Phonological Analysis

Phonological Analysis

Introduction

Learners are confronted with diverse problems in learning a second language so as English, especially in pronunciation, which is believed to be the most basic stumbling block in learning English (Roach, P., 2009). The reason why there are so many challenges with pronunciation is that speakers come from various language backgrounds and where the L1 phonology is significantly different from English. Of the Chinese phonological viewpoint, English phonology is problematic, and students often make mistakes. Teachers of English can learn a lot about their student’s problems if they can analyze spoken discourse appropriately. This essay will analyze a sample of spoken dialogue from three aspects, including segmental, suprasegmental, as well as fluency and pausing. Also, it will discuss some approaches for refining the speaking competence of this speaker and will highlight the main features which can be developed in the classroom for students with similar phonological issues.

Segmental Analysis

For better understanding the speech, people should translate those speeches sounds into written forms to make sure audiences or readers can totally and correctly understand what does each phonetic symbol represent for (Hewlett, N. and Beck, J.,2006). It means that the criteria of judging whether the speech item in the sample is understandable or not depend on the recognizing level by comparing NNS’ and NS’ pronunciation gap. There are a few segmental areas where the sample speaker’s pronunciation exists some drawbacks compared to the native speaker, and that can make others confused. Firstly, the pronunciation tendency of inserting some extra syllables (insertion) in this Chinese speaker’s speech has taken the principal place and has confused the audiences most according to an understandable level survey (seen as appendix 1). In this survey, the participants band the sentence from 1 to 5 marks and five means they can understand the sentence without any difficulty. As a result, there are some sentences’ marks are lower than the average level. In other words, the speaker is used to add the extra /ə/ after some consonants. For example, the student pronounced ‘speed’ /spiːd/ as [spiːdə] inline 14. Such cases cover: ‘about’ (line 1), ‘it’s’ (line 2), ‘luxury’ (line 3) and ‘more, two, together, steed’ (line 15) and so on (seen as appendix 2). This oral habit is observed by Pennington (2007) and is known as “foreign-accented speech” which is believed to be the most popular mistake encountered by many ESL learners (Pennington, M. C., 2007).

Furthermore, another apparent pronunciation trend (elision) appeared in this sample is not native-like. The complete disappearance of a vowel phoneme, mainly/ə/ in the example, occurs when it is weak and part of an unstressed syllable (appendix 2). ‘Company’ (line1), ‘together and sturdy’ (line 15), and ‘afterwards and possessed’ (line 16) are typical examples of such a phenomenon. Also, Pennington (2007) hold the opinion that some variations of pronunciation could be easily understood and it should be acceptable. He noticed that any change could be recognized if it is systematically linked to relative context. Therefore, Jonathan Kaye (1989) has found these two tendencies common for L2 learners such as this Chinese speaker in the sample, and it is evident in appendix 1 that the under-average-result lines are full of these two speaking phenomena.

Suprasegmental Analysis

Pronunciation holds the language feature which can distinguish native speakers from nonnative speakers of languages in general and English in particular (Clark, J., Yallop, C., 2007). In other words, only if the L2 pronunciation follows some criteria or patterns, people can easily understand each other and analyzing L2 speakers’ speech effectively can help improve communication. Apart from the segmental areas discussed before, the suprasegmental analysis also plays an essential role in the phonological analysis process. Firstly, words stress or the stressed element will become more salient than the other parts and is found to have a higher pitch, and the length of the duration is more prolonged (Katamba, F., 1989). It means that from the phonological viewpoint, correct word stress can inevitably not only make the critical points in the speech more easily to be caught but also more likely to understand. For example, ‘this, words and degree’ inline 10 (appendix 2), the length of some elements is longer than others which are mispronounced and has confused the audience in a large degree according to the band results in appendix 1. Because Chinese is believed to be a syllabic-timed language while the English are stress-timed one, the Chinese speaker in the sample is used to pronounce each word with the same stress and sometimes can make the audience hard to distinguish the main points in the sentence. The spectrogram showed in appendix 3 can support each importance in one sentence, and it can understand that every word stressed in the sentence, and there will be no focus to catch. Also, accurate word stress can help the speakers to distinguish whether the things they want to express is a proper noun or a normal one. For example, the white house cannot be separated from the White House if there is no word stress (Pennington, M. C., 2007). Thus, correct word stress such as syllable stress and suitable duration length can ensure better understanding.

Furthermore, appropriate sentence intonation can ease understanding. It is assumed that some typical intonation patterns are normally linked to certain sentence types. For example, the falling tone is always believed to express declarative sentences, while rising intonation usually matches examination sentences (Katamba, F., 1989). She also supports that the speaker’s attitude could be guessed because of the attitudinal purpose conveyed by intonation. In the provided sample, the majority of end tones of the Chinese student is a falling tone, and it is powerful to support all the contents she talked about Benz is reliable (appendix 4). However, Thompson (2003) has suggested that when making lengthy personal statements, the speakers should be asked to hold the intonation cues to guide the listeners to follow the main structure or nobody could follow a monologue all the time. It is the primary difficulty for those international students who are not native speakers of English that they lack the competence to control the utilization of these organizational devices. As a result, their monologues are often regarded as flat and undifferentiated (Tyler and Bro, 1992) by the audience. For example, in appendix 5, the waves of the spectrogram created by the sample speaker’s speech only range from 100 to 200 Hz, and it means that there are not enough intonation clues to direct the audience to follow. Also, appendix 6 shows the comparison between the original intonation of the sample and the ideal one. Therefore, the speaker in the sample answer should change her intonation or tone more frequently to ensure other audience could understand the structure of each section and the link between the whole speech.

Fluency and Pausing Analysis

The definition of fluency is a kind of ability that can assemble units of speech with ease and no strain or long time hesitation (Hedge, T.,1993). Once this sort of knowledge was accomplished, it can make those L2 speakers more pleased and can stimulate more practice. At the same time, the more fluently the speakers say, the more efficiently the listeners can understand (Gatbonton and Segalowitz, 1988). According to some calculation format (appendix 7), the sample speaker’s speech fluency rate can achieve the level between the intermediate and the advanced one. It means that the sample speaker’s fluency can be acceptable.

Compared with the native speaker, those nonnative speakers of English will encounter the additional burden of constructing extended discourse, which often results in miscues that lead to a lack of coherence by the listener (Tyler and Bro, 1993). It means that some of the nonnative speakers have noticed they should have some pauses during the speech to guide the organization of the monologue, but they do not know where to pause which confused the audience either. Usually, breaks could happen at the end of clauses, tone units, before or after the discourse marker while the wrong pause could interrupt the whole melody of the sentence and may lead to some comprehensibility problems or some misunderstanding. The front part of line 13 includes three interludes after ‘so’, ‘problem’ and ‘after’ respectively and this is the example of such productions and the wrong pauses can break the rhythm of the sentence and make the audience confused. What is more, the overuse of stops can also interrupt the understanding of the whole sentence, especially the long sentence. Taking the line 10, 11,12 and 16 as examples, all of them cover at least three apparent pauses in one sentence, and it is the pause that divides the sentence into several fragments. Thus, overuse or the wrong place of the break can make the original meaning of the sentence chaotic.

Teaching section

Among the drawbacks discussed above, the pausing problems are believed firstly to be focused on, while the segmental issues would be ignored in my class because whether foreign accent strong or not does not necessarily cause L2 speech hard to comprehend or lower intelligibility level (Munro and Derwing, 1999). Pienemann, M. (1989) suggested that the right time and the right way can help the L2 learners familiar with English phonology indeed. It is also believed that task-based instruction can provide teaching of pronunciation a considerable help for improvement and learning in many respects (Ellis, 1990).  Learners’ attention can be drawn to the rhythm or the pausing pattern of sentences produced during the task (John, C. and Yallop, C. 2007). Also, someone suggested that the whole language approach could be useful when teaching L2 students. However, this suggestion ignores the period for running the entire target into a class.

Conclusion

According to the analysis above from segmental, suprasegmental, and fluency and pausing aspects, it is clear that the Chinese student in the sample is used to add some extra morphemes at the end of some typical syllables, the range of intonation cannot meet the guidance demands, and in specific sentences the pauses existed interfere with comprehensibility, although the total fluency is accepted. It could be summarised that from the Chinese phonological view, English phonology is problematic indeed and those problems are all related to their mother language pronunciation habits, which is hard to be corrected in time. Following the task-based instruction will make some progress in teaching L2 learners and can overcome the language background interruption to some degree.

Reference List

Clark, J., Yallop, C., Fletcher, J., Malden and MA (2007) An introduction to phonetics and phonology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Ellis, R. (1990) Instructed Second Language Acquisition: Learning in the Classroom.

Blackwell: Oxford.

Gatbonton, E. and Segalowitz, N. (1988) “Creative automatization: Principles for promoting fluency within a communicative framework.” TESOL Quarterly, 22, 473-492.

Hedge and Tricia (1993) “Key Concepts in ELT.” ELT Journal 47.3: 275-77. Web.

Hewlett, N. and Beck, J. (2006) An Introduction to the Science of Phonetics. New Jersey:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Katamba, F. (1989) An Introduction to Phonology. New York: Longman Inc.

Kaye, J. (1989) Phonology: a cognitive view. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Munro, Murray, J. and Derwing, T. M. (1999) “Foreign Accent, Comprehensibility, and Intelligibility in the Speech of Second Language Learners.” Language Learning Dec99.

Pennington, M. C.(2007) Phonology in Context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pienemann, M. (1989) “Is language teachable? Psycholinguistic experiments and hypotheses.” Applied Linguistics 52-79.

Roach, P. (2009) English phonetics and phonology: a practical course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Thompson, S. E. (2003) “Text-structuring Metadiscourse, Intonation and the Signalling of Organisation in Academic Lectures.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2.1: 5-20. Web.

Tyler, Andrea, and John, B. (1992) “Discourse Structure in Nonnative English Discourse.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition14.1: 71-86. Web.

Tyler, Andrea and John, B. (1993) “discourse processing effort and perceptions of comprehensibility in nonnative discourse.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition15(4), 507-522.

Appendix 1: Marking band (understandable level survey)

Appendix 2: The texts of speech (convert from the audio)