Teaching Pronunciation: Simplicity Is the Key by Judy B. Gilbert

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Figure 2. Prosody pyramid based on the work of Bolinger (1989), Cutler (2015), Derwing and Munro (2015), and Gilbert (2012).

If you help your students absorb a threshold command of the prosody pyramid system (including the contrastive function of schwa), they will have a strong base to learn other aspects of English pronunciation (see Figure 3).


Figure 3. The English system of contrastive clarity.

English calls attention to the focus words by three basic signals: extra clarity, extra length, and a marked pitch change. Focus words convey new information (what hasn’t already been talked about). See Figure 4 for an example of the focus changing as a conversation continues. It is crucial that learners are able to hear/process those signals.

English Sounds That Do Not Exist In Spanish

Be aware of sounds in English that do not exist in the student’s native language.  They may be more difficult to hear, say, and need to be explicitly taught.

There are many letters and combinations that are pronounced differently or that do not exist in Spanish.

English Sounds That Do Not Exist In Spanish:

Initial Consonants of: g, h, j, r, v, z

Diagraphs of: ch, dg, sh, th, wh

Letter Combinations: -ck, -ght, -nd, -ng, -nt, sc-, sch-, sk-, sl-, sm-, sn-, sp-, spl-, spr-, sq-, st-, str-, sw-, -tch, thr-, tw-

Short Vowels Sounds: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/

Long Vowel Sounds: 

/a/ represented as a-e, ai, ay, ei

/e/ represented as ea, ee, ie, y

/i/ represented as I, i-e, ight, -ind, y

/o/ represented by o-e, oe, ow, oa, o

/u/ represented by u-e, u

Diphthongs: au, aw, ew, oi, ou, ow, oy, ue

R-controlled vowels: /ar/, /er/, /ir/, /or/, /ur/

Silent Letters: -gn, kn-, -mb, wr-

Others:

Schwa a as in again

A as in second a in camera and around

E as in stolen

E as in the second e in obedience

O as in dragon

U as in circus

U as in suspect

Source:  Esparza-Brown, J.  Utilizing Response to Intervention to Improve the Academic Performance of your ELLs.  December 16, 2009, Cincinnati, OH.  Resource materials.  Institute for Educational Development, Medina, WA

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