Introduction

Correct pronunciation is a vital feature of using language properly. Speaking any

language involves understandable pronunciation. Therefore, teaching pronunciation and

teaching speaking, which is one of the basic language skills, should happen

simultaneously. Although there is a wide variety of available techniques of teaching

pronunciation it seems to be difficult to choose the most effective and, in the same time,

the most enjoyable one. That is why the diploma paper entitled “Teaching

Pronunciation Using Tongue Twisters” is devoted to one specific method which is

researched thoroughly here.

This diploma paper will check whether pronunciation is taught at school and what

techniques are used to do it. It will elaborate on students’ attitude towards

pronunciation. Finally, it will describe the method I chose to teach pronunciation:

namely, teaching pronunciation using tongue twisters.

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Chapter I

Theoretical background

1.1. What is pronunciation?

Dictionary of English Language and Culture provides us with a very general but

accurate definition of a concept of pronunciation: “1. the way in which a language or a

particular word is pronounced, 2.a particular person’s way of pronouncing words or a

language.” Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

emphasizes a role of a hearer in an act of pronouncing words. According to it

pronunciation is: “the way a certain sound or sounds are produced.

Unlike articulation, which refers to the actual production of speech

sounds in the mouth, pronunciation stresses more the way sounds are

perceived by the hearer, and often relates the spoken word to its

written form.”

The most precise definition of pronunciation is stated in Fraser (2001: 6)

who mentions that one of key features of pronunciation is its being comprehensible and

adds factors which have influence on pronunciation, according to him pronunciation

“includes all those aspects of speech which make for an easily intelligible flow of

speech, including segmental articulation, rhythm, intonation and phrasing, and more

peripherally even gesture, body language and eye contact. Pronunciation is an essential

ingredient of oral communication, which also includes grammar, vocabulary choice,

cultural considerations and so on.”

1.2. Reasons to teach pronunciation

Teaching pronunciation seems to be neglected at schools. It may be caused by the fact

that teachers whose pronunciation is not correct do not include teaching pronunciation

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into their teaching syllabus or they do not have enough knowledge about methodology

of teaching pronunciation. It may be rooted in the past when the emphasis was laid on

teaching macro-language skills and grammar. According to Md. Zahid Akter (2007:

36): “The lack of good teachers of pronunciation (in EFL settings) today has perhaps

resulted from the absence of teaching pronunciation earlier.” Hewings (2004: 19)

states that “[…] pronunciation is given a lower priority than other components of

language such as grammar and vocabulary, and is sometimes relegated to an ‘end-of-

the-day’ activity or a five-minute filler to give students some light relief from the ‘real’

work of language learning.”

Nevertheless, there are plenty of reasons for incorporating pronunciation into a teaching

programme. Hewings (2004: 10) mentions students’ frustration and being demotivated

due to “repeated experiences where communication breaks down because of problems

with English pronunciation. This is perhaps especially true for those ho have a good

command of other aspects of language such as vocabulary and grammar.”

Incomprehensible pronunciation may lead to difficulties in conveying any message and,

vice versa, understanding what has been said. It may cause embarrassment of the

speakers when pronunciation errors are ambiguous, such as in case of common mistake

of mispronouncing words “beach” and “bitch”.

Moreover, Md. Zahid Akter (2007: 36) mentions also “the intended outcome as a result

of what we say.” According to Md. Zahid Akter (2007: 36) we communicate not only to

be understood but also to do so effectively since “Good pronunciation is highly

appreciated and bad pronunciation immediately leads us to call one’s overall

proficiency of English into question.”

The newest approach in language teaching which is Communicative Approach “holds

that since the primary purpose of language is communication, using language to

communicate should be central in all classroom language instruction. This focus on

language as communication brings renewed urgency to the teaching of pronunciation,

since both empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a threshold level of

pronunciation for nonnative speakers of English; if they fall below this threshold level,

they will have oral communication problems no matter how excellent and extensive

their control of English grammar and vocabulary might be. ”

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1.3. Pronunciation teaching approaches, techniques used to teach

pronunciation and pronunciation exercises

Pronunciation teaching is multidimensional. It is not enough to include repetition

exercises on the English lesson. Hewings (2004: 13, 14) enumerates important elements

which should be taught:

consonants

consonant clusters

vowel length

word stress

tonic words

the exact shape of vowels

weak and strong forms

connected speech

intonation

pitch of voice.

Before we make students do any pronunciation exercises we have to make sure that they

are willing to them. Students have to realize how pronunciation is important in

communication. In order to raise awareness of pronunciation significance we may ask

them an intriguing question suggested by Dalton and Seidhofer (1994: 156): “How do

you feel when you meet a foreigner who speaks your own language with a very good

accent?

a) surprised

b) pleased

c) not surprised

d) full of admiration

e) don’t care or think about it”

Certainly, students would like to be this foreigner admired by his speakers. Evoking

admiration in speakers is a well-motivating factor. We may also say anecdotes:

9

1. “Student to English literature tutor: ‘What do you think about /ǝ’ni:mɪzm/ in

“King Lear?” Tutor wonders about the connection between anaemia and

Shakespeare.”

2. “Host introducing a guest speaker: ‘Proffesor X is a very /’ɪmpɒtǝnt/ man in the

field of …’ (embarrassment and giggles).

What the speaker meant was, of course, ‘Animism’ and ‘imPORtant’.”

(Anecdote 1 quoted after Brown (1990) by Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994: 100)

Students would probably want to avoid such awkward mistakes.

As mentioned earlier, students must be aware of the importance of pronunciation.

Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994: 67, 68) state that many learners “need to have their

attention drawn to what they have to do by explicit explanation. Making learners notice

things by consciousness raising is as crucial to pronunciation as it is to the teaching of

other aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary.” I am opposed to the view

that students should not be taught pronunciation on isolated forms and always based on

meaningful interaction and supports Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994: 130): “(…) in order

for language items to be learnt, they need to be ‘noticed’ first (Schmidt 1990). And in

order to be noticed, they need to be highlighted-learners need to be exposed to the

forms they are to acquire.” When a teacher encounters on the class any repetitive

pronunciation mistake he can follow the procedure explained by Doff (1988: 114):

Say the sound alone.

Say the sound in the word.

Contrast it with other sounds.

Write words on the board.

Explain how to make a sound.

Get students to repeat the sound in chorus.

Get individual students to repeat the sound.

There are two approaches towards pronunciation teaching described by Dalton and

Seidlhofer (1994: 69,70). They differ in priority which they give to certain elements of

pronunciation: “(…) whether it is the separate segment of sound or the larger prosodic

unit. In the first case, we have a bottom-up approach, beginning with the articulation of

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individual vowels and consonants and working up toward intonation. In the second

case, we have a top-down approach, beginning with the patterns of intonation and

bringing separate sounds into sharper focus as and when required.” The first view

gives priority to segments, it is supported by “a structural approach to teaching

grammatical and lexical features of language.” The second one gives priority to

prosodic features of pronunciation and “is consistent with a more communicative

perspective in language teaching.”

Each of the approaches mentions articulation of individual sounds as an element of

pronunciation learning process. No matter when we start, it is advised to explain

students articulatory features of sounds, so, how they are produced. Whole vowel

system and majority of consonants are different than Polish ones. Students have to be

explained how to make sounds which they had never produced before. At least, they

have to be aware this fact. As a support to this claim Underhill (1994: 2) may be cited:

“To facilitate the learning of the phonemes of standard English, we need to know:

how each sound is produced within the vocal tract;

where in the vocal tract each sound is produced.”

Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994: 72) are also in favor of this idea: “With explanation, the

assumption is that this will not necessarily happen unaided, and that it can be helpful to

make students consciously aware of phonetic, and phonological, facts.”

The first step to “make students aware of phonetic facts” is explaining sound

production process. A number of exercises may be applied to achieve this goal.

Underhill (1994: 21) suggests plenty of “discovery activities,” one of them advises

experiencing how vowels in vowel chart change when saying them aloud separately and

by smooth gliding and without stopping to notice the tongue moving back and lips

rounding (i.e. taking horizontal rows forward and in reverse: /i:, ɪ, ʊ, u:/; /e, ǝ, ɜ:, ɔ:/; /æ,

∧, ɑ:, ɒ/ and vertical columns: /i:, e, æ /; /ɪ, ǝ, ∧/; /ʊ, ɜ:, ɑ:/; /u:; ɔ:, ɒ/).

Your students may also notice their mouth movement, their gradual opening and

gradual tongue moving backwards doing the exercise from Dalton and Seidlhofer

(1994: 16) adapted from Catford 1988: 126-7:

“Silently say the following sequences of words, paying attention to the way the mouth

gets progressively more open with the different vowels:

beat-bait-bet-bat

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too-toe-paw-pa.

Then try the same words again, but this time bite the end of a pencil to hold your teeth

about one centimeter apart (…). Holding the jaw rigid in this manner, try to become

clearly aware of the different degrees of tongue raising.”

Students should have been informed how to produce particular vowels or diphthongs

beforehand, otherwise, they will say Polish vowels instead of English and whole

exercise will not make any sense.

When students are aware of the English vowel and consonant system they may play a

“minimal pairs game”. Tell your students to say a monosyllabic word, the next one has

to repeat the word and add his own one by changing only one sound in the word, the

third student has to repeat two previous words and add his own one and so on… Pay

attention to proper pronunciation of your students.

Students’ awareness may be also practiced by The yes/no game suggested by Dalton and

Seidlhofer (1994: 126), here is the sample teaching material: “Give learners YES card

and NO card. (…) Read word list: singer, rang, ran, thing, thin, sin; Tell your students

to hold up a YES card if they think they hear /n/ and hold up a NO card if they don’t

hear the sound.”

No one likes to be tested but the majority of us like to test others. Let your students test

you. Follow Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994: 134) and make students read one word from a

row:

“oh or

so saw

low law

coal call

coat caught

boat bought”

Then, “say that you will point to the word you hear, and they should say ‘Yes’ if that

was the word they said and ‘No’ if it wasn’t. (…) If you aren’t sure whether you have

heard, for example, ‘coat’ or ‘caught’, point in between the two. If you hear something

different, like ‘curt’ for instance, point somewhere else on the board. (…) The learners

are in control and the teacher gets the ‘No’ for being wrong, which makes it, at least for

many learners, a fairly risk-free and enjoyable way of trying out the accuracy of their

pronunciation.”

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As far as consonants are concerned they are relatively easier to be pronounced.

Nevertheless, students should be informed about more significant differences between

Polish and English pronunciation, as aspiration, velar glottal sound and dental fricatives

sounds. Here is an exemplary exercises on aspiration adapted from Dalton and

Seidlhofer (1994: 14): “Prepare to pronounce a [p] as in ‘pot’, but do not actually say

anything. Just let as much pressure build up in your mouth as you can. Which parts of

your mouth do most of the work in holding up the air pressure? And consequently,

which parts do you move to release the pressure when finally saying the [p]?” Ask your

students to say ‘pot’ with assembling air in the mouth beforehand, they will pronounce

aspirated [pʰ].

Hewings (2004: 13, 14) mentioned that pronunciation teaching is not restricted only to

particular sounds production. The next step may be teaching items of connected speech,

which are:

links between words

contracted forms

weak and strong forms of grammar words

leaving out sounds

Try to get students interested in juncture by the following activity adapted from

Underhill (1994: 68):

“Say the following pairs of phrases. Can you distinguish between them? And if you can,

then how?

mice pies my spies

grey tapes great apes

send the maid send them aid

car pit carpet

it’s an aim it’s a name

grade ‘A’ grey day

ice cream I scream

ice train eye strain

the way to cut it the waiter cut it

I’m ‘A’ I may”

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Contemporary pronunciation teaching theory claims that prosodic features of speech

should also be taught. One of them is intonation. By the means of intonation we may

express respect of lack of it. It is vital not to confuse falling intonation from rising.

“Unlike grammar, vocabulary, and segmental pronunciation, mistakes in intonation are

not usually noticed and allowed for by native speakers, who assume that in this respect

a person sounds as he means to sound” may be read in Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994:

75). They suggest also a very instructive exercise on practicing falling intonation which

should be especially taught to Polish learners who tend to have raising intonation in

most sentences:

“Student 1 says either (a) or (b) with a pitch fall at the end of each group. The new

group starts on a higher pitch. This shows the listener the beginning and ending of the

group. Student 2 says the answer. The correct answer depends on correct grouping.

Examples (2+3)x5=25

two plus three times five equals twenty-five

2+(3x5)=17

two plus three times five equals seventeen

1. a) 3x(3+5)=24

b) (3x3)+5=14

2. a) (5-2)x2=6 (five minus two)

b) 5-(2x2)=1

3. a) (4-1)x3=9

b) 4-(1x3)=1”

Last, but not least, when taking into consideration prosodic features, word and sentence

stress cannot be omitted. Notion of word stress may be presented according to Dalton

and Seidlhofer (1994: 98-9, adapted from Wong 1987: 26-7) using the following

exercise which involves a sense of touch and will be particularly enjoyed by

kinaesthetics:

1. “Take a set of 3-syllable words such as ‘oranges’, ‘pineapples’, ‘computer’.

Mark the syllable lengths and ask students to note the differences in length as

they listen to you reading each one.

2. Before the second reading, distribute rubber bands to each student. Show them

how to stretch the rubber band with their two index fingers according to the

length of a syllable. Try it with ‘banana’. They should stretch the band a little

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for ba, more fore na, and a little again for na. exaggerate on the longer

syllables: stretch-STRETCH-stretch.”

The next chapter will investigate on tongue twister use in teaching English.

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Chapter II

Tongue Twisters

2.1. What is a tongue twister?

According to Mary Elizabeth (2003: www), “A tongue twister is a series of words or a

longer piece, like a poem, constructed to be very difficult to pronounce properly.”

Tongue twisters found place in cultural history of English as informal word games.

Cuddon (1991: 978) states that “[…] the tongue-twister is an alliterative jingle of some

antiquity. Also known as tongue-tripper.” Crystal (1995: 399) states that “[…] informal

word-play, involving […] tongue-twisters is common enough, from an early age. The

reason presumably is that auditory perception and short-term memory cannot cope with

the complexities of a multi-dimensional game.”

Uttering tongue twisters is enjoyable and brings elements of laughter to each

conversations, Mary Elizabeth (2003: www) claims that “Tongue twisters are used to

create humor by challenging someone to repeat them very fast and listening to the funny

results, as well as by public speakers and speech language students to increase verbal

agility”

2.2. Typology of tongue twisters

Tongue twisters can be divided according to the sound which appears in alliteration or

which is repeated many times in a tongue twister. Linse (2003: 27) presents some

tongue twisters based on specific sound or sound cluster:

Sounds - Phonemes Tongue Twister

Pp Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

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Bb Betty bought some butter,

but the butter Betty bought was bitter,

so Betty bought some better butter,

and the better butter Betty bought

was better than the bitter butter Betty bought before!

Betty bought some bitter butter

and it made her butter bitter,

so Betty bought some better butter

to make her bitter butter better.

oy oa Toy boat. Toy boat. Toy boat.

f/fr/fl Fat frogs flying past fast.

b, bl A big black bug bit a big black bear,

Made the big black bear bleed blood

u/oo How much wood would a woodchuck chuck

If a woodchuck would chuck would?

He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,

And chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would

If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

z/s Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,

Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy,

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,

Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he?

sh/s She sells seashells on the seashore. The seashells she sells are

seashore seashells.

Or

Sally sells seashells on the seashore. The seashells Sally sells are

seashore seashells.

adapted from Linse (2003: 27)

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Mary Elizabeth (2003: www) presents 5 types of tongue twisters:

1. Shifting from a single sound to a blend or digraph – during articulation of

tongue twisters in which shifting is present learner has to shift quickly between a

single sound, e.g. /s/, and a cluster, e.g. /ʃ/. For instance: The sixth sheik's sixth

sheep's sick.

2. Changed order – “[…] two words present the same sounds in the opposite

order. Juxtaposing these words in a tongue twister means that we're still hearing the

aural feedback and experiencing the muscle memory of saying the first sound when

reading the second, and this causes confusion.” For instance: A quick-witted cricket

critic where after clusters /kr/ there is /k/ and then /t/ in cricket and /t/ and then /k/ in

critic.

3. Similar but different – rhyming words with only the initial or the final sound

different. For instance:

“Denise sees the fleece,

Denise sees the fleas.

At least Denise could sneeze

and feed and freeze the fleas.”

4. Homophones – words pronounced in the same way but spelled differently. Mary

Elizabeth (2003: www) claims that “[…] the recognition of a word that looks

different but sounds the same as a word we've already said seems to increase the

complexity of pronunciation.” For instance:

How many boards

Could the Mongols hoard

If the Mongol hoards got bored?

5. Various combinations – combination of two or more phenomena presented above.

For instance: If Stu chews shoes, should Stu choose the shoes he chews?

Hewings (2004: 222) differentiates between tongue twisters which practise single

consonants and those which practise consonants and consonants clusters. Crystal (1995:

247) mentions other kinds of tongue twisters:

1. Those which capitalize on a difficulty of articulating clusters of consonants

occurring in a sequence, some sounds necessarily must be elided. He claims that

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“[…] some sequences are impossible to articulate naturally without elision. Try

‘Henry the Sixth’s three advisers’.”

2. Those which use farapart vowels:

Palato-alveolar / alveolar vowel-based sequences: If a shipshape ship

shops stocks six shipshape shop-soiled ships would six shipshape ship

shops stock?

Bilabial vowel-based sequences: Are you copper-bottoming ‘em, my

man?’ ‘No, I’m aluminiuming ‘em with the minimum of aluminium,

my’am.’

2.3. Suggested tongue twisters use

Few authors present their own ideas how to use tongue twisters as a method of teaching

English or teaching English pronunciation. Those ideas are gathered in this chapter. Ur

and Wright (1992: 84) suggest the following procedure: “Write a tongue twister on the

board, and read it with the students slowly at first, then faster. Make sure the students’

pronunciation is acceptable. Then individual volunteers try to say it quickly three

times.” They (ibid.) treat tongue twisters as the “five minute activity” which functions

as:

“1. a quick warm-up for the beginning to get your students into the right mood for

learning;

2. an idea for a brief vocabulary review before starting a new text;

3. a light filler to provide relief after a period of intense effort and concentration;

4. a brief orientation activity to prepare a change of mood or topic;

5. a game or amusing item to round off the lesson with a smile.” They (ibid.) believe in

learning value of such activities: “We have included only teaching procedures which we

consider to have genuine value for the students. […] We feel strongly that even in brief,

enjoyable ‘transition activities the students can and should continue to practise, learn,

increase knowledge and improve thinking.’”

Linse (2003: 27) makes students create their own tongue twisters according to a

language pattern which she gives them. She also disagrees with a popular belief that

tongue twisters are useless because of their being senseless: “At first I have students

and pupils, of all ages, write nonsense twisters where they merely string words together

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that start with the same sound. The next step is to have them write sentences where all

or almost all of the words start with the same sound or a very similar one. Finally, I

give them a simple language device where they put together words that start wit the

same or similar sounds as seen below. It doesn’t matter whether or not the twisters

make sense. The silly ones are actually more fun.

Noun Verb Adjectives Nouns

Laura likes luscious lemons

Nana knits naughty Nightingales”

Linse lists that tongue twisters are: “[...] a nice way to practice pronouncing different

phonemes; enjoyed by native English speakers and can be easily introduced into EFL

classroom.” Linse started to use tongue twisters when she realized that she could use

them to practice pronouncing phonemes that were difficult and troublesome for her

students.

Hewings (2004: 221) suggests using tongue twisters which contain similar sounds,

like /r/ or /l/ or the clusters /fr/, /fl/. He says that the purpose is to say the as quickly as

possible. Apart from the traditional procedure he proposes two variations: “1. Use the

‘She sells sea shells…’ tongue twister. Divide the class into two groups. One group

should say all of the words that begin /ʃ/, the other half all that begin /s/ and you say the

rest. […] 2. Use a short, repeated tongue twister (e.g. Truly rural…; Red lorry, yellow

lorry…; Please pay promptly…; Chop shop stock chops…). Choose two students to say

the tongue twister in turn. […] The students continue until one of them makes a mistake

(you should be the judge) and this student is eliminated. Choose another student (or ask

for a volunteer) to take place of the eliminated student to ‘challenge’ the winner.”

The next chapter will present the research which I will conduct to check how tongue

twisters should be taught to bring the expected result.

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Chapter III

Description of the Research Design

The following chapter is entirely devoted to the research design. It presents questions

the research will answer, place and time of the research, research tools which will be

used and research procedure.

3.1. Research questions

The research will evaluate whether English pronunciation may be taught using tongue

twisters. I want to find answers to the following questions:

Is pronunciation taught at schools?

What techniques are used to teach pronunciation?

What are the problems connected with teaching pronunciation?

Which element is the most difficult for pupils to learn?

What are the most common mistakes?

Do teachers use tongue twisters to teach pronunciation and how do they use

them?

Do students do pronunciation exercises at school?

Do students enjoy practicing pronunciation?

Do students enjoy practicing pronunciation using tongue twisters?

The research is aimed at checking whether learning how to say tongue twisters has any

influence on improving pronunciation in general. The research will evaluate

pronunciation of all sounds after learning tongue twisters and pronunciation of which

sound will improve mostly.

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3.2. Subjects of the research

The subjects of the research will be 30 Junior High Schools and High School students.

All of them are on the pre-intermediate level in English. They will be taught and

evaluated on private lessons. Two of them have the speech impediment. Subjects of the

additional questionnaire will be teachers from Junior High Schools and High Schools in

Tychy.

3.3. Date and place of the research

The research will take place in Tychy in April 2010 and will last approximately two

weeks.

3.4. Research tools

Among research tools which will be used are: a experiment, a questionnaire for teachers

and a questionnaire for students.

3.4.1. Experiment

Experiment will be conducted in the group of 30 Junior High School and High School

students who are on pre-intermediate level in English. Each students will be taught and

evaluated separately. First, pupils will read two short text on pre-intermediate level

(App. I) (from: Clementson (2005: 25,41). All the mistakes in pronunciation of vowels,

diphthongs, dental fricatives and velar nasal consonants will be marked in the

evaluation sheet (App. II). To avoid confusing pronunciation mistakes with mistakes

connected with reading an unfamiliar words for the first time pupils will be given a list

of difficult words from each text. Then, if they say that a word is unknown they will be

given explanation, they will be able to hear a pronunciation model and to repeat it for

practise. After reading the texts students will be given a set of tongue twisters (App. III)

practising pronunciation of the sounds which were mispronounced mostly. I will read

22

tongue twisters together with students, talk about the meaning of tongue twisters and

repeating them many times. They will be given an explanation about articulation of a

particular sound, how they should produce it, how to shape tongue et cetera. Pupils

should repeat tongue twisters until they can say them relatively fast without any

mistake. Then, they get tongue twisters to learn by heart as a homework.

The next part of the experiment is repeating tongue twisters after learning them at home

and re-reading the same texts by students. Their mistakes will be marked once again. It

is hoped that there will be improvement in students’ pronunciation as they drilled

particular sounds and tongue twisters enlarged the awareness of the sounds present in

English.

At the end of this part of the research students will be asked to fill in a questionnaire

which will give us crucial information whether students enjoy the technique or not and

whether they find it useful.

3.4.2. Questionnaire for students

Students who will take part in the experiment will be able to express their opinion about

the technique used by filling in the questionnaire (App. IV). The closed questions of the

questionnaire will give us qualitative data and the open questions will give us

quantitative data which, together with the results of the experiment and the results of the

questionnaire for teachers, will summarize the effects of the research.

3.4.3. Questionnaire for teachers

The questionnaire for teachers will be conducted at the end of the research as a separate

research (App. V). It will provide us with data about teaching pronunciation at schools.

Teachers will be asked about teaching pronunciation in general, techniques which they

use and about tongue twisters, whether they use them or not. Teachers will be informed

about the experiment’s results and will be provided with experiment’s procedure so as

they could use the technique on their own.

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3.5. Research procedure

The first research tool to be used is experiment. It consists of pre-test for students,

tongue twisters using as a technique to practice pronunciation and post-test. Then,

students will comment on the technique in their questionnaire. Finally, teachers from

Junior High Schools and High School will be questioned.

3.6. Research data analysis

Data gathered by means of the questionnaires and conducting experiment will be

analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative analysis will be presented in

the form of diagrams and tables. The qualitative analysis will consist of the detailed

description of data and will present the reasons of the results.

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Chapter IV

Quantitative analysis of the research results

Chapter IV presents the data gathered on the basis of the experiment and interviews

with the researched students and teachers. The chapter presents pure facts illustrated in

diagrams.

4.1 Experiment

The first part of the experiment involved reading two texts by thirty students. All in all,

they made 747 mistakes involving pronunciation of vowels, diphthongs and /ŋ/, /ð/,

/Ɵ/ sounds. After conducting the lesson using tongue twisters the number of mistakes

made during the second reading of the texts decreased to 156.

Figure 1.

Figure 2 presents the number of mistakes made while pronouncing particular sounds

and how pronunciation of them improved after learning tongue twisters.

25

Figure 2.

26

4.2 Questionnaire for students

30 students who took part in the experiment filled in the questionnaire about the

pronunciation learning at school and about tongue twisters used to teach them

pronunciation.

Among the students there were 28 (93.3%) girls and 2 (6.7%) boys. 2 (6.7%) students

had speech implements. 18 (60%) of them were high school students and 12 (40%) were

junior high school students. Their age varied from 13 to 17. Figure 3. presents the

detailed information about classes which students attended.

Figure 3.

In the following question students were asked if they learned pronunciation at school.

3 (10%) of them answered that they learned pronunciation at school, 27 (90%) admitted

that they did not learn it at school.

Figure 4.

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In question number 7 all the students admitted that they knew that English and Polish

had different sound system.

Figure 5.

In the next question 29 students admitted that they knew some rules of English

pronunciation.

Figure 6.

In the following question students were asked if English pronunciation was, according

to them, difficult. 7 students stated that it was difficult and 23 stated that it was not.

28

Figure 7.

The next question showed that all the students thought that correct English

pronunciation was important.

Figure 8.

In the question number 11 students were asked if they needed more pronunciation

exercises at school. 27 (90%) students said that they needed more practise and 3 (10%)

students did not need more.

Figure 9.

29

In the following questions students were asked about tongue twisters used on the classes

to teach them pronunciation. Questions number 12 and 13 proved that all the students

liked tongue twisters used to teach them pronunciation and all of them thought that it

was effective and useful.

Figure 10. Figure 11.

In the next question students were asked about the features of the technique. They could

mark the following features: enjoyable, funny, effective, boring, ineffective, difficult,

easy. All of the students marked that the technique used was enjoyable, funny and

effective. None of the students marked that it was boring or ineffective. For 9 students

the technique was difficult and for 7 students it was easy.

Figure 12.

30

The last closed question in the questionnaire concerned the difficulty of the technique.

Figure 13.

4.3 Questionnaire for teachers

Among the 20 teachers who filled in the questionnaire there were 10 junior high school

teachers, 6 high school teachers and 4 teachers who teach both at junior high school and

high school. All of the teachers claim to conduct pronunciation exercises.

Figure 13.

15 (75%) teachers said that they gave pronunciation exercises once a week, 4 (20%)

teachers conducted pronunciation exercises on each lesson and 1 (5%) teacher did it

rarer than once a month.

31

Figure 14.

18 (90%) teachers thought that students should start to be taught pronunciation at

primary school in the first class, 1 (5%) teacher thought that students should start to be

taught pronunciation at primary school in the second class and 1 (5%) teacher thought

that students should start to be taught pronunciation at primary school in the third class.

Figure 15.

14 (70%) teachers claimed that pronunciation should be understandable by foreigners, 4

(20%) teachers claimed that it should be near-native and for 2 (10%) teachers it should

be native-like.

32

Figure 16.

Teachers were asked about elements of pronunciation which they taught. 19 (95%)

teachers teach vowel pronunciation and consonant pronunciation, 17 (85%) of them

teach word stress, 8 (40%) teachers teach sentence stress and 14 (70%) teachers teach

intonation.

Figure 17.

19 (95%) teachers give private lessons and all of them teach pronunciation on them.

33

Figure 18.

19 (95%) teachers have used tongue twisters to teach pronunciation.

Figure 19.

The following chapter will be devoted to the qualitative analysis of the research results.

34

Chapter V

Qualitative analysis of the research results

This chapter will evaluate on the results of the experiment, questionnaire for students

and teachers. It will give some reasons for the results of the experiment and it will

comment on the open questions which appeared in both questionnaires.

5.1. Experiment

The experiment proved that students find the greatest difficulty in pronouncing /ŋ/,

/ð/, /Ɵ/ sounds. Then, so called ‘long’ vowels caused some troubles for them. Below

there is a diagram presenting sounds arranged from the most difficult for students to the

least difficult. It is based on the number of mistakes which students made during the

first reading of the texts, before learning tongue twisters.

Figure 20.

35

The results are approximate since there is not the same amount of each sound in both

texts. Nonetheless, the texts were long enough in order to pronounce each sound many

times in many sounds’ environments. Moreover, in the analysis I will pay attention only

to the sounds which arose the most difficulty, particularly /ð/, /ŋ/, /Ɵ/ and /ɔ:/. These

sounds turned out to be the most problematic as they do not appear in Polish and they

are not even similar to any Polish sounds. Students tended to pronounce /ð/ and /Ɵ/ as

‘d’ or ‘w’ and ‘t’ or ‘f’, /ŋ/ as ‘n’ and they never omitted the /g/ sound in –ing cluster

and they pronounced /ɔ:/ as /ɔ:r/.

Sobkowiak (2001: 22) claims that learners of English create their “private norm which

is called interlanguage. This is a convenient label to attach to the learner’s competence

which is somewhere between (inter) his/her native tongue and the native competence of

the speakers of the language.” Students thought that the alternative forms of /ð/,

/ŋ/, /Ɵ/ and /ɔ:/ which found their place somewhere on the line of interlanguage would

be accepted and understood by their speakers. Mistakes concerning /ð/ and /Ɵ/ were

made due to the native interference. Sobkowiak (2001: 24) states that “(…)

mispronouncing ‘faith’ as */feif/ or */feis/ is a relatively early phonetic error due to the

interference from Polish, which doesn’t posses the /Ɵ/ sound. (…) it is good to know

what kind of interference a given error is due to. If native, there is a good chance that it

will tend to disappear with time.” These mistakes are owing to interference from

sound. There are also mistakes made on the ground that the spelling is confusing. This

is called interference from spelling. Mistakes connected with pronunciation of /ŋ/ and

/ɔ:/ are caused by interference from spelling. Students tend to pronounce /g/ which

follows /ŋ/ in –ing cluster and /r/ which follows /ɔ:/. According to Sobkowiak (2001:

25) “Literacy (…) can have some negative consequences in the process of learning

foreign phonetics, especially in a language where spelling is so loosely related to sound

as in English.”

5.2. Questionnaire for students

36

Only 3 students out of 30 stated that they learned pronunciation at school. They claimed

that pronunciation exercises conducted at school were basically repeating after the

teacher. They did not mention any other primary pronunciation activities, like ‘odd one

out’, repeating minimal pairs, repeating after the recording. Although every textbook

provides exercises on pronunciation, some of them even introduce phonetic symbols to

enable students differentiate between sounds, it seems that teachers simply omit those

activities. Pronunciation still tends to be neglected at schools.

Figure 7 in the previous chapter presented that 23% of students perceived English

pronunciation as difficult. They said it was difficult for them since they sometimes

couldn’t pronounce some English sounds, some students mentioned that pronouncing –

th cluster was very difficult and that when they tried to pronounce it they were

embarrassed. Nevertheless, 67% claimed that English pronunciation was not difficult

for them. I have to admit that pronunciation of students who took part in the experiment

was far from perfect. Their self-confidence of their own performance was due to the

lack of exercises in which they could imitate or follow the proper examples of native

speech and which could have proved that their pronunciation was not near native one.

100% of students admitted that correct English pronunciation was important (Figure 8).

They supported their view saying that:

- it is important by dint of aesthetic values or because,

- it may affect the meaning of an uttered word when a word is a

homophone,

- they do not want to stand out from Englishmen,

- it is important for others to understand us,

- it may avoid misunderstandings.

As we can see students are aware of the fact that without proper pronunciation we may

be not understood or misunderstood by others. Consequently, 90% of students needed

more exercises on pronunciation at school (Figure 9).

Let me now proceed to the questions concerning the method of teaching pronunciation I

suggested. 100% of students liked the method and said that it was effective and useful

(Figures 10 and 11). They said that they liked it because:

- it was learning and having fun at the same time,

37

- it made them speak more fluent,

- it made them understand that proper pronunciation might be really

important,

- the tongue twisters were difficult to learn but they saw effects,

- it helped them to have more English-like pronunciation,

- when they had to repeat the tongue twisters constantly they automatically

remembered a given way of pronouncing.

In the question 15 students were asked if they marked any improvement in their

pronunciation. Not all of the students marked it but the majority of them claimed that:

- some words were less difficult for them than before,

- they tried to say properly –th cluster and not to pronounce /g/ and /r/

after –in and –oa respectively,

- they paid more attention to how they pronounced,

- they knew more rules of pronunciation.

In the following question students were to write the biggest advantage of the method,

they said that it was:

- learning through fun and laughter which does not discourage to learn,

- its efficiency,

- a lot of repetition,

- increase of concentration, mobilization, increase of willingness to learn.

The last question concerned the level of difficulty of the technique. Figure 13 presents

that it was difficult for 30% of students. Those who perceived it as difficult said that:

- at the beginning it was very difficult to pronounce everything properly,

- it was difficult to remember how to pronounce sounds,

- it was difficult to repeat tongue twisters,

- it was difficult to understand the meaning of tongue twisters,

- sometimes the effects did not depend on the student’s commitment but

rather on hearing and speaking abilities.

38

5.3. Questionnaire for teachers

The first observation which occurred to me while analysing the questionnaire for

teachers was that only 20% of teachers conduct pronunciation exercises on every lesson

(Figure 14) which is way too little. The first open question in the questionnaire

concerned the aim of teaching pronunciation which, according to teachers, was:

- promoting understanding and good communication with native speakers,

- acquiring native-like pronunciation and sounding more authentically,

- informing students about differences which occur in English

pronunciation,

- scoring better results on Matura exam.

Teachers were also asked what are their techniques to teach pronunciation. All of the

teachers mentioned repetition after the CD and after the teacher. Moreover, they listed:

- learning phonetic script,

- correction and self-correction,

- rhyming activities,

- exercises based on minimal pairs,

- matching the words with the same sound,

- crossing odd one out,

- teaching how to produce /ð/ and /Ɵ/.

It seems to be a contradiction of what students said – “Only 3 students out of 30 stated

that they learn pronunciation at school. They claimed that pronunciation exercises

conducted at school were basically repeating after the teacher. They did not mention

any other primary pronunciation activities, like ‘odd one out’, repeating minimal pairs,

repeating after the recording.” If an optimistic assumption was true, the reason for that

would be that pupils were not aware that they are learning pronunciation while doing

particular exercises. Nonetheless, primary school students do not need to be aware of

the fact that they are learning grammar or pronunciation at the moment but older

students, junior high school and high school students, should know what skill they are

practising and that pronunciation is one of the skills which students are required to

know.

39

Teachers were asked about accent which they teach. 90% answered that teach British

accent and 10% said that it was RP which is basically the same as British.

The tenth question was about evaluating students’ pronunciation. 50% of teachers stated

that they evaluated students’ pronunciation. The evaluation took place while reading the

texts or speaking, it was the part of the total grade which students got from reading

loud or speaking. One teacher claimed that she gave students a list of difficult words

and some sounds in contrast to learn and pronounce properly.

Questions 11 and 12 concerned problems while teaching pronunciation and students’

problems in learning it. Teachers mentioned the following problems concerning

teaching:

- finding challenging recorded materials,

- overcoming problems with speech impediments,

- not enough time left for teaching pronunciation,

- too big groups to teach and correct everyone’s pronunciation,

- not enough pronunciation activities in coursebooks,

and the following problems which their students had in learning pronunciation:

- learning that spelling is usually different from the actual sound,

- not existing sound in Polish, like /∧/, /æ/, /ð/, /Ɵ/, /r/, /ǝ/, /ǝƱ/ and

other diphthongs and learning pronunciation of consonant clusters,

- getting rid of bad pronunciation habits without conscious effort,

- learning IPA,

- poor hearing and quick forgetting.

Most common mistakes made by students are:

- -th cluster realised as /w/, /f/, /s/, or /d/,

- realising –able ending like /eɪbl/,

- pronouncing /ǝƱ/ as /oƱ/,

- /æ/ realised as /a/ or /e/,

- wrong stress,

40

- wrong pronunciation of weak syllables and weak forms, contractions and

length of vowels, diphthongs and /ɜː/ sound.

The minority of teachers admitted to accept wrong pronunciation of –th cluster at the

early stage of learning, especially realising it as /d/. Some of them allow also

pronouncing /ǝƱ/ as /oƱ/.

The following question concerned tongue twisters. Teachers explained the notion of a

tongue twister as a: “chant based on certain syllable which is difficult to pronounce”,

“sentence consisting of words which have many similar syllables”, “a rhyme/sentence

focusing on different sounds”, “a word or a group of words in a sentence that are very

difficult to pronounce”, “an exercise based on producing an utterance compose of

sounds, which are very difficult to pronounce when combined together”. As we can see

some of the definitions are rather wrong, the last one which I quoted is fairly the best of

all. More or less, all teachers knew what tongue twister was.

Teachers’ opinions about tongue twisters were very varied. They claimed that tongue

twisters might be helpful but not necessarily or that tongue twisters are funny and

enjoyed by students but not much effective or that results were short-time. Some of the

teachers said that students worked eagerly with tongue twisters and achieved success or

that they used tongue twisters to raise motivation which is important element in learning

process and to prevent them from quick forgetting the proper pronunciation.

Chapter VI

Conclusions and teaching implications

41

This chapter will present final conclusions after conducting the experiment, it will

answer the overall questions which I asked myself before doing the research and

provide teachers with further implications.

The general aim of the research was to check if it is effective to teach pronunciation

using tongue twisters. The method I presented in the third chapter was based on the

thorough analysis of a student’s pronunciation which is impossible in the classroom

conditions. Though, the analysis may be then omitted and exercises may be attuned to

the needs of a class. As the questionnaire for teachers proved, there are some common

mistakes which may be easily eradicated using tongue twisters. My own classes

demonstrated that especially /ð/ and /Ɵ/ sounds may be quickly learned by students

while reading or memorizing tongue twisters. These sounds were repeated many times

in most common examples of words which students now quickly recognize while

reading or pronounce properly while they are speaking because they remember about

them and they know how to produce these sounds. None of the teachers mentioned /ŋ/

sound which caused many troubles on my classes. This sound, due to the same reasons,

may be easily taught. The most common mistakes, presented in the previous chapter,

appear on every lesson, that is why conducting pronunciation exercises only once a

week is far too little. According to my experiences and most of the teachers’

pronunciation of the particular words or sounds is remembered long after teaching

students using tongue twisters, because it was taught in a funny and entertaining way.

Tongue twisters may be introduced in the classroom teaching as a five-minute exercise

and will certainly have better results than mundane repeating after the teacher or a CD.

The questionnaires for students and for teachers proved that too little attention is paid to

pronunciation teaching at schools. The exercises are too repetitive and always the same,

students need variety of exercise and words in many different contexts in order to

memorize the proper pronunciation. Even if after learning tongue twisters students,

while speaking, still make mistakes when we correct them it automatically takes them

back to the moment when they learned tongue twisters and to the proper pronunciation.

It is worth sacrificing the precious time which we have on classes to root long lasting

good pronunciation habits.

42

Students enjoyed learning tongue twisters. It made them laugh, get involved and realize

that English pronunciation do differ from the Polish one. At school their Polglish

pronunciation (term ‘Polglish’ is explained in Sobkowiak (2001: 22) is accepted but for

many reasons, on which I elaborated in the first chapter, the proper standards should be

introduced to schools and fewer mistakes should be neglected. My experiment showed

that students found practicing pronunciation interesting, they eagerly wanted to do the

exercises and, what is more, valued the importance of a proper pronunciation in talking

to native speakers. They wanted to sound more like Englishmen.

I noticed also that the most of the teachers thought that pronunciation should be taught

from the earliest stage of learning but a lot of them allowed many pronunciation

mistakes at the early stages. As far as I am concerned, there is no logic behind this

claim. Habits rooted at the beginning are difficult to eradicate and it is better to imbue

students with the proper pronunciation from scratch.

In conclusion, visible effects which were noticed by students motivated them to pay

more attention to pronunciation. They tend to correct themselves when they are reading

or speaking. My experiment brought expected and long lasting results.

Bibliography:

Clementson, T. 2005. Reading & Writing Skills. Oxford: Oxford University Press

43

Cruttenden, A. 2008. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. London: Hodder Education

Crystal, D. 1995. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

Dalton, C., Seidlhofer, B. 1994. Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Doff, A. 1988. Teaching English: Trainer's Handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Fraser, H. 2001. Teaching Pronunciation: A handbook for teachers and trainers.

Sydney: TAFE Access Division

Hewings, M. 2004. Pronunciation Practice Activities. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Linse C. 2003. “Twisting Tongues. Tongue twisters in the classroom”, Modern English

Teacher vol. 12 no. 4, pp. 26-28

Md. Zahid Akter. 2007. “Teaching Pronunciation”, Modern English Teacher vol. 16

no. 3, pp. 36-38

Ponsonby, M. 1987. How now, brown cow?. Oxford: Pergamon Press

Richards, J., Schmidt, R., Platt, H., Schmidt, M. Longman Dictionary of Language

Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Harlow: Longman

Roach, P. 1991. English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press

Sobkowiak, W. 2001. English Phonetics for Poles. Poznań: Poznańskie

44

Underhill, A. 1994. Sound Foundations. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann English

Language Teaching

Ur, P., Wright, A. 1992. Five Minutes Activities. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press

Victor, D. A. 1992. Dictionary of English Language and Culture. Harlow: Longman

Webgraphy:

Mary Elisabeth. (www). What is a Tongue Twister? Available at:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tongue-twister.htmn (accessed: 12.01.2010)

http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/ (accessed 10.03.2010)

http://www.squarewheels.com/content2/copyrightexpl.html (accessed 11.03.2010)

Summary

Tematem niniejszej pracy jest nauczanie wymowy angielskiej przy użyciu łamańców

językowych.

45

Pierwszy rozdział omawia teoretyczne podstawy nauczania wymowy angielskiej i

składa się z trzech części. W pierwszym podrozdziale zostaje wyjaśnione pojęcie

„wymowa”. Następny podrozdział dowodzi dlaczego wymowa, jako jedna z

umiejętności językowych, powinna być nauczana w szkole. Ostatni podrozdział

przedstawia proponowane przez metodyków techniki nauczania wymowy.

Drugi rozdział teoretyczny dotyczy łamańców językowych. W pierwszym podrozdziale

zostaje wyjaśnione, co to jest „łamaniec językowy” oraz jaka jest jego geneza. Drugi

podrozdział przedstawia i omawia typologię łamańców językowych. Ostatni

podrozdział rozdziału drugiego przedstawia proponowane przez metodyków

zastosowanie łamańców językowych w nauczaniu języka angielskiego, a zwłaszcza

wymowy angielskiej.

Trzeci rozdział niniejszej pracy dotyczy przebiegu badania, które zostało

przeprowadzone na grupie 30 uczniów oraz 20 nauczycieli w celu określenia, czy

łamańce językowe są skuteczną techniką nauczania wymowy angielskiej. Rozdział ten

przedstawia szczegółowo podmioty badania, jego procedurę oraz wykorzystane techniki

badawcze, jakimi były: eksperyment, kwestionariusz dla uczniów oraz kwestionariusz

dla nauczycieli.

Rozdział czwarty przedstawia analizę ilościową przeprowadzonego badania. W

rozdziale tym znajdują się wykresy i diagramy obrazujące wyniki uzyskane dzięki

eksperymentowi oraz kwestionariuszom.

Rozdział piąty przedstawia analizę jakościową. W tym rozdziale można znaleźć

odpowiedzi na pytania postawione przez autora tej pracy, przyczyny, które, według

autora tej pracy, leżą u podstaw uzyskanych wyników oraz komentarz do tychże

rezultatów.

Ostatni rozdział zawiera konkluzje i implikacje dotyczące nauczania wymowy oraz

wykorzystania łamańców językowych do tego celu. Rozdział ten omawia, czy cel

badania został osiągnięty i jakie są ogólne wnioski po jego przeprowadzeniu.

46

Eksperyment osiągnął zamierzone rezultaty. Uczniowie poprawili swoją wymowę,

zwłaszcza głosek /ð/, /Ɵ/, /ŋ/ i /ɔ:/. Uznali również, że użyta metoda była zabawna,

ale efektywna. Badania przeprowadzone w szkołach wykazały, że nauczanie wymowy

jest wciąż lekceważone mimo tego, iż uczniowie wyrażają potrzebę większej ilości

ćwiczeń doskonalących wymowę angielską.

47