I’d like to introduce my experience of learning English pronunciation with a downloaded video clip of academic presentation training. The instructions on making academic presentation is presented by Ms Rosemary, senior tutor with the University of Portsmouth. I chose the video clip because the presenter speaks clear and good English. In her speech, there are identifiable patterns of rhythm and intonation contour. Following is the elaboration of how I made use of this video clip to learn English pronunciation.
I transcribed Ms. Rosemary’s speech and printed it out. By rewinding and listening to her speech thoroughly, I identified the rhythmic features of her speech and marked them out on the transcript. For example, the weak forms are regularly realised on function words and words of given information. The syllables are stressed in the words that are emphasised. Together with the stress shifts, intonation contour is also presented on the weak and strong syllables. The stressed, end-of-tone-unit syllables within an utterance usually have a rising or even tone, while the unstressed words at the end of an utterance are often realised in a falling tone. These features are so distinctive that I found my imitation noticeably closer to a British accent in terms of intonation when I imitated them.
Apart from these prosodic features I have identified in the video clip, Ms Rosemary’s speech also has the feature that most of the plosive and fricative consonantal sounds within, or at the end of, the words are realised. This feature is so noticeable that I pick it up in my imitation in my formal, prepared speech with much ease.
Above all, I believe that the most important point of learning English pronunciation from online resources on a computer is that we carefully digest the materials, extract from them the rules and the nature, and do much practice on the features identified. It is more valuable to analyse and practice with a small number of good materials than viewing a large amount of websites, roughly.
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Hi there,
ReplyDeleteI really like the way that you have systematically analyzed the language in this clip. That kind of approach is essential to any use of technology in language teaching. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Amazing! You demonstrate a great example to us about how to utilize materials online.
ReplyDeleteYes, I can't agree more to your idea on the effort we should make to digest materials on-line!
Robbie, you really rocks!
ReplyDeleteI wish I were as hardworking as you!
You have given us a good example of how to use the materials. As we know, there are millions of kinds of language learning materials on the Internet. However, what matters is how we use the resourses to improve our proficiency of the target language, in which a lot of efforts are needed. In your text, your method inspires me that we should provid students with approaches to make most of the materials instead of just telling them the useful links.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteIn my previous workplace, students would listen to the tape or the famous professor in the course of phonology. It's quite boring and ineffective to teach in such a way. You have provided us with a more interesting approach in teaching and learning pronounciation. Amazing technology!