I am in dreadful trouble trying to get English pronunciation across to a Kurdish girl who currently lives here. She is rather isolated and never gets the chance to venture into the English speaking world.
I have managed to teach her some English and we now read and discuss articles (fashion and celebrities which is what interests her (Eek!)) but her pronunciation is terrible ... any ideas?
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
Phonetics haven't seemed to help much ... she knows what needs to be done in order to produce the sounds but somehow cannot get beyond the 'producing the sounds consciously' ... the moment we stop concentrating on the 'sound' .... it vanishes.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
Well, an excellent tool I use for Pronunciation is the Sky Pronunciation Suite programme. If you could get a copy out of the library that would help, but it is a bit pricey. The old-fashioned (but I think still very useful) Pronunciation books which you could probably pick up fairly cheaply are 'Ship or Sheep' and 'Tree or Three'. They also have a website: http://www.shiporsheep.com/ with some decent free stuff on it.
If she is a Kurdish/Arabic speaker she probably has problems with vowel sounds (Try and get her to say "Her hair here" and see what you get!!!) and she might be adding a schwa (the 'uh' sound) before words that start with a consonant ("I am a Kurdish uh-student"). Here is a link to common problems Arabic speakers have: http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/l1arabic.html - this could be useful for her, too. The BBC also has quite a good resource for pronunciation - http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/multimedia/pron/
What you need to do is spend the first part of each lesson concentrating mainly on accuracy: choose a sound or pair of sounds that she really has problems with (the difference between "sit" and "set", for example, which she probably struggles with) then do a series of exercises practising this - minimal pairs is quite a good way to go (sit/set big/beg chick/check etc.). After that do some semi-controlled practice - give her a topic to talk about but structure it fairly closely and tell her to concentrate on producing the correct sound you have worked on. Finish off with some more 'free practice' conversation - discussing the article you have read. That can be more relaxed but you should be concentrating carefully on what she is saying and if she makes a mistake with the sound you have been practising indicate (a raised eyebrow / a cough) that it is wrong and hopefully she will correct the mistake herself.
Hope that is of some use. Let me know how it goes.
For BiH
Posted - 03/10/2007 : 10:06:19
