Week 13: Pronunciation and Teaching

I recorded a video to reflect on last Monday, but found myself doing everything but reflecting. I had the same students again this morning and they reminded me about many of the things I had thought about last week. So I've come back to it!

Despite the title of this post this lesson was not primarily about teaching pronunciation, as we were introducing the "Can I...." form of requesting for the first time. This means that the first part of my reflection "What We Did" talks mostly about, well, what we did, and also some reflections on my attempts at MIC and CI techniques during the lesson as a whole.

The second part reflects my main interest for this post, the pronunciation aspect of my lesson. Although the actual pronunciation teaching content of this lesson was very limited, there was certainly material worthy of reflection. Therefore, the section imaginatively titled "Pronunciation" is arguably more interesting. Skip over the first section if you came to this blog expecting to read about pronunciation!

What We Did

In introducing the how to make requests using the structure "Can you..." I aimed to catch my students interests by showing them that what they have learned until now is wrong (in the sense that "can" doesn't have one meaning). I elicited the usual ability focused "can" which my students are well acquainted with (along with a picture of a can) and challenged what they knew. Thinking again now this seems like quite an abstract way of motivating a group of uninterested 5th graders, but they seemed engaged.

It certainly allowed a stronger sense of interest in the listening activity I provided to teach them the structure. At this point in my teaching I'm still trying my best to consciously implement a Top Down --> Bottom Up strategy, as I find it doesn't yet come naturally. To do this here I first showed them the context of the listening activity (which also had a video), which was an old people's home where some students were volunteering. I successfully elicited this from the students, and gave them a clear focus for what to do in this activity - listen out for three sentences which use the word "can" and take a note of them if they can.

The first two sentences were easily elicited, and I mainly used short, simple recasts and WB use to try to help students reach the right answer without giving it away. The third one took some time, but we eventually got there. We then did the listening a second time the students had to listen for how the sentences were used and what they meant. This, too, seemed to work pretty well. A few of the smarter students quickly identified a rough Korean equivalent which didn't involve the idea of ability, and the others seemed to follow along.

At 18:00 I tried to make this really clear by talking about the absurdity of answering the question "Can you open the window?" with "Yes, I can", but I found I was largely talking to myself and assuming an understanding of the target language content. Not only did I not make what I was saying clear, but I kept answering my own questions and found myself thankful to the few students who followed me and proceeded to correctly display some excellent examples of how we should answer the TLC question. I put this down to a lack of thought and preparation in this area; I had noticed it might be helpful to mention it at the last minute!

When I felt the students had got the meaning I spent a lot of time emphasizing the importance of the structure by playing a version of Simon says. I used my over-acting skills to demonstrate the rudeness of telling someone to "OPEN THE WINDOW" in contrast to the positive feelings associated with asking someone "Can you open the window, please?". This question form effectively replaced the function of the "Simon says" structure, with students only doing the action when I was polite. The students found the game, aided by my over-acting, great fun, and I really think they picked up on what I was trying to get across.

There was one main problem with the way I approached this, however. Have you worked it out? Yup, it's...

Pronunciation

My pronunciation teaching in this lesson was meditated and intentional, but the actual time spent directly teaching it was fairly brief (see 18:47). This was my first ever attempt at teaching "natural" sounding English, and I decided to show my students the shortening of "can you" to "cnya". It didn't take long to get them to see what I was saying, and from the choral repetition I got I assumed that everyone had got it. However, looking back I now see that I didn't provide any opportunity to check individual students' pronunciation. I simply got a few loud choral repetitions and some obvious understanding from a few students, and moved onto the Simon says activity mentioned above - a listening activity (if that). I can't even say that everyone had tried the pronunciation out at that point in the lesson.

This wouldn't have been too much of an issue if I'd returned to lots of speaking practice later, but I didn't really do this. I instead aimed the activities on making sure the students understood the target language content. There was a speaking activity planned for the end of the lesson, but we ran out of time (we started it at 39:00!) and my students were so keen to go that the activity didn't really work. But I shouldn't blame this on them - I didn't prepare enough speaking time.

The biggest problem, however, wasn't my use of activities, but my lack of use of the pronunciation I was teaching. Because I'm used to changing the speed and level of my English in class I didn't expect this to be a problem, but I really failed to consistently pronounce the TLC the way I'd taught it. I found that I really do have a teacher voice! I think this is alright for my normal teaching, as it's important for the students to get to grips with what they are learning through my clear example, however given this all the time I'm in no doubt that my students won't have a way to understand real English outside the classroom. I say I don't mind giving clear, slow English a lot of the time because my learners are at such a low level and because I can potentially provide more varied and real speakers on listening tasks, but this lesson really highlighted the need for me to teach pronunciation, and consistently, to my students.

A really great thing, however, happened when I met this class again this morning (I only see them once a week). I was both shocked and delighted to find many of them coming out with the pronunciation I taught them last week without my prompting. The fact that they had remembered was a great start, but I was much more impressed at how much more natural their English sounded after such a short and simple change... Suddenly they didn't feel like my students any more!

I think it's not unreasonable to mark this as a big realization about how I've been teaching and what I need to teach in the future. The size and level of my classes is not a reason or excuse not to teach pronunciation, and nor is my ability to understand them. I would almost say I'm morally obliged to teach them natural pronunciation the way I have been learning to recently. If I don't they will finish four years of English education with me and not be able to go out into the world and speak English with anyone other than their classmates. That reality would be far from my recently formed aim of teaching them to communicate.

Is it time to get the rubber bands out, then?