LCD720

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LCD720 03/25/08

• Phonology and speech perception

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Announcements

• Midterm
• Looking ahead
• Next four weeks Interfaces
• Last two weeks Implementation
• May 20 Final paper due (and last class!)
• Final paper
• Lesson plan justification of the plan (paper)
• Start thinking about a topic now
• Guidelines and grading rubric are on Blackboard
  please review soon

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Announcements

• Homework assignments
• Ungraded assignments for April 22 and 29
• Dont need to hand in
• Graded homework assignment due on May 6
  (available on April 29)
• Hand in in class or on Blackboard

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Interfaces, or How pronunciation is involved in
other parts of language knowledge and skills

• Listening perception
• Grammar
• Orthography (spelling)

Today
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Importance of perception in acquisition of
phonology

• Remember Listening discrimination is an
  important first step in acquiring correct
  pronunciation (both segmental and suprasegmental
  features)
• If students dont hear the difference between
  sleep and slip, they cant produce the difference
  either
• Similar for word stress and sentence intonation

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Importance of phonology for listening (perception)

• Listening discrimination is also crucial for
  developing listening skills
• Identifying phonemes, word stress and intonation
  correctly
• Sleep vs. slip thirty vs. thirteen statement
  vs. question
• Segmenting the speech stream correctly into words
  and phrases

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How do native speakers listen?

• They attend to stress and intonation (strongly
  and weakly stressed syllables)
• They attend to stressed vowels
• They segment speech and find words that
  correspond to the stressed vowels and the
  consonants next to them
• They look for phrases that are compatible with
  the stress/intonation patterns in (1) and words
  in (3)
• These steps may proceed in parallel
• Listeners also use prior knowledge (schemata)
• Example /greydey/

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What is difficult for non-native speakers?

• Each of the steps may pose problems
• Identifying phonemes, word stress, sentence
  intonation (step 1)
• Finding words, esp. unfamiliar words (step 2 and
  3)
• Finding phrases and grammar (step 4)
• Parallel processing
• This requires automatized processing and
  sufficient working memory
• Prior knowledge e.g., cultural background
  knowledge
• Result mishearing or no comprehension

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Assessing students listening difficulties

• Dictation may show some of the students
  difficulties
• Not hearing unstressed syllables
• Including function words (articles,
  prepositions!) and grammatical morphemes
• Mishearing unfamiliar words
• Including unknown culturally-related words, like
  names of people and places
• Incorrect segmentation
• E.g., no in instead of knowing
• Incorrect identification of phonemes
• E.g., /l/ instead of /r/

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What to focus on

• Intonation units and prominence
• Reduced speech
• Function words
• Assimilation
• Contractions
• Ambiguities
• Segmentation

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More examples of reduced function words

• Remember
• him, his, her, them first consonant is dropped
• and, of last consonant is dropped
• can, to, as, or, in, on reduced vowel ?
• will gt /l?/ (syllabic l) and /n?/ (syllabic n)
• What (wi)ll you do?
• Bread (a)n(d) butter
• Combinations of these processes
• have gt /?v/, /v/ or /?/
• of gt /?v/ or /?/

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How did this happen?

• What are the intermediate steps?
• What processes (e.g., reduction, assimilation)
  are involved?
• dont know /downt now/ gt /d?now/
• might have /mayt hæv/ gt /may??/
• should not have
• /??d n?t hæv/ gt /??dn?t?v/ gt /??dn??/

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More examples of assimilation

• (have) got to
• have to
• has to
• want to
• going to
• dont know
• should have
• might have
• used to
• shouldnt have

gotta hafta hasta wanna gonna donno/dunno shoulda
mighta usta shouldntve/ shouldna
g??? hæft? hæst? w?n? g?n? d?now ??d? may?? yuwst?
??dn?t?v ??dn??
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More examples of assimilation

• Students can memorize these chunks and practice
  identifying them in a spoken text
• E.g., they listen to a text, identify the
  assimilated forms and write out the full forms
• Additional focus on ambiguous assimilated forms
• Emphasize that this is informal speech, and
  should not be written

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More examples of contractionsand blendings

• is, has s had, would d
• have ve are re
• will ll not nt
• Students should practice these contractions in
  chunks, like Ill, hed, theyre, whos,
  wherere, hows, etc.
• Practice identify the contractions and write out
  the full form
• Focus on ambiguous contractions

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Ambiguities due to reduced speech

• What is the full form of these words?
• Use the reduced forms in a sentence
• /?m/
• /?z/
• /?z/
• /s/
• /?/
• /?n/
• /d/
• /w?t??/

him is, his is, as is, has of, have and, in,
on had, would, did what do you, what have you,
what you
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Segmentation difficulties

• Remember linking
• lef/t_arm, fin/d_out
• Joa/n_Elson will sound like Joe_Nelson
• gra/de_A will sound like gray day
• There may be slight differences between the two
  members of the pair
• Especially in connected speech, these differences
  may be difficult to hear

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Segmentation difficulties

• In other pairs, there are greater differences
• nitrate night rate
• my turn might earn
• key punching keep punching
• Native speakers can hear these differences
• ESL learners will need to practice them

What is the difference?
aspiration release
aspiration flapping
length of /p/
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Teaching listening skills (perception)

• Fill-in-the-blanks listening exercises
• Open or multiple choice
• Some basic rules
• Never have a gap in the first sentence
• There should be enough time between the gaps to
  fill in the word
• Use only familiar words if possible, use a
  familiar text
• Listen to the text twice before discussing the
  answers
• Finish by listening to the text again

Why?
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Teaching listening skills (perception)
Why?

• Listening reading
• Listen to the text twice, and check for
  comprehension
• Listen again and read along
• Repeat until all words, function words, and
  morphemes are heard
• Listen again without reading,focusing on the
  missed or misheard words
• How to keep the students attention? Ask new,
  simple questions each time they listen

Dont forget
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Teaching listening skills (perception)

• Transcribing (in regular spelling)
• Listen to and transcribe a text containing the
  targeted forms (e.g., reduced forms,
  assimilation, contractions)
• Indicate the reduced/assimilated/contracted forms
  and provide their full forms
• Listen to the text again

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• What does this exercise focus on?
• Why would this work?
• How can this exercise be improved?

p. 232
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• What does this exercise focus on?
• Why would this work?
• How can this exercise be improved?

p. 233
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Next week

• Read Chapter 8
• Construct a fill-in-the-blanks exercise for
  teaching contractions/blendings
• Bring to class, and be ready to discuss it
• Bring two copies of the text (empty blanks)