Re: Pronunciation

Interesting discussion, but I can't help feeling that it's drifting a bit, like 
a child with two halves of an apple, one in each hand, nibbling a bit on one 
piece then nibbling on the other.

When I taught pronunciation, my caveats were I am Australian, what they would 
hear is my accent, and it has changed moderately to a more rounded, less 
distinguishable form. However, when amongst compatriots it drops back into hard 
country Australian (from Eastern Victoria). Also, as much as they try, most 
will have their own language influence impacting the sound of their oral 
efforts. (More on this in a moment)

I told my students, there?s no such thing as ?perfect English? (yes I have been 
asked this question) that if they wish to perfect a particular accented sound 
then to a: use the IPA symbols as a guide AND listen to their preferred accent 
style via BBC, VOA or ABC broadcasts/cds.

Our standard reference text was the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for 
Current English. It, like most dictionaries, uses IPA symbology. Thus teaching 
any other system, in my mind, is an utter waste of time and energy both for the 
teacher and the students.

The other factor in favour of using IPA is I would also get my students to 
write down the IPA symbol set for the English of their choice, AND the IPA 
symbol set for Chinese. 

(For those who would like a copy of ?Chinese Pinyin in 6 minutes.wmv? it?s now 
available on the P@P networks)

By comparing the two IPA symbol sets we could then use standard Chinese 
characters to represent various sounds (a great help for slow starters and for 
those less fluent in IPA transliteration) This works for the simple sounds, for 
the ones where there was no comparative sound, well, the students had to learn 
the specific new (to them) phoneme. Good or bad, the only model for this 
usually was me. 

Now, that?s what I did. Care for a bit of the other piece of apple?



Regards,

Tsc Tempest DCA
__________________________
People's Republic of China
Zhuhai SEZ, Guang Dong


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