1) Should we teach our students features of connected speech?
2) And if so how?
1. Should we teach our students features of connected speech?
a) Teaching for productive use?
First of all, what do we mean by “teach” them? If we mean present them in such a way that we expect our students to incorporate them into their productive use of English, then probably not. Brown (1977) argues “I think it cannot be too strongly urged that students should not be required to produce the forms …only to recognize them and understand utterances in which they occur”.
But why? Leaving aside for now any political issues concerned with accent and identity, the most obvious answer is that it’s probably an unrealistic aim. And in addition, it’s not necessarily a positive outcome. Here are a few reasons why:
- These are by definition features of fairly rapid speech. Few of our learners, especially at the early levels, are so fluent that they sound natural using the features. In fact, a low level learner who tries to use, for example, weak vowels while still speaking slowly with pauses between words, can sound quite ludicrous.
- Our learners are liable to be making a fair number of lexical and grammatical errors while speaking which already detract from their comprehensibility. Ironically, a slower, clearer pronunciation might actually make them more, rather than less, comprehensible.
- Do we have time? Wouldn’t the time that would be necessary to achieve a truly NS-like pronunciation be better spent on other things?
- Who do our learners want to speak English to? If for instance they are living in Britain (or Australia, or the States …) and want to integrate with the local community, then developing an accent which is as close as possible to the local accent may help them to do so. But if they are using English as an international language (EIL) and are mainly speaking to other non-native speakers, it again may not be necessary and could actually impede rather than help comprehension. Most learners say they find non-native speakers far easier to understand than native speakers, and the absence of these features is one of the major reasons for this.
We still, of course, have to decide whether we are throwing out productive use of all or just some of these features. Most teachers would probably argue for teaching contractions productively. Without them, learners would probably sound too stilted and unnatural even in an international context. But most would also argue that the use of assimilation is an unnecessary aim. There are always exceptions of course. We may find ourselves dealing with learners who do have the aim of sounding as much like native speakers as possible – for example operators in call centres who are expected to speak in an accent which does not give any clues to the fact that they are based overseas (again, we are not here concerned with the political implications of this). In this case we would need to focus productively on these features with our learners.
Teaching for receptive use?
What about teaching for receptive purposes – ie assuring that our learners are aware of these features and can understand them when they occur in NS speech? Again, if our learners are only using English as an international language, it may be that they don’t need to focus on the features at all. For example, an Area Sales Manager learning English in order to do business in Japan might spend his time better focusing on learning to interpret Japanese English pronunciation rather than British or American. This time though, I would argue that this is probably a minority situation.
Why? Firstly, with many of our learners it is difficult if not impossible to predict that understanding native speakers will not be an ultimate objective – for example, if we are teaching in a state educational institution with secondary or tertiary students, and in many other general purpose contexts. And even learners who recognise a predominant need to communicate with NNSs may sometimes come into contact with NSs. For example, a sales manager whose clients may come from anywhere in the world. And even learners who know for certain that they are unlikely to interact with NSs may still wish to watch films or TV in English.
Teaching Approaches
As with teaching individual sounds, there are two possible teaching approaches: integrated teaching or isolated teaching. If we integrate the teaching we might do so at three points in the lesson :
1. Presentation/Controlled practice: When new grammatical items were taught, we would focus not only on the structural/notional/functional aspects of the new item but also on the phonological aspects. For example, in teaching modal verbs followed by the perfect infinitive (eg He might have forgotten), the weak form of have can be presented and practised.
2. Free practice/Fluency practice: When monitoring learners’ output, the T can be listening for phrases where connected speech might occur, and can focus on these in the follow-up.
3. Listening: If we are focusing on these features mainly to improve receptive competence, it would seem logical that we focus on them intensively in the listening activities which are built into the course. If we are using a standard Warm-up / Gist comprehension / Detailed comprehension / Language focus approach, the focus can be built into the third stage (if the connected speech feature has blocked comprehension), or can be the main focus of the fourth.
A second approach would be to build these features into the course as items in their own right. This for instance is the approach taken by the coursebook International Express. For example, in Unit 8 of the Pre-intermediate level (original version) there is a section presenting and practising the weak and strong versions of to. Learners hear two sentences: Who do I speak to? and Can I speak to John? And are asked to identify the difference in pronunciation of the word to. They then hear another six sentences, identify which pronunciation is used and work out the “rule” that the strong form is used at the end of sentences and the weak form internally. There is also repetition work and other controlled practice.
Very few course books, whether they take and integrated or an isolated approach, deal truly systematically with these features. And many courses leave phonology out all together. If the teacher wishes to incorporate these features, s/he often has to use specialist texts which do focus on them (see eg Mortimer) or create ad hoc materials to do so.
References
Brown, G. Listening to Spoken English, CUP 1977
Taylor, L. International Express, OUP , 1999
Mortimer, C. Elements of Pronunciation, CUP 1985
