Perception comes before production, and that is why prosodic elements become the ideal tool on the awareness of English pronunciation in first hand, likewise supports the discrimination of sounds, qualifying learners to distinguish the sounds of the speech and produce them later. “The better a learner can hear the subtleties of the speech, the more likely that person will be to reproduce those sounds in their own speech” (Haslam, 2010, p81). Recognizing accurately what native speakers say and the way they say it, enables English learners to produce a native-like pronunciation. “Through the instruction of suprasegmentals, the learner develops awareness and monitoring skills above the segment level that will allow learning and self-correcting opportunities outside the classroom environment” (Adams-Goertel, 2013, p.124). Becoming mindful of what learners perceive, allows them not only to imitate exactly what they listen but to do some self-monitoring to notice and correct mistakes triggering a native-like accent. To do so, technology resources has become an important tool along with the teaching of prosodic features.
Stress as the combination of length, loudness, and pitch applied to syllables plays an important role in the intelligibility of the speech and in the acquisition of a native-like pronunciation. “Placing stress patterns in the wrong place in both words in isolation and context may seriously impair meaning and understanding” (Belhoum, S. and Benhattab, A., 2016, p.317). At both the word level and the sentence level, stress is key for intelligibility, the wrong practice leads to misunderstandings on the communicative practice. Along with the stress, intelligibility depends of the right practice of the rhythm and intonation.
The prosodic feature that comes in as an interdependent feature with stress as mentioned before, is rhythm. Rhythm, enhances the intelligibility of speech making speaker’s sound natural instead of sounding like a robot. Rhythm importance relies on giving the learners a better comprehension on their listening and better production of their speech, the same with their pronunciation. “Since English learners will be predisposed to use the rhythm of their L1, it is highly important that they be made consciously aware of the English system of rhythm” (Gilbert, J. 2008, p.4). The more conscious the English learners become of these features the better their production comes.
Pronunciation is a factor that depends on how learners perceive the language and this perception is directly linked to the listening skill. Therefore, the use of recordings and audio-videos as technological resource, promotes great development and improving on their listening and speaking skills. For example, the use of CD-ROMs, eminently appropriate for self-access, facilitates large amounts of contextualized native-speaker data provided to learners, along with the facility to listen to short extracts and recap specific feature (Jenkins, 2004). Listening to recordings, video-clips, music and even phonological chunks as part of educational and technological resources, first enables leaners to become aware of specific features of the native pronunciation and later allows them to do self-monitoring and self-correction propitiating native-like pronunciation.
To conclude, besides the traditional pronunciation strategies, the teaching of prosodic elements empowers students on the achievement of a native-like pronunciation while learning English. Elements such as intonation, stress, and rhythm have a big impact on the accomplishment of that goal. The reason is that these elements pursue both, perception and production of the language, which makes them key elements of native-like pronunciation gain. “Stress, rhythm and intonation differentiate the fluent from the mediocre second language speaker, and results in a native-like accent which is central to the successful use of a second language” (Adams-Goertel, 2013, p.117).
References
Adams-Goertel, R. (2013). Prosodic elements to improve pronunciation in English language learners: A short report. Applied Research on English Language: 2(2), 117-128. Retrieved from: http://are.ui.ac.ir/article_15474_0658d035bda407a803698e369844de91.pdf
Gilbert, J. (2008). Teaching Pronunciation: Using the Prosody Pyramid. USA: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/26353337/Teaching_Pronunciation_Using_the_Prosody_Pyramid
Haslam, N. (2010). "The Relationship of Three L2 Learning Factors with Pronunciation Proficiency: Language Aptitude, Strategy Use, and Learning Context" . All Theses and Dissertations. 2111. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2111
Jenkins, Jennifer. (2004). Research in Teaching Pronunciation and Intonation. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 24. 109 - 125. DOI10.1017/S0267190504000054.
Sonia, B. and Abdelkader B. (2016). The Importance of Prosody in a Proper English Pronunciation for EFL Learners. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ), 7(2) Pp. 316-327. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2814804
.
Skeleton
Thesis statement