Course Description
This is an advanced pronunciation course for students with good listening and speaking skills. Students taking this course should have no major pronunciation problems. The course will provide a review of the sound system and major stress and intonation patterns introduced in ELLA 0285, as well as exercises in understanding English spoken in a variety of ways. Students will improve fluency by practicing some of the finer features of native speech, such as stress and intonation variation for emphasis or special meaning, phrasing, syllable reduction and linking. It is recommended that students take a conversation course at the same time.
Course Content
Pronunciation
- Sound System
- Identify effective and ineffective communication
- Learn and use the International Phonetic Alphabet and principles of morphology and phonetics in order to determine word pronunciation
- Vowels and consonants, including diphthongs and consonant clusters.
- Regular grammatical endings, such as “ed”, “s”, “able”.
- Consonant-vowel, consonant-consonant and vowel-vowel linking.
- Word, phrase and sentence stress; stress in longer spoken texts
- Pitch and intonation
- Rhythm
- Independent learning techniques
- Identify individual pronunciation errors, and their effect on interpersonal communications.
- Learn techniques for using dictionaries to determine pronunciation.
- Explore techniques for monitoring improvement, including the use of appropriate course technology.
- Learn about and be able to discuss linguistic principles as they apply to sound production and suprasegmental features.
- Special Pronunciation Patterns
- Recognize the major dialects of English.
- Identify patterns typical of a particular group, such as teenagers (slang).
- Develop awareness of patterns typical of particular language groups, such as Chinese speakers of English.
- Develop awareness of patterns typical of particular genres, such as newscasts, plays, songs, poems, political speeches.
- Develop awareness of patterns which show special meaning, such as surprise, anger, implied criticism or emphasis.
Classroom Skills
Take responsibility for the following:
- Attendance and punctuality.
- Class work and assignments.
- Participation and teamwork.
Groupwork – take turns giving and receiving constructive criticism.
Learning Activities
The instructor will facilitate, observe and evaluate students' participation in class activities. Whole and small group instruction will be combined with individual assistance and student directed learning. Students will participate in the setting of goals by identifying their communicative and language development needs, and will participate in the selection of learning activities.
Means of Assessment
A mastery model of on-going evaluation will be used. A student will reach mastery when s/he has demonstrated through satisfactory completion of exercises, assignments and other assessments that the course objectives have been achieved.
Where formal tests of specific skills are used, mastery will be defined as a score of 70% or more.
Progress will be monitored on a regular basis by the instructor in consultation with each student.
Learning Outcomes
Overall Objective:
Extend fluency and confidence in communicating for a range of educational, employment, personal and social contexts.
Specific Objectives:
- Speak with easily comprehensible pronunciation in longer conversations or presentations, and in less controlled and more varied communicative situations.
- Manage communication anxiety.
- Speak with native-like fluency and cultural appropriateness in short conversations or presentations under controlled conditions.
- Identify, distinguish between, and reproduce all English sounds singly and in combination in communicative situations.
- Identify and reproduce the basic stress, intonation and rhythm patterns of native speakers in communicative situations.
- Identify individual pronunciation problems, and some techniques for dealing with them.
- Identify special pronunciation patterns, such as dialects.
- Assess progress.
- Participate effectively in a classroom.
Textbook Materials
Materials will be supplied.
Students may be required to purchase a text.