ESL | Writing | Oral Communication | Quantitative | Content
Breaking Down Speaking and Listening Skills
Another way to look at the skills involved in an everyday conversation is to break down the language to its component parts, then look at a few examples of how to target some of these components in a tutoring session.
| Units of Language | Skills Involved in Speaking | |
| Phonemes | → | pronunciation |
| Morphemes | → | grammar/vocabulary |
| Words | → | vocabulary |
| Phrases | → | grammar/idioms |
| Sentences | → | grammar |
| Discourses | → | discourses |
These skills affect:
- Fluency
- Comprehensibility
- Communication
- Interactional success
- Sense of well-being
Some Tips for Teaching Pronunciation
Teaching pronunciation requires focusing on the phonemic level of language. However, it doesn’t make sense to just work on sounds in isolation. Instead, it is more practical to look at how sounds affect communication at all of the other levels of language.
Sounds at the phoneme level:
- Voiced and unvoiced
- Aspiration
- Nasals
- Minimal pair exercises:
- Red/led; that/sat; ban/bam
- Obasan/obaasan; moto/motto; kite/kiite/kitte
- Tools for teaching pronunciation:
- Mirror
- Mouth diagrams
- Tape recording
- Miscellaneous (tissue, lighter, etc.)
- Website: http://phonetics.ucla.edu/
- Sounds vary between languages:
- What is produced
- What is heard: Allophones (kitten/link) (kIten/ki?n/kiɿn)
- Spelling (latter/ladder)
Sounds at the Morpheme level
- The plural “s” is sometimes pronounced /s/ and sometimes /z/
- The past tense “-ed” can be pronounced /d/, /t/, or /-ed/. It is often unaspirated and/or linked to the next word, which can make it hard to say naturally.
Sounds at the Word level
Word Stress
- May affect word meaning (part of speech)
- content (n) vs. content (adj)
- produce (n) vs. produce (v)
- Stress changes with word forms
- photograph/photography/photographic
- diplomat/diplomacy/diplomatic
Sounds at the phrase or sentence level
- Function words are usually unstressed (vowels often become “schwa”
- “I’d like to have a cup of coffee.”
- “What does he do for a living?”
- “What does he do for a living?”
- Linking is also important to natural speech at this level.
- Do you want to go to the movies? → Do ya wanna goda the movies?
- I shouldn’t have gone. → I shouldana gone.
Sounds at the discourse level
- Intonation provides much of the meaning
- Are you going?
- Where are you going
- Stress
- My math class was fun.
- My math class was fun.
- My math class was fun.
A word of caution
- Teach actual pronunciation NOT spelling!
- Adult language learners may have difficulty hearing and/or reproducing English sounds, especially in a conversation
- May also be issues of identity
Some Tips for Teaching Academic Listening
Academic listening at the phonemic level
- Ability to hear all phonemes of English including minimal pairs that might not exist in native language, such as /r/ and /l/
- Ability to hear and understand word stress and sentence stress
- Ability to understand natural, linked speech
Academic listening at the morpheme level
- Ability to hear and understand grammatical sounds (plurals, past tense, etc.)
Academic listening at the word level
- Vocabulary comprehension
- Strategies for dealing with unknown words
Academic listening at the phrase and sentence level
- Understand spontaneous speech (sentence fragments, pauses, fillers such as “um” and “ya know,” repairs, redirections, etc.)
- Understand standard and nonstandard grammar
Academic listening at the discourse level
- Organizational structures
- Discourse markers (“and finally,” “I would like to propose…,” “in contrast,”)
Bibliography
Cable, T. (1993). A companion to Baugh and Cable’s history of the English language (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) (2001). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.
Fillmore, L. W., & Snow, C. (2000). What teachers need to know about language. www.cal.org/ericcll/teachers.pdf.
Ladefoged, P. (1993). A course in phonetics (3rd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
