Reflections in Passing #8: Pronunciation and Failure

This is yet another podcast-y post, unedited, off the top of my head, based on the lessons we can learn when things go wrong.


Some references you may want to consult:

• Field, J. (2014). Myth 3:Pronunciation teaching has to establish in the minds of language learners a set of distinct consonant and vowel sounds. In Grant, L. (2014). Pronunciation Myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. Michigan Press. (I reviewed his chapter here)
• Fraser, H (2010). Cognitive theory as a tool for teaching pronunciation. In: De Knop, S,  F. Boers, A. De Rycker (2010) Fostering Language Teaching Efficiency through Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter

BTW, here's J.K. Rowling's speech on the "fringe benefits of failure":

Pronunciation Integration #3: Word Stress & Word Formation

We all have our pet peeves as teachers. I have always dreaded international exam mock sessions, myself. I found those lessons to be endless, with my students filling in sheets and sheets of tasks piling up on my desk. Automatism in all its glory. (Mind you, I have tried for years to make exam preparation fun, significant, relevant, but when the moment for "exam rehearsal" came....it was just sheer torture for me). 

Anyway. One day, some six years ago, while browsing through exam sheets, something really, really obvious hit me: there is so much work on pronunciation we can do with our Use of English paper! I just realised this was my big chance to mix my two greatest sources of "suffering", and overcome this annoying feeling: I decided I would take those word formation exercises (Part 3 of FCE 2015 exam, for instance) to introduce Word Stress to my students. Oh, yes, English word stress! *sigh*

In other words, when we teach affixation (one of the many features of vocabulary), we can introduce, we should introduce, some features of word stress. In particular, we may plunge into the stress-fixing, -neutral or -attracting features of English suffixes. Affixation is one of the many links between pronunciation and vocabulary teaching, as was made explicit in a few pronunciation teaching books, like the volume edited by Jones (2016), and the beloved manual by Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (1996, 2010). 

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Important detour. A little bit of theory. Before we go any further, let's discuss  one of the ways in which we can define levels of stress/unstress in words. Cruttenden (2014) and Ortiz Lira's  "Word Stress and Sentence Accent" (1998)  define four levels of prominence that we can represent through inerlinear "tadpole" notation:

Levels of prominence. Based on Ortiz Lira (1998) and Cruttenden (2014) 

Tadpole interlinear notation.

(Note 1, elementary, Watson!: Stressed syllables are generally characterised by a change in pitch, and by generally being louder, and longer. These syllables obviously have a full and  strong vowel.)

(Note 2: Ortiz Lira (1998) has done a great job of explaining the differences between three tricky terms: stress, accent, and prominence. It is interesting to note that both him and Cruttenden include in their description a level of unstressed syllables treated as  "minor prominences"  only because of their full vowel quality, but not fully "prominent" in other ways ...though perhaps quantity may also be of interest here....)

This "word stress mess" that English is subject to is, in part, a result of the several linguistic "invasions" that have shaped the English language through history. There are two main tendencies operating in English word stress, one towards early stress (Germanic, Anglo-Saxon) and one towards late stress (Romanic, Latin). These two forces are always in tension, and etymology does not always help. As a result of this, in English we have secondary, and even, tertiary stresses early in the word when the main or primary stress falls on the last two or three syllables of the word: 

prəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃn, ˌɪnfəˈmeɪʃn

As you can see, there is also another important tendency in English  to avoid "stress clash" and keep an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables whenever possible. At times, as in "pronunciation" and "information", this alternation is pretty mathematical: 1234, 1234, but this is not always the case. (See Ortiz Lira 1998 for a comprehensive list of stress patterns in polysyllabic words). So English word stress is a mess, yes, but there are a few rules we can cling to.

Now, as it happens, we can, to a certain extent, predict word stress in derivations (note that inflected forms are not subject to changes in stress). We can divide suffixes into three groups:

So if we know the stress pattern in the root, we can have an idea as to where the primary and secondary stresses may fall once a certain suffix has been appended to the root by knowing the behaviour of the suffix and also considering the tendency for alternation. (For a extensive discussion of affixation and stress, check Cruttenden, 2014 and Teschner and Whitley, 2004, and one of the appendices in Ashton and Shepherd, 2012). 

When we approach the teaching of word formation in the classroom, then, we should help our learners to become familiar with the rules associated to each suffix. What is more, we also need to aid them in creating a sort of "auditory template" for different word stress patterns. The last part of this post addresses this last point.

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Around the same period of my "integration" discovery at secondary school, two of my colleagues were working in their Lab 3 courses with this great book series by the great Brita Haycraft, called English Aloud. Among many creative tasks, there are a few brilliant songs aimed at teaching word stress and suffixation, like the one I post below:

From: Haycraft, B.(1992)  English Aloud. Heinemann.

You can see the that Haycraft has included a "shSHsh..." pattern in the song (which is a sort of Bossa Nova, in fact!) to illustrate the stress pattern at the end of -ATION words. You can build our own battery of "noises" to "musicalise" the pattern. You can tap your feet on the floor, nod your head, clap hands or snap fingers to mark the different levels of stress. You can train your learners to hear the "beats" in their minds, the sort of "ringing effect" that stress has in our heads. 

You can also devise your own language, as Hancock (1996) has brilliantly done with his "DAda" language game (which we all love!). 

You can also resort to other Total Physical Response (TPR) activities to represent levels of stress, in what I like to call the "Equalizer game":

Credit: http://orig15.deviantart.net/7602/f/2011/054/f/0/f05bbbb5e1b31309a1a514c748f8ea5a-d26kux4.jpg

1.  Make a row of chairs, one for each syllable in the words you are going to produce. 
2.  Each student adopts the identity of a syllable, and stands in front of a chair. 
3. When you produce a polysyllabic word, students representing unstressed syllables should sit down, and those who are on "stressed" chairs, should stay up. 
4. Then each student produces the syllable that corresponds to them (and this makes a good opportunity to reflect on weak and strong syllables, by the way!)
5. All students produce the word in unison.

This game can also be used for peer-assessment for both perception and production skills: you can ask a student to read out a word, and you can get the students by the chairs to represent the pattern produced by this student. The student's version can be compared to the teacher's, or to an audio version of the file, and corrected, if necessary.

Apart from representing the words you have uttered, you can work on melody-to-word perception by providing students with lists of words to be associated to certain patterns. You can hum or DAda word stress patterns for students to fill with actual words, so a possible task question could be:

Visual reinforcement and manipulation of objects tends to be very helpful as well to make these features "tangible". Many of you may be familiar with Judy Gilbert's "rubber band" technique to mark vowel length, which is useful to mark stress in some contexts (careful with pre-fortis clipping, though!). You can use the "tadpole" notation, or consider other ways of graphically illustrating stress patterns in words, such as plasticine balls or bars, or  an abacus:

Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Abacus_34437.jpg

If you are feeling insecure about your own placement of stress as a teacher (no worries! we all feel that way!), you can use the recordings in the two most popular pronunciation dictionaries (LPD or EPD), or any online dictionary with sound recordings, for that matter. Forvo and YouGlish may also come in useful, though you may need to do some fact-checking first.

Finally, there are many songs in English that exploit rhyme with different suffixes, and you can also use them to teach word stress, since they can contribute to the building of auditory memory or images of these patterns. One of the most entertaining songs I have found is "When you are Old", by Tom Lehrer, very useful to discuss -ity endings:

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These are some basic ideas to integrate the teaching of word stress to the introduction of word formation patterns in the English lesson. I hardly need to stress the importance of word stress, but if you need convincing, Gilbert (2008) has included this wonderful quote in her booklet on her Prosody Pyramid approach:

The stress pattern of a polysyllabic word is a very important identifying feature of the word . . . We store words under stress patterns . . . And we find it difficult to interpret an utterance in which a word is pronounced with the wrong stress pattern – we begin to “look up” possible words under this wrong stress pattern. (Brown 1990:51 as cited in Gilbert 2008)

Checking a word formation activity from an international exam mock in your class may turn out to be a fantastic opportunity to do pronunciation work, so I hope you, like me, will find a way out of boredom or fear by trying these tasks with your students!.

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A Note on References: If you wish to learn more about the books I have referred to, click on all the authors' names on this post. The only material I do not have a link to is:

Ortiz Lira, Héctor (1998). Word Stress and Sentence Accent. Monografías Temáticas No. 16. Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación. Santiago de Chile.

Book Review #3: Pronunciation Myths, edited by Linda Grant - Part 1

I am now back on my "commuting reading" mode, since by November my whole body hurts and I don't engage in those usual 45-minute long walks to work. I decided to make the journeys productive, so I got hold of the Kindle version of the book "Pronunciation Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teching", edited by Linda Grant, and wtih conributions from Donna Brinton, Tracey Derwing and Murray Muro, John Field, Judy Gilbert, John Murphy, Ron Thomson and Beth Zielinsky and Lynda Yates.

The book is structured around seven myths related to pronunciation teaching and learning, some of which sound all too familiar for my Argentinian context. The discussion of each myth is carried out through an adequate balance of personal anecdotes that illustrate the points in question, and what the research has found. Each chapter also presents a number of practical tasks or advice to deal with the matters described.

In this review, I would like to briefly comment on each myth/chapter, and add my own humble take on what is said, and how it relates to my context.

As usual, I will piece this review into parts for your (and my!) sake!

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A few comments: this volume is mostly written by researchers who have done a lot of work in English in an L2 environment, that is, many of the experiences shared refer to students who learn English in instructional settings and have to use English outside the classroom. At times, there are explicit references to non-L2 environments, but I think it is important to keep this in mind when reading the book. 

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Prologue, by Linda Grant

Grant discusses four interesting aspects of pronunciation teaching and learning as part of the prologue. The first part discusses the last four decades of pronunciation teaching, reviewing some of the tenets identifying different movements, such as audiolingualism, and communicative language teaching, all ascribing different roles and goals to pronunciation teaching in L2. Grant claims that current approaches draw from both traditions mentioned in terms of techniques and goals, and discusses the need for integration of pronunciation work to other areas of the curriculum.  The author describes a shift from concern with native-likeness to intelligibility, and the separation of ideas of accentedness from those of intelligibility, as two different phenomena, also separated from degrees of comprehensibility, based on the research by Derwing and Munro. A very interesting addition to this discussion is the explicit acknowledgement of the listener in this process of interaction.

The second aspect that Grant reviews in her prologue includes the definition and scope of pronunciation, based on Fraser's (2001) contribution, which establishes three categories: peripheral and global features, suprasegmentals and segmentals. The review of these features includes references to research and published materials that describe the complexity of these categories, and the difficulties in language teaching when it comes to the selection of features to teach. 

I particularly enjoyed the "bulls-eye" analogy: 

"in the circle or ring around the eye are all of the acceptable variants of the target sound as they occur in spoken English. So variants diverge from the target more than others, but all of the sounds falling within that first circle are acceptable pronunciations" (Grant, 2014)

Through this comparison, I think many things can be encompassed, and I celebrate Grant's mention of allophonic variants, since these appear to be neglected in pronunciation books, and after all, it is the production of allophones which in fact allows learners to leave the "ideal", "isolated" phoneme and place it around others, to ease co-articulation and thus, together with phonemic processes of connected speech, to produce fluent speech. The comparison with the bulls-eye also goes beyond segment into the production of words, and the variations from "citation forms" to other forms in real speech (in the "jungle", as Cauldwell, 2013 rightly claims!). 

The next feature described in Grant's prologue is related to the levels of pronunciation teaching: motor or physical, perceptual, cognitive and psycho-social. I found this classification so neat and so true, and I can't help thinking that it is the psycho-social that really defines what my students end up reaching. So much to think about!

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Myth 1, debunked by Tracey Derwing and Murray Munro: "Once you have been speaking a second language for years, it's too late to change your pronunciation"

This chapter discusses issues of fossilization. Some interesting remarks that the authors make include the fact that this phenonmenon is not only restricted to L2, as it can happen in L1 with a few specific linguistic forms. 

Munro and Derwing begin by analysing some of the reasons pronunciation work is not (effectively) addressed in the lesson: a) the belief that explicit instruction cannot possibly be effective; b) the influence of communicative language teaching tenets, that leave learners to their own devices when it comes to pronunciation; c) lack of training in pronunciation teaching. 

Regarding the first reason, the authors quote research findings that prove that explicit instruction does make a difference in learners' performance. These studies appear as a response to the claim that most pronunciation changes are to be made during the first year of residency in the foreign country (remember that this is an English as L2 context), as this is the period where fossilization could become decisive.

A very interesting study reported is that of Derwing, Munro and Wiebe (1998), in which three groups of learners received differentiated instruction: 1) suprasegmental; 2) segmental; 3) no training. The first group rated higher in fluency and comprehensibility, but got no improvement in accent ratings. The chart below by Derwing and Munro (in Grant, 2014) discusses the dimensions for L2 evaluation that they propose:

Derwing & Munro (in Grant, 2014)

One of the most interesting features, I believe, that these authors address is the interdependence of these variables. In my context I struggle with advanced students who could rate perhaps high in accentedness and still render unintelligible speech. I also see fluency problems in advanced students, even when their control over segments appears to be pretty native-like. As a pronunciation instructor, I do wonder at times whether I may be overlooking some of these aspects in my teaching of pronunciation for speaking and reading...especially since my teaching context values accentedness as a goal over perhaps other variables....

Another interesting question that the authors address is related to what makes pronunciation instruction effective.  Apart from the usual perception-production relation already reported in the research, the authors highlight the proper selection of features to teach, following an intelligibility criterion, and they also make a very important point of corrective feedback. This may not come as a surprise to those of us who have been doing this for years, but it is clear to me that correction may be seen as many teachers as an "intrusion" into learner space. This is, I guess, because of the physical nature of pronunciation, whereas all other skills that can be corrected "on paper" do not seem to suffer the same fate. Most teachers would not object to picking a red pen or pencil and giving corrective feedback on the page. This opens up a whole new debate, of course, when it comes to feedback on something which is so physical and so personal as one's accent (worth a million blog posts!)...

Another study included in this chapter was related to student success in de-fossilising speech towards better comprehensibility and intelligibility, even after a long time of residence (10 years, even) in the foreign country.

This chapter finishes with a few suggestions. I would like to quote a very interesting point made by the authors to shed light on what they propose to solve this issue:

"years of input from their (L2) own speech patterns contributes to fossilization because the learners come to establish their own perceptual categories for segments and for prosodic phenomena. These deeply engrained representations make it difficult to change pronunciation patterns" (Derwing & Munro in Grant, 2014)

The first thing these researchers believe should be done in the classroom is, precisely, draw students' attention of their own version versus other more intelligible forms, and train their perception. This is a key aspect of what we do in Lab 1 at College, as we need to teach students to "de-automatise", "de-fossilize", and "un-learn" past habits and targets towards new perceptual and also motor habits. It's indeed a "painful" process, and at times tinted by psycho-social aspects as well. Quite a challenge, methinks!

The second invitation the authors make is, of course, give explicit corrective feedback, not only from teachers, but also from peers. Another suggestion in the conclusion includes choosing the right focus, deciding on pronunciation priorities based on the course and students being taught (which I have addressed in these posts on pronunciation goals: part 1, part 2). One way of approaching this includes considering the relative functional load of pronunciation features, based on the list of criteria drawn by Catford (1987). The next tip for effective pronunciation instruction relates to the use of authentic language over focus on citation forms, and working both on shadowing and mirroring techniques. The use of technology is also put forward, though the presence of the teacher as a judicious guide and feedback-provider needs to be highlighted whenever technological resources appear. The last piece of advice by Derwing and Munro warns teachers against the presence of early fossilization, that is, teachers need to act before fossilization has a chance to seize our students!

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Hope you have found these comments useful, and interesting.

The next posts will review the chapters that follow. Stay tuned!

Talk like Hawking: Teaching with a synthetic voice

Hiya! I have been pretty busy and also a bit disappointed in life lately (soo dramatic!), but blogging has always been good medicine, so I'm back! 

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I have always found voice matters interesting, and I do pay a lot of attention to people's voices in general. They have the power of generating feelings, immediate gut feelings, in me. 

For many years, I was concerned about my own voice, as it would invariably become hoarse and then turn to a whisper at least twice or three times a year. I was teaching over 55 periods a week and as we all know, our teaching activity is a 100% dependent on our voice (there's a limit to emergency video sessions one can plan when your voice's "on the blink"!). So I was basically "killing my voice softly".

Things changed for the better when I started training in vocal technique, and I will always be grateful to Carlos and Liliana at Instituto de la Voz for having saved me from potential hiatus and nodule problems. And I have now got the huge responsibility of passing on these techniques and voice care tips to my teacher trainees, which I try to do on a regular basis. 

Now. This whole babble is related to today's blog post, since in spite of all my care, my voice was gone yesterday due to an irritating bout of flu or something (and the winter temperatures hitting our country like we haven't seen for a number of years!). With several classes a day to teach, all pronunciation-related, how do you keep going?

Well, the obvious answer is: "You don't. You go home, you see a doctor, you get some rest for a few days till you recover". And that would be the right answer. But it's not always possible. So here's what I did yesterday.

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Teaching Phonetics the Hawking-style

We are all familiar with Stephen Hawking. We all know what a miracle it is that he can share all his wisdom and knowledge with us through a computer. Therefore, I used him as an inspiration to try to teach my class without having to strain my voice.

So here's what I have done:

1) I typed part of my lecture at home, on my tablet (It runs an Android Kit Kat operating system).

2) I downloaded the following app: Talk, and selected English (GB) as the output voice. (I was in a bit of a hurry, so this is the first app that worked for me, but I will be comparing it with others below)

3) I tried the app out, and noticed that to make it less "robotic", I had to "teach" the system to read the way I wanted it to read. That is, I had to input extra punctuation marks, such as "" and ; to allow the machine to chunk units apart or produce some basic intonation patterns which would allow my audience to follow more clearly.  I also had to simplify my clauses and exploit thematic marking on the text to make sure my synthetic voice would signpost topics and paratones more clearly to my students.

4) I gave my tablet Internet access via my phone, using it as a router, since this app needs a working connection, and of course, I connected my tablet to my portable speakers.

The immediate result? Giggles, of course! It was fun. I got called "Marina Hawking". But it was, of course, not the same as being able to respond to students' queries in real time. I eventually had to replace the use of my tablet for the whiteboard when I needed to reply to students' queries on the spot. 

I wanted to brag and I finished my lesson by typing in "That's all, folks!", but the awful rendering by the system (giving "folks" a separate IP and using a fall) spoiled all the fun! (Try it!)

However, I was teaching a theoretical class, so the app did the trick. I had a Lab lesson right afterwards, and it was really difficult to succeed in this way. I was not in a position to deliver feedback on the spot, since obviously, my app would not read IPA symbols, and the need for synchronous comments while the student is reading out, or speaking, does not match my typing speed. In this particular case, gestures and the whiteboard did the job. Sort of. My teacher assistant allowed the class to happen, to be honest!

(Had I had a data projector, I would have projected the text my students were reading, and I would have highlighted their slips and mistakes on the spot, to allow them to at least see what I was trying to comment on! I could have also projected some vids and audio files from some of the pronunciation apps I reviewed in the past.)

So all in all, a text-to-speech act may save the day, but you defo need to take care of yourself and try to get your voice back asap!

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Free Text-to-Speech Apps

After yesterday's experience and while resting in bed, I decided to review a few other apps that may do the job nicely.

App 1: Talk

App 2: Type and Speak 

App 3: Easy Text to Speech

(I will review them together, as they are very similar and use the same voice database. The same text was read by both apps identically, and with the same voice. They only differ in their interface.)

• These apps allow you to paste your text, or type it straightaway, and play it out. (Easy Text to Speech does not require any text-pasting, it just reads from your clipboard)
• You are able to choose from a long list of languages and accents.
• You can export or save your audio file.
• You need an active data or Internet connection.
• Tip! You need to "overpunctuate" your text to avoid a robotic output.

App 4: IVONA Text-to-Speech

This application uses its own voice database. You choose an accent, and a speaker, and you download the voice database for that voice in particular. I have chosen "Amy, UK English". So far, it sounds like the most natural reading option, because the voice is somehow soothing. 

It has not, of course, reached the state of artificial intelligence, in that it does not chunk my text the way I would like it to, and it does not always employ the intonation I expect, but it does recognise a few chunks and it appears to be able to recognise patterns of declination and paratones. 

This application also allows you to set your preferred pitch and speech rate for the chosen voice.

From what I have been able to make out, it does not need an active Internet connection. The voice data files I have downloaded were 150 MB, so I guess it should all be "there".

App 4: Google Translate (Web version)

Even though it is not a text-to-speech app but rather a translator, I cannot help feeling surprised about the changes that Google has introduced to their voices and to the whole reading aloud experience. It still sounds pretty "robotic", but there are some chunks of language that the system automatically recognises and reads out with some fixed intonation patterns. This creates an overall "weird" effect, since you hear upsteps, downsteps and sudden tone changes that make the whole text sound incohesive at times, but less so, if compared to what it was like last year!

BTW! I have found a tip on how to get Google to read out a phrase out for you. Type in this address in your browser:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=type your phrase here

And replace the bit that says "type your phrase here" with your own phrase, and voilá!

App 5: Bing Translator (Web version)

Much as I love Google, Microsoft has done a better job in terms of making their performance of read-out texts more natural. The Bing Translator option presents, in my humble opinion, a better chunking, and more natural selection of intonation patterns. 

See for yourself! Compare the output versions of a short paragraph of my lesson by both Google Translate and Bing Translator. Look out for some interesting word stress choices as well!

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Final remarks and a few extras...

• A full selection of Android text-to-speech apps is available here.
• For a list of other possible uses for text-to-speech for language learning, and ideas to aid students with special needs, you can check out these resources:
• ‘Text-to-speech Technology’: What Does It Offer to Foreign Language Learners?http://callej.org/journal/7-2/Kilickaya.html

• Digital Support for English Language Teachers: http://blog.texthelp.com/2014/12/digital-supports-english-language-learners/
• Speech Recognition for Learning: http://www.brainline.org/content/2010/12/speech-recognition-for-learning_pageall.html

Hope this blog post has been of use! It has certainly inspired me to start considering writing a paper on synthetic-speech talk and intonation!

Podcast-y post #2: Your accent, your Patronus - Yet another reflection in passing

Some time ago, I recorded my first podcast on accents and the"Voldemort effect". Here's another post/ramble, unedited, heart-to-mind, mind-to-heart talk, of this complex feature of attaining, sustaining, and more importantly, owning and loving your accent.

It was inspired by my teacher trainees in their last year, and the challenges I find while teaching these advanced students.

Usual pre - listening warnings (I am a teacher, after all, and I am my own teacher, as well):
☂I have mispronounced "Patronus". I should have probably pronounced it: /pə'trəʊnəs/. ☂Plus, there are a few choices in word stress, nucleus placement, tone and tonality which I would have made differently. ☂A few " dysfluencies" as well, sorry to say!

As usual, many of these posts emerge as "reflections in passing", almost through a "stream of consciousness" technique, and editing this post would have meant spoiling the spontaneity of this moment of realisation, and thought.

So here it goes. Hope you will enjoy it.

Analysing "errors": My "shame" list

When I first considered writing this blog, I thought of it as an answer to all my quandaries during my lessons. I was thinking of my students first, in fact. But now that I've embarked on this blogging adventure, I have noticed that I find my own processes fit for analysis, and that I can forge a better path for my students if I retrace my steps as a learner. Well. To be honest, I don't think I've ever stopped being a learner, myself.

This is why this blog post is going to address another of my obsessions with pronunciation which is part of my Evernote Moleskine notebook, travelling with me in my mobile and my bag. I humorously, and dramatically, call it....

The SHAME list!

Image credit:"De Paso Arte"

My "shame-on-you!" list includes a number of words that I have mispronounced systematically (or still do, at times!) (Now, I am not going to reveal his name, but there is a friend and great colleague of mine who also keeps one of these..... ;) ). This post, then, will examine some of my versions of these words, and an attempt at an explanation for my mispronunciations.

Warning! The words "error", "mistake", "mispronunciation" will appear a number of times in this post for the purposes of discussing some of the common views on this aspect of the learning process. I try to adopt a positive view towards error, try to be analytical towards it, and that is the spirit of this article.

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A bit of theory first. There are different categorisations of "mistakes" around, and one of the views on "error" I first found attractive while a student at College was that outlined by Julian Edge (1989), in his book  Mistakes and Correction. In a nutshell, what I particularly liked about it was this division between:

• slips: those "mistakes" made due to lack of proper attention, which, if pointed to, the student can self-correct.
• errors: those mistakes we make which include features that have been systematised by teachers but which have not yet been "internalised" or "appropriated" or "automatised" by us; 
• attempts: those mistakes which involve the student's experimentation with features that have not been taught, or the overapplication of rules into other contexts.

This leads me into another view that considers the source of error. This great article from Macquairie University explains this very neatly, and I would also like to make a point of some of these categories here:

• Transfer from L1 errors: we all know that we tend to interpret foreign sounds from the filter of our L1 phonology, and as I have discussed in previous posts, the closer to L1 we interpret a foreign sound to be, the more likely we will have more difficulty in learning it (Flege, 1987 and others). Many interlanguage mistakes, then, imply the production of an L1 sound for an L2 quality which we consider to be approximate, or just because it is the only quality we have "at our disposal".
• Spelling-to-Sound errors: these can be fully blamed on the irregular spelling of English (especially if the student uses a transparent, phonetic language as L1), and of course, you can then curse (or enjoy!) the history of English! (I've been reading a great book by David Crystal on this, highly recommended!). Students may merely apply an L1 sound to an L2 spelling looking similar to an L1 spelling, or interpret an English spelling he/she knows about into a context where in fact it is not associated to the sound in quesiton: bʌtcher for /ˈbʊtʃə /, for example.
• Hypercorrection errors: this consists in the overapplication of a rule that does not fit into a context the student believes it should apply to. My secondary school students, for example, apply the /ɪd/ ending in contexts with sibilants, through analogy of the third person singular suffix rule: [wotʃid] for /wɒtʃt/.
• Performance errors: this refers to the errors that may be "instilled" by the challenges of a particular task, that is, lack of weakening by some students when reading aloud, or overchunking when producing spontaneous speech, etc.

A note on another error-related issue. The transfer vs developmental debate: This is a very interesting way of looking at errors. As we have seen before, there are many common mistakes that reveal that the student is actively making hypotheses as to what the language "sounds like", and these cannot be truly seen as transfer/interference errors. At times we are so used to hearing some of these, that we fail to see that several mistakes are actually attempts towards a sound that may bring about difficulty. Take the sound /dʒ/, quite rarely at times used in Spanish as an allophone of /ʒ/ (Yes, another debate as to whether /ʒ/ can still be taken to be the phoneme used for <y, ll> spellings in Riverplate Spanish over [ʃ] or the other way round. Long story! No time to draw on this here!). The video of a local celeb, Susana Gimenez, shows different renderings of the word "you" and some (not all, though) have [dʒ]:

(Sorry about this!) Now. When our students say [ʃip] for "jeep", they are not necessarily transferring this from Spanish, as a true instance of transfer would probably be something like [xip]. This pronunciation which makes our students' rendering of "jeep" homophonous with "sheep" reveals that our learners feel this sound is different and approximate it to a quality they may be more familiar with.

A hypercorrection mistake in this respect may be our students' use of [ʒ] for /ʃ/, as when they say "shopping" as [ʒopin], for example. This is becoming a bit of a sociophonetic feature, as I can easily identify some features of the social background of those students who generally pronounce this this way.

OK. Back to my own errors, then. My own "shame list".

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 The horror! :p  List 1: [eɪ] for /æ/
The words below stayed fossilized in my interlanguage for a long time. They surely responded to my overapplication, hypercorrection of the /eɪ/ for "a" rule:

*eneɪmel, teɪpestry, eɪbbey (!)

for General British /ɪˈnæməl̩, i-,  ə-/, /ˈtæpɪstri, -ə-/, /ˈæbi /
(Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD) (Wells, 2008), English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD, 2011) edited by Hartman, Roach and Setter )

There was a sort-of famous song by a local rap band, here, called "Abbey Road". I guess I will have to blame them (ha!) for my serious mispronunciation of this placename while in London in 2010 (felt sooo ashamed!):

In the opposite direction, I remember having problems with the word apron, which I produced as [ˈæprən ] instead of /ˈeɪprən /, and [ˈæprɪkɒt ] for /ˈeɪprɪkɒt, -rə- /  .

List 3: Word Stress
Again, I guess some of these errors stem on either the hypercorrection of the Teutonic tendency towards early stress:  ˈcoincide,  inˈnovative or the overapplication of my perception of the French tendency towards late stress: maˈssage, misˈchief, emploˈyee . I could have also "fallen pray" to the influence of American English.
The proper word stress according to the cited versions of LPD and EPD goes:  /ˌkəʊɪnˈsaɪd, -ən- /, /ˈɪnəvətɪv, -veɪ-, ɪˈnəʊvətɪv / (Wells 2008 has an interesting poll on the pronunciation of this word!), /ˈmæsɑːʒ, -ɑːdʒ /, /ˈmɪstʃɪf / (EPD accepts /tʃi:f/) , /emˈplɔɪiː, ɪm-, əm-/. In this latter case, my own version is accepted /ˌemplɔɪˈiː/ but as the last entry in both pronunciation dictionaries.

List 4: [ʌ] for /ʊ/
Another case of hypercorrection in the words mʌstache, pʌssycat  for /məˈstɑːʃ, mu-/, /ˈpʊsikæt/. In the case of "moustache", American English influence may also be "to blame".
Many of my students also struggle with the word bʌtcher for /ˈbʊtʃə / and  cʌshion for | ˈkʊʃn̩ |.

List 5: Miscellaneous
A few other words I find myself at odds with, include: tournament, handkerchief, gauge, drawer, demise.
I was relieved to see in the dictionary that the first two words also accept my versions:  [ˈtɜːn ə mənt], [ˈhæŋkətʃi:f] and I guess my perceived "error" stemmed from making a spelling-to-sound connection. In the case of the second word, I believe it is the spelling that initially led me into an /i:/ sound.
My versions for the last three words: *[gɔ:dʒ][drɔ:ə][dəmi:z] for the words /ɡeɪdʒ/, /drɔː/, /dɪˈmaɪz /. I guess these three are mispronounced due to different reasons. In the case of "drawer", I thought it was a homophone of the "one who draws", so my analogy backfired here. For "gauge", I don't remember finding another <au> spelling being pronounced in this way and its etymology does not help me at all (I should maybe check the Phonology of Old French!?), so my knowledge of spelling-to-sound connections was used logically, I guess. In the case of demise, I guess it would probably have to do with the fact that the "-ise" ending is generally /aɪz/ in verbs, not nouns, where this ending is generally  /i:z/. So, in spite of applying the rule correctly, I have not pronounced it correctly (such is...English!)

Hope that some of these items of my "shame list" have helped you wonder about the source of your own mispronunciations! (At a very high level of obsession, you'll understand!)

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To err is human, and "native" speakers of English also engage in frequent pronunciation "errors", and these are reported in some very interesting articles. Some views are really extreme and defo beat my own personal passion, let me tell you!

"8 Pronunciation Errors that made the English language what it is today:" - The Guardian . HERE
"100 Most Often Mispronounced Words in English" HERE
"More than 80% British People Can't Speak Properly" HERE
"17 Everyday Words you may just be Mispronouncing" HERE

Any pronunciation pet-peeves out there? Post them on the "comments" box!