom. In general, the majority of participants could be said to demonstrate only the beginnings of understanding. Unfortunately, the number of participants that demonstrated good understanding was equaled in number by those that demonstrated a total lack of assimilation of the material. From the responses to question #1, dealing with the identification of the source of problems for English L1 speakers, we can see that the outstanding participants demonstrated an appreciation for the differences in pronunciation between English and Spanish vowels and the fact that the Spanish occlusives are not aspirated as the English ones are. Diphthongs are apparently another concept that was made salient to these novice teachers since we spent the better part of two weeks detailing the Spanish ones and comparing them to their English counterparts. Prosodic stress also came through in at least one of the participants’ spontaneous recalls as important to the task of helping a beginning learner with pronunciation. This could also be attributed to the fact that accentuation receives much attention in several of the participants’ other classes. In addition, one participant demonstrated the ability to distinguish between the very different sounds represented by the orthographic ‘r’ and ‘d’ in Spanish and English that we mentioned in the analysis of this response.
With respect to question #2, the one about older learners, the fact that only one participant assimilated part of the argument that the researcher presented is not surprising given that this was not material presented in the first semester’s textbook when the focus was on KAL nor was it a principal part of the second semester’s text when the focus was more on second language acquisition and processing instruction. The brief mention that this topic received in the textbook provided a springboard for me to bring in supplementary information about brain development and to stress throughout the course that L1 and L2 learning are different in several respects. We did not have time to delve deeply into the topic nor examine the theories regarding critical versus sensitive period.
Question #3, regarding when pronunciation should be taught, yielded results, or lack thereof, that again are not surprising given that we did not have time to examine the most current research on neuron specialization. The fact that only one participant captured the argument about phonemic awareness is probably due to a lack of focus on the topic in either of the texts and that I had to interject this concept into all the other KAL the participants needed to assimilate during the course of two semesters.
Question #4, having to do with how to teach pronunciation, also yielded unimpressive results given that only three participants assimilated my message that pronunciation should be given constant attention, yet keeping in mind the desire to create a low anxiety classroom, and without recurring to the technical language we had employed as part of the introductory course. The textbook we used, although providing an excellent model to follow for creating processing instruction for making salient aspects of syntax and morphology, does not attempt to do the same for phonology. We spent one half hour of one fifty-minute class creating as a group some exercises to make salient the contrasting aspects of Spanish and English phonology. We brainstormed Spanish words that could be illustrated concretely and that would serve as models to contrast the sounds of Spanish that are problematic to L1 English speakers. It was a very challenging activity and few participants really enjoyed the challenge; however, for those who missed class that day or had something else on their mind, the opportunity to apply the strategy of processing instruction to phonology was lost. Again, to have assimilated the concept that one does not use the terminology of the linguistics classroom with beginning learners, nor does one spend all available class time explaining in detail the mechanical production of sound, the participants had to have attended faithfully all classes and to have been paying attention at all times during class since this was a concept that I had to interject independently because it was not included in the formal course materials.
Lastly, with respect to question #5, regarding the value of participating in the tutoring project, I consider this question to be the most important in determining whether the teachers-in-training saw the relevance of including phonetics and phonology in their preparation to become teachers. There was one mention of describing how a sound is physically made to help a beginner and how the fact that it did help was a surprise to the participant. In addition, another participant mentions advising the tutee to notice “where she felt the sound,” which was encouraging to me although very non-specific. All the participants seemed to recognize the value of the tutoring project and its relevance to their future careers even if they were not able to support the affective evaluation with language that demonstrated their KAL. There were allusions made to the KAL presented as part of their coursework in the responses to this question, but only the researcher who could guess at the thoughts the participants were trying to convey would be likely to recognize their attempts to express KAL.
If we compare the list of concepts that the participants did notice to the topics outlined in the description of the study (point and mode of articulation, voiced versus voiceless sounds, vowels and consonants, semi-vowels and semi-consonants, accentuation, rhythm and intonation, assimilation of /n/ to the point, mode and sonority of the following consonant, fricativization of certain intervocalic occlusives, assimilation of voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ to a successive voiced consonant producing the voiced allophone [z], reinforcement of semi-consonants converting them to occlusives and regional variation), we see that really very few of the concepts came through in the participants’ spontaneous discussions. Since the spontaneous discussions were ‘choreographed’ to include topics that I assumed would elicit the language that would clearly demonstrate the participants’ knowledge of the concepts, I realize that my efforts to supplement existing materials with information that would make phonetics and phonology more relevant to the teachers-in-training was but marginally successful. Even the most outstanding participants were not convincing in demonstrating that they actually understood even a limited number of basic phonetic processes, much less the phonologic processes associated with spontaneous and rapid speech. However, the outcomes in this respect were better than they had been before reorganizing the courses and including the pronunciation-tutoring project.
