Brief review: Manchester Voices exhibition

This week I got my PhD confirmation (that is, I passed my first year, which means that I am now a confirmed PhD candidate at York, yay!), and I rewarded myself with a short trip to Manchester, to see the Manchester Voices exhibition (because my love for accents still is alive and kicking!). I will be reporting on what I have seen, very briefly, and informally. (And as usual, any misunderstanding or error is entirely my own!)

This exhibition stems from the Manchester Voices research project on "the accents, dialects and people of Greater Manchester" (see webpage link above), and it has been developed by Dr. Rob Drummond and Dr. Erin Carrie, from Manchester Metropolitan Uni.

The exhibition can be found in the very centre of the Manchester Central Library, and it consists of a huge panel that has as its major division the different boroughs of Greater Manchester: Bury, Bolton, Manchester,  Oldham, Wigan, Tratford, Tameside, Stockport, Rochdale, and Salford.  The exhibition is based on a collection of views in the form of video interviews, whose snippets you can access by scanning the QR codes in the poster with your phone. 

Note: The current division and unification of Greater Manchester as it is is quite recent (1974, if I understood correctly), and this historical division that included parts of Cheshire, and Lancashire, for example, still sports a great deal of dialectal, and accent variation, as the exhibition fantastically attests. 

Tip! If you make it to the exhibition, make sure you have your headphones ready, a QR reading app, and enough battery life (the library's got you covered with the Wifi). I must have stayed there reading the poster and watching snippets for at least a full hour, if not longer!

(Forgive the quality of the pics!)

I understand that the interviews were collected through a direct recruitment method. In late August and early September 2016, participants were invited to get into a van parked in central areas in each borough, and they were asked questions by a computer. Some of the questions are related to how they see their own accent and dialect, how representative they believe their dialect is of where they are from, and of what they are and do. Other questions invited them to offer expressions or pronunciations they considered typically local. (I do not have access to all the questions, but the video snippets available featured some of them.)

Maps and speech bubbles illustrate several of the contributions by the participants recorded for the project, and for each borough you have a purple box that summarises some of the pronunciations and lexical items that have been reported to be used in the area. 

Bury.

Northern girl.

the Manc twang.

All in all, the exhibition illustrates different individual viewpoints as to how locals view their membership to Greater Manchester, and how they see their own accent, and others, as markers of their local identity. Some participants reported their own identification with their own local borough as strongly related (or not) to Mancunian identity, others confessed to a closer association to Lancashire (in the western areas), or even Yorkshire (in the eastern areas). It was great to see non-linguists reflect on their own "repertoire of accents" and while talking about their accents, to notice how they also made adjustments to what they were saying, and how they were saying it. I personally got the feeling that some participants were going far "broader" than they would normally go in their everyday life, but that's just an unjustfied claim of mine in the shape of a "hunch". 

One of my favourites! Several participants reported having different accents for different settings, some called it a "posh voice", or a "telephone voice", versus the accents they would use at home, or with friends.

I found this exhibition really insightful, and as as a former EFL teacher trainer who once tried to help my trainees understand the social and political role of accents in the UK, I honestly enjoyed the fact that I got to see lots of invaluable testimonials as to how accent issues are always latent in everyday life (even for non-linguists!), and how accent is, indeed, a great part of the way people "categorise" each other, and even themselves, in different speech situations. 

If you want to learn more about the project:

Manchester Voices Website: http://www.manchestervoices.org/

Twitter hashtag #McrVoices

Colloquium report #1: Researching, Learning and Training Late Second Language Speech', by Kazuya Saito

Hi, there! I've been looking for excuses to blog before my read-load and write-load become bigger than they already are, and I have found one! Every Wednesday, one of my Departments (yes, I am member of both the Language and Linguistics and the Education departments) has a colloquium, and today's talk was highly relevant to us, pron-lovers.

Kazuya Saito, from Birbeck Uni in London, has presented the results of his research on late L2 acquisition. "Late" acquirers would be those individuals who start learning a second language after puberty, here defined as people aged 16 onwards. His study involved Japanese speakers in their late teens and adults who had settled in Canada.

Find my (informal) report on the event below, with a few of my own comments, of course. (The usual disclaimer: all misinterpretations or misrepresentations of the info presented are my own)

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The talk began by reviewing two well-known models of L1 and L2 acquisition (or actually, "learning"? That is a whole separate debate....): the Speech Learning Model (SLM) by Flege (1993, 003, 2009), and the Critical Period Hypothesis (for this, Saito quotes Abrahamsson 2012, DeKeyser 2013, but the CPH dates from much earlier). Saito claims that these theories trigger different predictions as to what could happen to late learners.

The SPM would predict that enough exposure ("experience effects") to L2 will help learners to invoke those speech learning abilities that we applied for our L1, so age will have an effect on their ultimate level attainment, and so will the length of residence in a foreign country. The CPH, on the other hand, predicts that near nativelikeness is not attainable after puberty, which would affect late learners, and it also establishes that the skills employed for the learning of a second language involve general cognition -that is, explicit and intentional processes - rather than the explicit and incidental language-specific processes. (This latter point, I think, is very, very important when it comes to favouring explicit pronunciation instruction. However, the role of explicit pronunciation instruction was somehow argued against -or downplayed- in this presentation). In other words, for the CPH, the effects of the length of residence will also be limited.

This lit review finished with references to conflicting results in studies related to the effect of length of residence and age (mental note: go back to Linda Grant's (2014) edited volume for examples!). There was also a reference to something that is highlighted in other studies I have read, the role of motivation and aptitude as well in determining the levels of ultimate attainment. What is more, the presenter made some slight criticism to the methods employed in some of the studies, as they focused on native speaker evaluation of accents globally. Thus, Saito's "niche" lies in the focus on one specific pronunciation feature: the Japanese flap [ɾ] vs English /r/. (Two comments: I have used /r/ for the English version because it was not very clear to me whether the target was an actual retroflex approximant [ɻ], or the alveolar [ɹ] one. And for the Japanese sound, the alveolar tap symbol was used, but in the speaker's description, I often wondered if it was not the alveolar lateral flap [ɺ] that was referred to. The Handbook of the IPA says that for Japanese it's [ɽ], actually, so I should have asked! ).

The difficulties that Japanese speakers face when it comes to English /r/ are threefold: two of these are related to adjusting cues already present in Japanese: the retraction of the tongue body -shown as the lowering of F2 values, acoustically speaking -(which is why I guess the target /r/ is a retroflex, perhaps) and the prolongation of length/duration; whereas the new feature for these learners would be  the presence of labial, alveolar and pharyngeal constructions, manifested acoustically in the lowering of F3.

The study was aimed at discovering some patterns in terms of the effect of AOA (age of acquisition) and LOR (length of residence), and it involved a number of Japanese people who had moved to Canada after they had turned 16, and most of them had only had instruction in English at school -using a Grammar Translation method, according to the presenter-. They have all been described as being "highly motivated" to attain a high level of English because of their need to communicate. The experiment consisted of testing the subjects' production of English /r/ in a picture-description spontaneous production task (adapted from Munro and Mann, 2007). In all the pictures there were target words with /r/, and in order to make sure participants were tested in a more spontaneous situation, the first 3 descriptions were presented as being "for practice", and the other four were used for the test.

The results of the study revealed the following:

• In terms of tongue retraction, most participants improved over their first six months of residence, and after that period, in this respect, their performance was deemed native-like.
• As for duration, the correlations were significant after 12 months of residence.
• When it came to the development of the new parameters (F3), levels of attainment were diverse and late acquirers were definitely at a disadvantage (only those moving to Canada before the age of 20 achieved better results in this study), but definitive changes were seen after 10 years of residence (!).

(Very interesting!)

Some implications for teaching were mentioned later. (I have to admit that this is perhaps where I would disagree the most, but it is true that I have worked in non-immersion contexts, and things are definitely different there). Based on these results, Saito contended that an effective tool is the use of contextualised instruction over explicit instruction of the target sound. Some of the activities mentioned included the use of prompted discussion and role plays with target words that were corrected on the spot. Some included /l,r/ minimal pairs, others did not. The testing of these activities after training students for 4 hours in two weeks rendered an improvement in students' /r/ sounds from 60% to 75%. (Plus, the "shock effect" of constant correction cannot, of course, be underrated, if these are highly motivated students!) In my view, explicit pronunciation instruction (because of the employment of these cognitive procedures mentioned earlier) is necessary to help create these new articulatory habits. I do, however, strongly make a case for contextualised and communicative pronunciation work, but not as the entry point to learn the sounds, but to make explicit instruction somehow transferrable to more spontaneous contexts (and this is, after all, the end result that Saito was seeking).

There were some very brief, but interesting questions. The issue of U-shaped learning and plateaus that is described in some psycholinguistic theories (if I remember correctly, Major's Ontogeny model, for example?) was brought up, inviting in a way the exploration of a more diachronic study of the same subjects. Another issue mentioned is whether a similar effect would be reached for the training of VOT as a low functional load feature, which was considered non-distinctive (well, I may have disagree with that, I believe that both VOT and vowel length can be distinctive in native-speaker's ears, no matter their allophonic status!).

All in all, it was a very interesting and thought-provoking talk with many implications for pronunciation teaching, both in immersion and other ESOL contexts. And a confession: at first, I was doubtful about attending a talk about Japanese, but I have to admit this whole uni experience has really widened my horizons to all the beauty and human and cultural wealth there is in this world.

Review #3, Part 3: "Pronunciation Myths", edited by Linda Grant

Hi! My two previous posts (Part 1 - Part 2) reviewed the first four pronunciation myths, debunked by well-known pronunciation and phonetics specialists in the book "Pronunciation Myths", edited by Linda Grant. This post will mark the end of the review of this enriching, thought-provoking, book. Remember this is an informal review, with a few intrusive observations and reflections of my own.

(Warning! This is a very long post, so you may want to bookmark it for later reading.)

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Myth 5: Students would make better progress in pronunciation if they just practiced more - Linda Grant

This chapter begins with a reference to the film "The King's Speech", and an "inconvenient truth" : "long term speech characteristics can become an integral part of who we are" (Grant, 2014, "In the Real World", para. 5), which is why many people decide, consciously or unconsciously, not to introduce any changes to their accent. Citing Dalton and Seildhofer (1994:72), Grant reminds her readers that  there is no "one-to-one relationship between what is taught and what is learned" when it comes to pronunciation. (And yes, we know that too well!)

The next section discusses aspects which have always been present in the debate around second language pronunciation, such as the role of age. Different studies are described which prove and also refute the effects of the Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1967) as far as the issue of accentedness is concerned. Grant believes the research in fact shows that it is social and psychological factors rather than neuro-biological changes that make the utmost difference in the end.

Another construct reviewed in this chapter is Lado's Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. Some studies reported found that students whose L1 was similar to English had more English-like accents, but it was also reported that L1-L2 differences sometimes promote learning (in-keeping with Major's Similarity-Dissimilarity Hypothesis), since these are at times more perceptually salient than similarities. Grant finishes this section by revisiting the concepts of positive and negative transfer, both presented as inevitable processes in L2 pronunciation acquisition.

Grant later examines the role of exposure and use of L2 as a positive contribution to a learner's pronunciation achievement, especially in terms of fluency and comprehensibility. The other big factor was length of residence, though it was proven that it was not as effective as the actual frequent use of L2 outside the classroom. 

The following aspect reviewed by Grant is the role of psycho-social factors in the attainment of L2 pronunciation. Issues of identity, motivation, attitude and inhibition are discussed in this section. Studies reported include those examining the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, issues of allegiance to their own L1 ethnic group, and identification. I personally believe this is THE issue to consider when it comes to success in pronunciation learning.

The author recaps then some of the most important factors related to the attainment of an L2 pronunciation, but concludes that research has not yet established what is the relative impact of each of these variables: "age at the onset of learning, similarities between L1 and L2 phonologies, extent of exposure to and use of the L2, and affective factors (...), aptitude and natural talent". The research reviewed, however, does give teachers some basic information as to what aspects affecting L2 pronunciation can be addressed, and need to be tackled. (See my post on pronunciation goals for my own take on this) 

Grant draws her chapter to a close by providing some practical suggestions: a) set realistic goals in partnership with our learners, giving more room to intelligibility over accentedness, and engaging students in setting their own personal goals; b) set interim goals to sustain student motivation throughout the course. This second point refers to what Wong (1987:8) has found regarding pronunciation achievement: "dramatic changes in student speech in 3 to 6 months are rare". (Well, I would personally have to read the study, because in my context this does not hold true at all. I guess this is true for a particular number of contexts with a specific set of characteristics...But I do grant them that my lessons are entirely pronunciation-based...). I do agree, however, that short-term goals, clear focus on specific features and assessable targets are a great "carrot and stick" for students not to give up. Suggestion c): increase student engagement by individualising assignments. Oh, yes. As I always say, "pronunciation teaching is a craft". There is a lot we can do with our students as a group, but there is an awful lot we need to do with our students on an individual basis. In this respect, Grant includes self-assessment sheets and rubrics for students to grade their own recorded assignments, for example. Suggestion d): ask students to maintain pronunciation logs. Even though Grant mentions examples that affect learners in which learners can use English outside the classroom, it is true that keeping track of the changes, breakdowns and challenges one encounters in the process of learning pronunciation is a great way to see how the process unfolds. I would have loved to have a diary for my Lab 1 course, I would have loved to see how I personally felt about having to "unlearn" my Spanglish accent and my own mental view of what English was like to get to the less Spanglish accent I have now (I have been listening to my Lab 1 cassettes, though...). Suggestion e): Maximise student exposure to English outside the classroom. This set of ideas includes ways in which we can introduce home practice as well using websites.

A final observation includes the importance of giving considerable amount of time to pronunciation instruction in the classroom, thus the need for integration for it to be an  everpresent priority.

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Myth 6: Accent reduction and pronunciation instruction are the same thing. By Ron Thomson.

This chapter warns the readers of the dangers of falling into advertising traps when it comes to selecting your tutors for accent reduction clinics or courses. By means of a few anecdotes, Thomson clarifies that many immigrants fall prey to deceit because they erroneously believe it is their accent that impedes successful communication and/or integration, whereas "L2 learners' perceived need for accent reduction is often the result of factors unrelated to pronunciation".

The premise to this chapter is that accent reduction and pronunciation instruction are different things, and for this, Thomson quotes Derwing and Munro (2009) with their description of three approaches to characterise programs as following a a) business, b) medical or c) educational model. Accent reduction is generally associated with the business model, accent "modification" with the medical approach, and pronunciation instruction with the latter.

The rest of this chapter reviews a considerable number of Google searches and website descriptions of the language used and the underlying assumptions of a few services offering pronunciation instruction or accent reduction services, some of which are compared to programmes that offer "miracle diets" (Lippi Green, 2012), and go unregulated. The review of programmes includes details of materials, costs, instructor qualifications and claims, which show how vast the offer is, and how confusing advertising could be in some cases. The chapter ends with a few proposals, including the need for provision of "ethical pronunciation instruction" that shows understanding of psycholinguistic, social and personal dimensions of foreign accent. Another major suggestion is that teachers "give more attention to pronunciation instruction as part of English language classes" and also to propose language programs to hold "stand-alone" pronunciation courses if possible. The discussion of this section ends with a set of practical tips as to how to avoid "charlatans".

This chapter left me thinking about a huge number of things. I find myself in a context in which I would say we do "accent modification" or "accent reduction", even, but our model is educational in nature, as we train teachers-to-be. Instruction in our context is carried out by specialised professionals, and the focus is mostly towards a native-like accent (pretty much in the same way other subjects attempt to help students to reach a native-like grammar or use of lexis...), while also training teachers to teach for different purposes (or so I hope). I guess we are all truly aware of the claims to the impossibility of reaching a native-like accent -we, pronunciation teachers, I think, are the best pieces of evidence for that, however obsessive we might be about our accents-, but even so, in our teacher-training context, we have many students who want to reach native-like proficiency (and many who do not, of course), and we work with them towards this goal (yes, there is a lot I could say and be critical about regarding this and a million other issues, but not today!) . I have to say I am lucky to be in a group of institutions in which I have the opportunity to do serious pronunciation instruction work and provide one-to-one moments of feedback, in spite of large classes.  As I always say, pronunciation teaching is a craft, it cannot follow a "one-size-fits-all" model, since what works for one student may not work for the other. We can provide tools to the whole group of students, but feedback and fine-tuning practices need to be individualised and I hope this is something I can pass on to my students with my own feedback practices.

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Myth 7: Teacher Training programs provide adequate preparation in how to teach pronunciation, by John Murphy.

This particular chapter is closely related to my current context, as I am a teacher trainer myself. For some reason, I never seem to find a book on pronunciation that will keep me "happy", though there are some good materials out there (my personal favourite being Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin, 1996, 2010) There is always something "missing" in these materials, something that drives my teacher trainees to be good, creative task designers, but at times "poor systematisaters". I try to make it my job to train teachers to actually make the presentation of features right, since after all, no matter how creative a task can be, if the teaching of the feature is not successful or well planned, the whole class plan will very likely fail anyways.

Now, off to the chapter. Murphy begins by retelling a personal experience teaching at a MATESOL course. One of the findings Murphy made in this journey is that pronunciation needs to be taught "within a framework of spoken communication". The author's account serves to introduce the question of confidence and knowledge that teachers may or may not feel they have when it comes to pronunciation teaching.

The research cited by the author includes issues of "teacher cognition" as a fundamental part of what should be the knowledge base for teaching, which includes, of course, knowledge about language, knowledge about second language acquisition, and specialist recommendations about pronunciation teaching. I think Murphy introduces a very important point here, that of the need to dive into teachers' beliefs, perceptions and understandings in order to help them build effective pronunciation teaching practices.

The author includes a table of research reports carried out by different experts and authors in different countries using different instruments, which in turn inform the report Murphy is introducing in this chapter. Some of the key points reviewed regarding teacher cognition include: a) teachers feel unprepared to teach pronunciation because of lack of training; b) there should be a clear focus on the pedagogical aspects of pronunciation teaching; c) previous experiences learning foreign languages have a bearing on the way teachers approach (or not) pronunciation teaching; d) teachers should be introduced to ways of teaching assessing pronunciation for intelligibility, introducing modern technologies and working on integration to the general ESL lesson.

I need to digress again, since this touches directly into my context. I lecture at three Teacher Training Colleges, and in all three, trainees are exposed to a minimum of two, and a maximum of seven (!) periods a week purely devoted to Phonetics and pronunciation, and in the last two years of the course of studies, also to pronunciation teaching. In two of these colleges, teachers have stand-alone pronunciation courses in all four years of training. That is an awful lot (and I am grateful, because it does show in most of trainees' pronunciation), but I sometimes fear these students may not still know how to approach pronunciation in their lessons in spite of all the input. At times, it is just a matter of giving teachers a few tricks and principles to "light the match", (and see the sparks in their eyes appear! Oh, joyful moment!), together with some consciencious reading of pedagogy and acquisition, and a "trip down memory lane" to their own experience learning the accent, but in some other occasions, I find teachers still get really "petrificus totalus" (yes, another HP reference) about this whole pronunciation teaching business. So much to think about....Anyway.

Murphy quotes Borg (2003, 2009) and eight findings on teacher cognitions, which is worth direct citation since they are spot on, in my opinion:

Murphy (2014) in Grant (ed). Amazon Kindle Edition: Position 3272 of 4350

There is another interesting reference, to Gregory (2005) this time, which describes the fact that teachers are rarely given the chance to immediately apply in real classrooms, or even among peers, all the declarative knowledge they attain.

The last sections of  this chapter contain  fantastic remarks for us, non-native speakers of English who have trained as FL teachers. Murphy reminds us that our training in pronunciation as learners will help us understand what our learners are going through. Our own learned accent can be interesting and relevant models for our students, as long as it is intelligible, comprehensible, and only if the teacher is "aware of what some of the more prominent accented characteristics of his or her own speech could be" (oh, yes, I have my own list!)

The chapter presents a few suggestions as to what can be done in training programmes, and also a review of resources for pronunciation teaching and practice which are worth exploring, also listed as an appendix. A second appendix describes sample topics and syllable tasks that can be applied at graduate level. (Not to be missed!)

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Epilogue to the Myths: "Best Practices for Teachers", by Donna Brinton

Brinton opens the epilogue by referring to a personal anecdote that supports her belief that we interpret the stream of speech in the foreign language by referring to our L1 and other languages we may have learned; and also that learners tend to process lexical chunks at the level of syllables/words/phrases, rather than phonemes.

This final section also introduces a very interesting list of "core knowledge and skills needed for L2 teachers to address pronunciation in the classroom", collected by Chan, Goodwin and Brinton in 2013. The list includes conceptual, descriptive and procedural knowledge, and it is truly worth reading (there is a copy of this list, presented by the authors at CATESOL 2013, here).

A second gift to the reader by Brinton: A summary of ideas and "best practices", including: a) the connection and separation of the concepts of intelligibility and accentedness, and a list of features contributing to the former that need to be trained in the classroom; b)  the fact that not all pronunciation features have the same relevance for intelligibility;  c) the finding that segmentals are critical building blocks of the sound system, but they need to be taught in terms of intelligibility needs, and also guided by functional load concerns; d) the tendency that claims that L2 adult learners may not reach an "accentless", native foreign accent; e) the fact that pronunciation learning is different from the learning of grammar or vocabulary, as it involves other modalities; e) the need to recognise the relation between perception and production, which is why it is important to introduce awareness raising activities to build new perceptual categories; f) the awareness that explicit and targeted feedback is truly beneficial; g) success in pronunciation learning depends on a myriad of factors, including age, motivation, identity, exposure, opportunities for real practice outside the classroom , and these need to be considered in our planning; h) L1 does have an influence on our acquisition of L2 pronunciation; i) exposure to authentic language is essential, including an analysis of processes of connected speech, that show the reality of speech "out there".

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And so my review ends. My verdict? Pronunciation Myths  is... a really insightful book, with discussions that probably describe pronunciation teaching issues worldwide, and a few other points and claims that can be questioned if seen from different locations and instructional contexts. A wealth of ideas, tips and tricks. And more importantly, in my opinion, a huge reference list of experimental, bibliographical, educational and also informal research that does not only "preach to the converted" (as a friend always says), but which may also, hopefully, persuade the sceptics, and the fearful.

Review #3, Part 2: "Pronunciation Myths", by Linda Grant.

On my previous post I briefly reviewed the Prologue and the first chapter of the Kindle book version of Pronunciation Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching. (BTW, I am trying to come to grips with the way of citing Kindle books....the lack of pagination can be maddening! So I hope you will excuse the lack of page numbers for the quotes. I will, in the future, try to adopt the approach in the APA guidelines (that is...counting paragraphs and all that jazz!): http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/how-do-i-cite-a-kindle.html)

This time, I will be discussing the research reviewed in the book to debunk Myths 2, 3 and 4. These chapters were written by Beth Zielinski & Lynda Yates, John Field, and Judy Gilbert, respectively. 

(Warning: It is quite a long post!)

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Myth 2: Pronunciation Instruction is not appropriate for beginning-level learners - Beth Zielinski and Lynda Yates.

I was particularly interested in this chapter, since I remember with great shame my very first class in Italian, and my first lesson in French. I was already a graduate teacher of English and I was in awe at both my new teachers, who spent the first half hour or more discussing the sounds of the languages I was about to embark on learning. The same thing happened to my colleagues learning Portuguese. Why is it that most teachers overlook this very important first introduction to the pronunciation of English language during the first lesson? Isn't this the perfect moment to plant the seed of curiosity and to start drawing students' awareness of the noticeable differences between their L1 (Spanish, in my case) and English?

The very first point the authors make is that pronunciation does indeed affect both intelligibility and confidence to speak, as previous research has found, at least in a context where English is spoken outside the classroom. It is claimed that beginnning learners do care about pronunciation, and that the later students are introduced to it, the more limited their improvement will be. Zielinski and Yates favour both the introduction to metaphonological knowledge and awareness, and incidental teaching and correction. They underline the fact that instruction also enhances on other, less "assessable" skills, such as confidence and understanding, and this was found in the action research projects in Springwall (2002).

The authors of this chapter propose following a systematic approach to instruction following four stages: a) listening and awareness, b) control, c) practice, d) extension.

I want to highlight the essential remark made in this chapter, which is that pronunciation is a spoken skill, and however obvious this may sound, we at times forget about this when we carry out reading aloud tasks and select texts to that end. Lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic choices differ greatly in the spoken-written mode continuum, as those of us who do Systemic Functional Linguistic work very well know.

A few other reminders are made on this chapter, regarding the use of different "modalities" (i.e.: learning styles); provide targeted feedback, immediately or in a delayed form, depending on the task at hand; have one pronunciation goal in every lesson, in combination with other areas and skills; introduce a variety of activities. The authors suggest that readers consult the AMEP Research Centre in Australia website for ideas.

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Myth 3: Pronunciation Teaching has to establish in the minds of language learners a set of distinct consonant and vowel sounds - John Field

John Field addresses a very interesting topic, and begins with a number of thought-provoking questions: "a) What is it that we expect learners to store in their minds during ear training? (...) b) How confident are we that storing a phoneme in the mind in some way enables the learner to recognise it when it is heard again in connected speech?". Apart from recognition, Field also questions how much of this "storing" of sounds actually contributes to production as well.

The research review reports on some truths we sometimes forget about: phonemes do not have a "standard" form because of the multiplicity of allophones they may be realised with, and because of all the phenomena involved in co-articulation. This is why training via minimal pairs does not always work as a form of enabling the later recall of phonemes. A clear implication of this is the need to expose learners to the sound in different contexts and in different word positions.

The rest of the chapter unfolds under the scrutiny of two theories that present assumptions in the ESL world:

"A- Although phonemes vary a great deal, any example of a given phoneme has characteristics that distinguish it from all others."

Field notes a first very important truth "the raw speech reaching the listener's ear is not a string of phonemes but a series of acoustic cues that the listener has to match to phonemes". The author reports studies carried out by Liberman in Yale in 1957 that attempted to somehow find "quintessential" (my own interpretation of the study) characterising features of English phonemes, but did not find features which were unique or exclusive to each. Plus, they found that speed had an effect on the perception of phonemes. The perception of consonants was found to be categorical, whereas perceiving vowels requires a distinction between three formants. There are no "constant" values to identify vowels, as we know. So this first theory in a way appears to be quite weak, since as Field concludes, "there is no simple one-to-one match between a group of acoustic cues and a phoneme".

"B - We store a set of 'ideal' phonemes in the mind, against which to match what we hear."

This assumption is related to the belief that our mind cancels out unusual features in the perception of sounds so as to match them to the closest "ideal" phoneme around. This view is related to  the notion of "prototype" (Rosch, 1975) or "template" against which all other manifestations of a word or phoneme are contrasted, and this makes for an economical view of the work the mind carries out in perception. However, Field argues that research by neuroscientists has proven that the mind is capable of more complex forms of storing, and that individual variation of phonemes due to coarticulation also acts counter to the "template" rule. 

(BTW, these two very interesting questions are currently being addressed by Richard Cauldwell in his "Listening Cherries" blog, and in his book "Phonology for Listening (2013)".)

Therefore, three alternative theories are put forward, which claim that a) the phoneme is not the unit of representation we use when we listen; b) the phoneme is just one of the clues used, perhaps not the most important; c) our minds store many variants of the phoneme heard in different contexts and voices.

Regarding a), Field reports studies that have found that listeners need to access the word, the "demi-syllable" (Dupoux, 1993) or the syllable in order to identify the number of phonemes. In this respect, the author believes that teachers should focus on high-frequency syllables as units of perception.

As to theory b), Field notes that phenomena such as ambisyllabicity shows the complexity existing in the recognition of syllable boundaries, and extends the list of cues employed by listeners to include phonemes, words and lexical chunks, and these are supplemented by contextual and co-textual elements. Research by Marlsen-Wilson 1975 has revealed that apparently we "process speech as we hear it at a delay of about a quarter of a second" and that we are actively making hypotheses as to what we believe we have heard, fine-tuning our perception unit by unit. Studies on L2 perception have found that learners "do not trust their perceptual skills in relation to smaller units of language", and they use a more "constant" unit, the word. However, as we know, words also vary, as Cauldwell (2013) states, by adopting different "shapes" in the stream of speech. So Field believes that perception should be trained at the level of the syntatic and lexical chunk as well.

The remarks made by Field regarding the last theory are quite fascinating. It seems that we store in our minds a large number of versions and examples of phonemes and word shapes, and we activate our memory of these items. The teaching implications that Field mentions include the need to expose learners to different realisations and accents, and reviews studies by Pisoni, Lively and Logan (1994) in which this kind of variable ear training was found to be effective. 

Field suggests that teachers should work at the level of the syllable, by working on common syllable patterns and recognition of syllable boundaries, as well as for stress. Later, instruction should be driven into larger units, by proposing "word activation" tasks to predict lexical items to be encountered, as well as "gap fill" activities with typical lexical chunks and their reductions and variation (Field introduces an interesting appendix on this). Focus on function words also acts as a good training exercise to identify changes in speech. The author also proposes exposing learners to many accents, voices and contexts following a gradual progression, in order to create "memories" of different sound and word shapes.

I found this chapter particularly fascinating and thought-provoking. I think it also bears great implications for production, since at times our students attempt to produce these "ideal" phonemes in contexts that in fact require a number of variations due to co-articulation. Even though we may teach allophonic and phonemic rules for different processes, students at times only produce strings of "ideal" phonemes, as if they were putting together a puzzle of individual sound shapes instead of making all the changes and adaptations that the surrounding environment of neighbouring sound requires. A lot to continue pondering on...

***

Myth 4: Intonation is hard to teach - Judy Gilbert

Those of you who know me will have guessed that this is one of the chapters that drove me into buying the book. There is such a huge gap in intonation teaching (for a huge number of reasons, some of those listed in the chapter), and there is so much that could be done in this respect....Anyway.

Judy Gilbert begins with the retelling of a few anecdotes regarding misunderstandings and intonation. She believes that one of the problems with intonation teaching is that it is filled with "too many abstract concepts.....that tend to blur the specific teaching point". Studies by Kang and Pickering (2011) on comprehensibility highlight the role of intonation for listeners to "confirm if an item is new or one that they are already aware of, to track important information, and to predict when one topic is ending and another is beginning" (2011:6). A stronger focus on prosody in the language lesson is also recommended by Derwing and Rossiter (2003) in order to make students' English more understandable. 

Gilbert reminds her readers that the "basic signals of rhythm and melody specific to one's first language are generally learned by the time a child is one year old". This affects the way we may produce our L2 intonation, and the way we perceive other people's intonation, which could lead to cultural misunderstandings, as well as communication problems, especially when it comes to inaccurate stress choices.

The author discusses some of the reasons behind teachers' uneasiness when it comes to intonation teaching, such as the lack of "friendliness" of intonational descriptions. The first "discouraging approach" is the set of technical rules based on grammar; the second relates to "technical rules based on pitch levels" drawn by phoneticians who cannot establish an agreement when it comes to "meanings" . Gilbert also nots that in these models, the different manifestations of pitch levels which are at times presented as absolutes, instead of as gradient. The third approach seen as "uninviting" is what Gilbert calls "subjective rules based on intuitions about attitude", which is "anxiety-inducing" (Roach 1991:165) Gilbert makes a point of the fact that attitudes are "culturally or contextually dependent", and that most attitudinal descriptions of intonation have applied conflicting values to different pitch levels and emotions. It is also establised that attitude is never expressed by intonation alone.

Gilbert moves on to present different proposals for the teaching of intonation. The first suggestion is to draw students' awareness as to how their L1 and English differ in terms of information delivery, since English uses specific prosodic signals (change in pich, lengthening and "extra clarity" of the vowel in question), and other languages may perhaps employ other non-prosodic features, such as word order. Another suggestion includes the teaching of intonation as a priority, done contextually in dialogues. The next idea is related to the teaching of "listener-friendly" intonation, intonation that helps the listener "follow" what the speaker is saying in the belief that "time spent helping students concentrate on the major rhythmic and melodic signals of English is more importnat than any other efforts to improve intelligibility". However, Gilbert warns teachers that learners may not believe the teacher when it comes to the introduction of intonation, and that they may feel silly trying intonation tasks, which in a way implies that the teaching of prosody is also an act of "persuasion" (and I agree entirely!). Creating activities that may focus on miscommunication or ambiguity, and which require immpediate communicative feedback, may help to debunk this view. Gilbert reminds her readers that one of the clearer benefits of intonation teaching include the fact that suprasegmentals fit nicely into communicative settings. 

Next, Gilbert makes a point of the features which she considers to be "main", and "most teachable". These include forms of highlighting new information and the separation of the message into thought groups. Gilbert puts forward her model of the "Pyramid of the musical signalling system", which goes from a peak vowel to a stressed syllable, followed by a focus word embedded in a thought group. The attention given to the production the peak vowel in the stressed syllable of the most important word in the thought group is an essential component of communication, and thus makes the delivery of the mssage more "listener-friendly".

Prosody Pyramid - Gilbert (2008)

Gilbert also suggests a holistic presentation of intonation, using template sentences through "quality repetition" so as to "get a clear image of what the flow" should feel like and thus not sacrifice fluency. The author believes that students should get an "acoustic impression" of a short chunk as a whole, and then focus on their individual components through repetition. The presentation of the template should be done through listening first, many times, before actually producing it, respecting the rhtyhm and intonation of the thought group (or larger unit) selected. Students can then be invited to analyse the inner workings of the tought group which has now been internalised.

I particularly liked Gilbert's defence of repetition as a strategy to "produce a long-term memory resource that they (students) can access when they need to remember how it went", since "cells that fire together wire together" (Shatz, 1992:65). The value of group practice to "overcome individual pyschological inhibitions" is also highlighted. 

The inclusion of other styles, such as kynesthetic reinforcement, or the use of gadgets (such as a kazoo or a wide rubber band) to introduce pitch patterns, stress or lengthening is an interesting addition to the teacher's kit that Gilbert proposes.

This is a great chapter, full of ideas, but the most fantastic inclusion to my mind is this quote, drawn from an unnamed teacher trainee Gilbert once met: "teaching pronunciation without prosody is like teaching ballroom dancing, only the students must practice standing still, without a partner, and without music".

I believe that the points made by Gilbert are definitely true. However, I need to point out that when it comes to intonation teaching, the "native speaker gut" is very useful, especially to give feedback or make associations between intonation and "meanings" or "interpretation". But the truth is that us, non-native teachers of English, struggle when trying to understand how the intonation of English works, and many of the theories reviewed and slightly criticised in this chapter have actually proven useful to many of us to get an idea of what patterns to use. In fact, I think that the development of metaphonological awareness and constructs when it comes to understanding -and later teaching- the intonation of English really works, if done conscientiously, and within the study of pragmatics and discourse.

***

Thank you for bearing with me till the end of this long post. Part 3 of this review will discuss the remaining "myths" in this fabulous collection by Linda Grant. See you soon!

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. 

***

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!

***

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!

***

Hope you have found these comments useful, and interesting.

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

#IATEFL2015 online coverage #1: Interview with David Crystal

As a Manchester, IATEFL 2015 registered blogger, I have to admit I have not had the time to catch up the way I would have liked to, but here I am, with my first report.

This time, I'll be talking about an interview with David Crystal (available here), which of course, was the obvious choice for me to start!

As usual, a bit of a report of what was said, and my own input, in a different colour.

***

The Crystals have been pretty active in this 450th celebration of Shakespeare's wonders, and they have been busy publishing materials for all our enjoyment. The illustrated Shakespearian dictionary is mentioned by David, with a few interesting tips and tricks regarding our approach to Shakespeare in the classroom:

• Shakespearean language has to be learned in context, and we need to have the pictures in our head of what these words represent in order to make sense of the images Shakespeare so very skillfully presents!
• Before approaching the play on paper with your students, see it on stage or watch a DVD! I looooved this bit of advice. Watching "a book" on DVD/YouTube/stage should not be a "sin" or a form of "cheating", it is yet another interpretation of the book in print through the eyes of the semiotic systems of image, sound, motion, and I agree entirely that this is a valid way of going about it!
• Act a bit of Shakespeare in the classroom. Nothing more exciting, methinks!

Now off to my personal favourite bit: Original Pronunciation. I've written about this in my review post of the latest Crystals' book here, but I would like to write down some of the points David raises in this interview.

David reminds us that the powerful resource of rhyme in Shakespeare's sonnets (because if I remember correctly blank verse does not rhyme except in the last verses of each scene?! Do I remember my Shakespeare?!) does "not appear to work in Modern English". We all remember the lovely Sonnet 116, and the supposed rhyming pair "loved"-"proved" [lʌvd - pru:vd], which in OP would be something like [lɤvd - prɤvd]. You can hear more about it here:

Crystal invites us to experience Original Pronunciation (OP) here:
http://originalpronunciation.com/

The last part of the interview leads us back to the "You Say Potato" book. Apart from retelling some bits from the book, David mentions the fact that the accent issue is complex, and that in order to faithfully represent the idea of how accents change, there had to be more than one person in the book, a "young person, and a slightly less young person". He mentions the fact that there will be an audiobook version later in the year (looking forward to it!)


There is an interesting discussion in the interview regarding the notion of accents. As we have heard countless times, accents are "all over the English speaking world" and they are "mixed". We are no longer speaking about RP as the norm, but as a "mixed or modified RP", what other authors called General British, which Crystal defines as "educated, understandable". This is a complex issue as well, in my opinion. Clearly, if you read the news, what the media sees as RP is the "Queen's English" or the "Public School English" which Cruttenden (2008) called "Refined RP" and is now termed "Conspicuous General British". I think this RP they may be talking about, spoken by 2% of the population, is not necessarily what we may call "General British" and of course, "Regional General British", which I associate more with universities and the media.  So when we say "RP", what are we really talking about? I would also question the use of the term "understandable", as my students would claim that it is General American that sounds "intelligible" to them, and not really British varieties, but it may be a problem of exposure. Worth another post!

Crystal then addresses learners of English by urging them to embrace the idea of keeping traces of their native language in the accent of English, except for "spies, who are the only ones who need to be anonymous" (LOL!). He sees English as a "garden of flowers", with each individual accent making a different variety and bringing colour to it (<3). David tells teachers that the priority should be students' clarity, and an approach to flexibility, that is, not focussing on teaching every single feature of an accent to students. He mentions, for example, the features of glottalisation (as in [hɒt -hɒʔ] and GOOSE-fronting (as in [ku:l - kʉ:l]), clear examples of the changes to General British, that ought to be accepted in the English classroom. Exposure to different accents as early as possible is key. Crystal does make a point as well of "knowing how to do it", that is, having the necessary tools to teach pronunciation of the accent(s) of choice. (Worth another post! #2)

As an answer to a question on the importance of stress and connected speech over the segmentals, David believes there is more an issue of complementarity. David also mentions the fact that if we look at the different Englishes around the world, 3/4 of the speakers actually employ syllable-timed versions of their accent, which is why, in his opinion, stress-timing as a teaching priority is actually outdated. The challenges to the "stress-timing" hypothesis have been going round since the early 1980s, including some papers by Peter Roach and Cauldwell, among many others. Very very interesting topic, by the way.

To conclude, Crystal presents some pieces of advice for teachers to "keep up with the times" by "listening, listening, listening" to English, to young speakers of English in the media, especially social media, in the understanding that the young speakers of the language are the ones pushing the language forward, the future parents of the future generations. He reminds us that we should not underestimate the power of Internet, as these generations take "screens as central, books as marginal".

All in all, a short, yet enjoyable interview, with that lovely accent of Crystals' (IMO) and his smooth, "surfable" intonation patterns (really worth teaching!), but first and foremost, with a very engaging discussion of hot topics which may at times be a bit "thorny" for teachers.

I expect to be able to report more on the online coverage of IATEFL 2015 soon!

Book Review #2: You Say Potato: A Book about Accents, by David and Ben Crystal

The book I'll be talking about is You Say Potato: A Book about Accents, a really entertaining, yet serious review of issues regarding accents and their role in everyday life, particularly in contexts where people may be self-conscious about them the most. In this short post, I would like to review the book in my own personal style.

This would be me in Trinity College Dublin, reading the book on a beautiful sunny morning.

***

The first appealing thing about the book is the fact that its style is conversational, and as a reader I felt I was actually at the Crystals' dinner table (and I have to say, after reading the book, I would defo love to be invited to have supper with them!). With David providing the historical background and the technical aspects of the discussion and Ben leading us through the world of the performing arts and illustrating his points with his anecdotes, this book is a great introduction for those people who have never pondered on the role of accents, or for those who have and need further evidence that accent does matter (but for what?)...

In this respect, as I read the opening chapters, I couldn't help thinking of the classic "Does Accent Matter?", by John Honey. I would be tempted to say the Crystals' book, in many respects, is an update of some of the chapters of Honey's material, and goes beyond it, by analysing accents in four sections, called: Accent Passions, Accents Present, Accents Past and Accents Future.

***

You Say Potato explores attitudes to accents on a first-hand basis -mostly through the anecdotes shared by Ben in his voiceover, acting and lecturing work - and through a great number of references to the media, including articles, surveys and TV shows, and extended to historical documents, films and advertising. The authors have taken to even retelling cases where forensic phonetics -with our lovely Jack Windsor Lewis - has a role to play!

The initial exploration of some basics of accents starts with a brief, simple explanation of the articulatory processes involved in the production and classification of sounds, and some comments regarding the acquisition of accents.  A more daunting endeavour later in the book is the making of an "Accent Map" that attempts to place all the accents discussed. This map proves to the reader how intricate the accent issue is, at least for, but not exclusively, Britain, where there are more accents per area than anywhere else in the English-speaking world.

David Crystal provides a really reader-friendly description of different accent groups, with plenty of examples for the non-specialist to have an idea of what a certain accent sounds like. One of the sections I found most useful is the "how to tell....from..." section, where David provides a few tips and tricks to distinguish Americans from Canadians,  New Zealanders from Australians, among other groups.

Issues of accent and identity, including historical and present "gut feelings" regarding accents are described through numerous quotes, including some mythical and prejudist views on Brummie (the old "ugly city, ugly speech" prejudice) in previous centuries (yes, including the 1990s....and probably still at present?) and a reivindication of regional accents in the media by those trying to explain why these prejudices are a mere "stupidity" (sic). It is true that we are all, to a certain extent, biased towards a particular accent group, so even though I am not a native speaker of English myself, I have to admit I felt a bit ashamed of having nodded in agreement when reading a few of these "stupid remarks" on accents.

As I have found in many current articles on accents (see my collection here), the book also goes over some of the issues we regularly see commented on the media and that non-specialists also pick out, like Brit pop and rock musicians using American accents, and Hollywood villains going for posh RP-like accents, and the role of accents when targetting certain audiences in advertising. Current phenomena worth exploring further, such as Uptalk, and Mockney, and notions of sound symbolism (what is known as "Phonesthesia") are also referred to briefly.

Another interesting thing about the book is the way accents are referred to in the different anecdotes retold by Ben, with notions like "blue", "rough", "smooth", words that refer to other senses and still help us picture different accents and voices (if I am not mistaken, this is called "synesthesia"). I particularly adored the definition of accents as "clusters of snowflake-unique sounds" (p.37). If you scroll below and hear Ben's rendering of a Shakespearean sonnet in original pronunciation, you will surely come up with your own adjectives and accent-resemblances as well.

It was, to me, so lovely to read about the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation (OP) again, which is also described in such a lively manner in the book Pronouncing Shakespeare. When you read the accounts by both Ben and David, and you see this video, you clearly feel the power of accent, the power of voice quality and articulatory settings, and somehow, you go back to that wonderful setting of Elizabethan theatre.




All in all, I have to say I loved the book, as I felt I was reading many books into one, and I would love to see many of the points raised  developed into further work. I got a thrill out of reading historical documents and quotes, since probably the current views are more easy to trace on the Internet nowadays. Until the Time Machine gets invented, we can always read books by David Crystal, where we are sure to find the voices of times past brought into the present!

But, wait! This is by far not over. The Crystals invite us to be part of the You Say Potato experience. You can record your own "potato" pronunciation here. And if you want to see the authors at work and get a feel of the book and the issues presented there, then take a look at these videos!





And yes, the title of the book refers to this song we all know about!


 Other reviews and articles on the book:
TIME:http://time.com/3525767/you-say-potato-accents-david-crystal-ben-crystal/
CityLab: http://www.citylab.com/weather/2014/10/a-map-of-how-the-worlds-people-say-potato/381218/

Currently reading #1: "Phonology for Listening", by Richard Cauldwell - Part 1

I am currently "mosaic reading", what with teaching, writing my MA thesis and more. But one of the books which has accompanied me since last year and which I have been reading with great care is Richard Cauldwell's Phonology for Listening. I am not only enjoying the book lots, but I have to admit it has also shaken the foundations of some of those beliefs behind my ideas of listening and speech production as well.
Plus, the book was nominated for an ELTon in Innovation in Teacher Resources, and it is both in paperback and e-book format.

Lots of people ahead of me have written very good & complete reviews of the book, such as the one by Wayne Rimmer (Available here, at the Pronsig FB page). I myself won't be reviewing the book formally, but I will be drawing upon some snippets which I feel are of major interest to me at this stage of my teaching.

***

As a self-confessed David Brazil fan (yes, when they ask you "what past historical figure would you like to interview if you had the chance?" I would most certainly choose him! I have issues!), reading a book by someone who has studied with him just makes me more than curious. Particularly, because they can tell us something about the "kitchen" of the whole system, something about the "didactic pruning" that we all engage into when teaching a topic and that may have led Brazil to make some simplification in his explanation, among other things. And also because I have not seen much developed from Brazil's time to now, at times just mere repetition of what was written in his books. So having someone taking this to the "next level", with adoptions and rejections of different bits of Discourse Intonation ideas, is more than appealing to me.

But this book exceeds the domain of Discouse Intonation, as it explores a wide range of topics, including:

•  perception and production models of speech, 
• changes to the stream of speech as we talk, 
• how spontaneous speech "works" and how it is different from other forms of "careful speech"
• what happens when we transcribe speech
• accents, identity and emotion in speech
• the teaching of listening.

As you can see, it's a sort of manual or handbook on a number of topics, descriptions, observations, and reflections that can inform our teaching practices.

***

The book centers around two issues, two "dilemmas":

• "Ying's dilemma", related to the problem that we know words, but we can't catch them in spontaneous speech.

I confess myself to having had lots of "Ying moments" this year, particularly in the North of England. In spite of the fact that I'd studied the accents thoroughly, so I supposedly knew what to expect, I found myself in York, "recruited" by an Avon saleslady who was asking me questions I never got to understand. I had to say "sorry" in a Spanglish accent to make her realise I wasn't really getting it (I'd say "sorry" with a rise twice before to request repetition) and she let me go. And on a bus to Whitby, two young people sitting next to me were talking of complaining to the company of the service, and one of them addressed me saying something that sounded to me like "Got a penner?", and after apologising and looking puzzled, I got a clarification: "something to write with". He had said "Got a pen or something?".

"Anna's anger" at not being taught to really listen, at being asked to complete listening comprehension activities without having any teaching of the phenomena of the stream of speech.

I generally do some teaching of the aspects of connected speech when I do listening comp activities, but it is true that I do this particularly when students have trouble with some specific answers. I ask my students to write down what they think they hear, the orthography of what they think they heard, even if it doesn't look like a familiar word, and then we start analysing what went on in the stream of speech, the processes that were applied. But I have to admit that "Anna's anger" made me feel guilty about not doing this more often, particularly in my Lab lessons at College.

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Some of the concepts I believe to be particularly interesting, especially because of the way they were presented, and which I have adopted immediately, are related to the "Window on Speech" framework adopted by the author, that uphholds a model that focuses on spontaneous speech with its "transient, invisible, plastic" features rather than on careful speech, the latter being the one we normally use for teaching production. I liked the notions of:

• "acoustic blur", defined as "the way in which words in the stream of speech do not have clearly-defined beginnings or endings" (p.18),
• "squeeze zones", those parts of speech that present non-prominent syllables and that present "squeezed" soundshapes, and that sound truly differently from the citation forms we all know too well, and which we, wrongly, expect to hear in spontaneous speech.

I found these ideas to be useful when doing dictation with my teacher trainees. I found that in the initial stages of recognition of onsets and nuclei, nuclei were not really a problem (at least, if the sentences were dictated with falls. Rises do bring about more trouble...). But the presence or lack of an onset were more difficult to spot for my learners. Drawing their attention to the "squeeze zones" in the pre-heads, and the comparison of the strong, better-defined vowels they would hear if the items were accented, has proven really effective.

These ideas by the author are futher developed in Part 2, and there is a great section on "Soundshapes" that deals with function words. Like in the rest of the book, there are a myriad audio clips exemplifying each and every point (the whole reading experience is a lesson in listening itself! Awesome!), and there is a description of these "weak forms" as we know them, together with other items which are not generally considered in other sources, except perhaps for Jack Windsor Lewis' blog (do an entry search for articles on less commonly reported reduced items!). The resources generally consulted for theory on weak forms in Phonetics/Phonology courses include the famous Gimson's... edited by Cruttenden (now in its 2014 edition!), the textbook by Peter Roach, and the "37 Weak Forms" article by Ortiz Lira. Cauldwell's description of reductions in spontaneous speech would certainly defy many of the reduced-word lists we are used to putting together, plus revealing that reduction is far more common than we would be ready to accept!

Among the many definitions in the book, I quite enjoyed the reference to tones in  careful speech as "countours of a landscape with high peaks, steep slopes and deep valleys" and the "gently rolling hills and shallow slopes of the English countryside" of spontaneous speech. This is so clear when it comes to the perception of the fall-rise by my students (and myself!) so used to O'Connor & Arnold's really steep fall-rises or rise-fall-rises, that the "shallow" fall-rises in spontaneous speech are either reconstructed because of our "theoretical expectations" or missed altogether. Another "challenge" to some long-established theoretical points, is the reference to the stress-timing theory. Though questioned from the early 1980s on by people like Roach and Cauldwell himself (click on the names for the articles), as it appears not to be a true reality of English speech, it is still a useful construct to teach English rhythm (in my humble opinion), but it is rejected if English is taught for ELF purposes, as weakening is not part of the Lingua Franca Core defined by Jennifer Jenkins.
The "Phonology for Listening" book presents cases of isochrony, but mostly claims that spontaneous speech is very rarely isochronous.

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The second part of the book also describes the shape of spontaneous speech, particularly the drafting phenomena: filled and silent pauses, restarts, repetitions, reformulations, markers of imprecision, softeners, issues of speed and articulation rate.... It is essential to bear these issues in mind when it comes to teaching production, as well, in my opinion. There was a great talk on fluency by Alan Tonkyn in the IATEFL PronSIG PCE last April with a great discussion of what was perceived as fluent by native examiners of L2 speakers of English, and the presence of drafting phenomena was not necessarily a "threat", except for a number of specifications:

All in all, the first two parts of this manual address extremely interesting points, challenge assumptions, and fine-tune our ears. I was truly enthusiastic to read it the first time, and to review my notes for this post, after having attended two talks by Richard at IATEFL, which helped me make better sense of the book still. The key issue to start with is:

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This ends my humble (intertextual!) review of Parts 1 and 2. I am most certainly not doing justice to the book, but you can always read it and read the reviews that are now around. Hope this piece has been enticing enough to go and have a taste!

My second part of this review, some time next week. And thanks for reading me!

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Celeb spot! I have a pic with the author! (I have cheekily selfied him during the IATEFL PronSIG event!).