Teaching phonetics at the School of English, AMU, Poznan, Poland

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, Jaroslaw Weckwerth, Justyna Zborowska

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

The objective of the present paper is twofold: on the one hand, to present the state-of-the-art picture of the phonetics’ teaching at the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, and, on the other, to discuss the relevance of transfer between metacompetence and performance in the process of teaching.

1. Introduction

School of English at AMU is part of the Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures and as such offers a B.A.and an M.A. in English. Due to the fileo logos motto of the studies, students get acquainted with all basic aspects of the study and use of language¹. Phonetics comes in in two places in the general programme: as part of the course in the descriptive grammar of English and as a practical pronunciation class (Practical English Phonetics). Both take place in the first year of study, whereas Practical English Phonetics is continued for the second year. Phonetics and phonology reappear also later, during a course on contrastive English-Polish linguistics and in seminars (including M.A. seminars).

2. Generally about the course

A two-semester Descriptive grammar of English, part I²: phonetics and elements of phonology course consists of a one-hour lecture and two-hour class. Although the class is conducted in parallel by a number of lecturers, the content is standardised across the groups as far as the basic outline is concerned and also harmonised with the lecture. A final written examination for all the students participating in the course imposes a formal requirement of the above standardisation.

The course is predominantly descriptive since it aims at, first, students of English rather than of linguistics, second, students whose native language is not English. While the students enter the University with fluent English, they are supposed to leave it not only with perfected competence of the language but with a high level of metacompetence as well. The latter is supposed to be conducive to the development of the former and to support the teaching skills in TEFL. On the other hand, this course constitutes for the students the only preparation for the later choice of specialised seminars in phonetics and phonology and as such must (and does) include some introduction to the theory of phonology.

The TEFL component of the School of English programme includes a four-semester course in pronunciation (called Practical phonetics). The initial two semesters of segmental phonetic training run parallel to the Descriptive grammar course. The next two semesters are devoted to suprasegmental phonetics. The content of the Descriptive and the Practical courses are uniform only as far as the basics of phonetic knowledge are concerned, whereas the respective curricula are not standardised. Legitimacy of this state of affairs will be the moot point of this paper.

3. The claim

The claim we will defend is that conscious metacompetence helps in performance in a second language whereas practical training on its own will not lead to competence. The so-called weak hypothesis of language acquisition provides the theoretical background for this claim. Adults can suppress the L1 interference by means of their meta-knowledge of their L1 and consciously learned knowledge of L2. This cognitive activity is helpful in the self-organisation of a new system. Explicit teaching of phonology is therefore predicted to be highly advantageous. The weak hypothesis stems from the idea of self-organisation in acquisition, adopted and developed by modern Natural Phonology (Dressler 1996, Karpf 1990, Dressler & Karpf 1995, Dziubalska-Kolaczyk 1997, 1998).

4. Content of the course

   4.1 Topics

Most of the topics return during the classes, with some minor variation in the selection of additional topics between the respective teachers. The main (recommended) sources are:

Clark, John and Colin Yallop. 1990. An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. (also 1995. 2nd edition)

Gimson, A.C. (1962)1989. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. Fourth edition revised by Susan Ramsaran. London: Edward Arnold. (also 1995. fifth edition, by Cruttenden)

Ladefoged, P. (1975,1982) 1993³. A Course in Phonetics. London: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Roach, P. 1983/1990. English Phonetics and Phonology: a practical course. Cambridge: CUP.

Sobkowiak, W. and J. Szpyra. 1995. Workbook in English Phonetics for Polish students of English. Poznan: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.

Sobkowiak, W. 1996. English Phonetics for Poles. Poznan: Bene Nati.

Wells, J.C. 1990. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Longman.

4.2. Descriptive Grammar Lectures vs Descriptive Grammar Classes: Emphasis on Exercise

The main focus during the classes is on the pracical side, which means concentrating on, for instance, transcription exercises, detailed articulatory descriptions of the sounds of English, their comparison with the sounds of Polish, exercises in rhythmical and intonational analysis and on the presentation of the material in such a way that the students are able to practically use this information primarily in their Practical English Phonetics classes. The phonological component is minimised as we deal with students of English as a second language rather than with linguists. An example of the practical focus of the classes is the high prominence of the phonostylistics section.

4.3. Relation with Practical English Phonetics

Segmentals are covered in parallel during the Practical English Phonetics course in the first year while rhythm and intonation are covered during the second year. It is evident, then, that full coordination of the Descriptive Grammar course with the practical phonetics course is not possible for these two fields. Overall, the lectures and classes are coordinated and constitute one course that is aimed to provide the students with theoretical knowledge that may be helpful for their development of competence in English and in English language teaching.

5. Students’ response to the course

5.1. A questionnaire

With reference to the claim in 3 above a questionnaire was prepared. It was aimed at investigating the first year students’ perception of the relation between descriptive and practical phonetics. The anonymous questionnaire was distributed during one of the lectures. 62 students responded. The questionnaire contained the following questions:

1. Do you find Descriptive Grammar helpful in mastering the pronunciation of English?

2. If yes, give examples of difficulties you have been able to deal with thanks to Descriptive Grammar classes.

3. Do you find any correlation between Descriptive Grammar and Practical English Phonetics?

4. If yes, give examples.

5. Do you think it is important that there should be some?

6. Why?

7. Do you think it would be a good idea to have Descriptive Grammar and Practical English Phonetics taught by the same teacher?

8. What advantages and disadvantages would such an approach have?

5.2. Discussion of the results

Questions 1, 3 and 5 are yes/no questions (for the results see TABLE 1 below), while Questions 2, 4 and 6 complement them with specific examples.

TABLE 1

As can be seen from the table, a vast majority of the subjects confirm the usefulness of the Descriptive Grammar course in mastering the pronunciation of English and the existence of a correlation between the Descriptive and Practical courses.

The responses to Question 2 may be subdivided into the following eight categories: articulation of vowels and consonants (47); context-related phenomena (e. g. assimilations, aspiration, fast speech processes, linking etc.) (52); transcription (5); differences between Polish and English (8); suprasegmentals (10); enhancing the students’ awareness of their pronunciation and of the English phonetic system in general (7); differences between British and American English (1); teaching others (1).

The responses to Question 4 may be subdivided into the following three categories: metacompetence as background for performance ("theoretical knowledge helps to create a mental image of how sounds are produced") (38); connected speech phenomena (10); transcription (5).

The responses to Question 6 may be subdivided into the following three categories: metacompetence (35); supportive role of the Descriptive course (13); naturalness of the correlation (5).

Questions 7 and 8 proved the most controversial ones. 38 people opted for the same person teaching both the Descriptive and Practical courses while 23 expressed an opposite opinion. These questions were asked in order to test the students’ reaction to the idea of improving of the correlation between the two courses by having the same teacher for both of them. The most explicitly stated argument in favour of the idea was the possibility of bringing the two courses closer in the sense of immediate transfer from theory to practice mediated by one person. The importance of being exposed to more than one method of presentation of the subject matter of the course was cited as the strongest argument against the idea.

6. Descriptive vs. practical phonetics: competence enhances performance

Generally, our students agree on the correlation between the Descriptive and the Practical courses, and they find the metalinguistic knowledge acquired in the Descriptive course helpful in mastering pronunciation.

In fact, we haven’t investigated the actual performance of the responding students, so the result concerns their personal reception of the courses only. However, the importance of formal instruction, training and exercise has been demonstrated in a series of experiments (see Dziubalska-Kolaczyk 1990) investigating the role of formal vs. natural setting in SLA. The experiments evidenced the lack of the application of phonostylistic processes in the English of the Poles in a natural setting, and the presence of those processes in a formal setting, which pointed to the effectiveness of training. Zborowska (1997) obtained statistically significant progress in perception and production of basic casual speech processes of English in Polish learners due to the regular explicit training in phonostylistics.

The most practical conclusion of this paper is very straightforward: phonetics and phonostylistics of a second language are teachable to foreign learners as long as they receive, besides exposure, explicit formal instruction in and about the relevant aspects of the second language. Needless to say, the success of the learners will be dependent on the whole array of socio- and psycholinguistic factors, including motivation and aptitude.

Bibliography

Dressler, Wolfgang U. 1996. Principles of naturalness in phonology and across components. In Hurch & Rhodes (eds.) Natural Phonology: The State of the Art. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 41-52.

Dressler, Wolfgang U. and Annemarie Peltzer-Karpf. 1995. The theoretical relevance of pre- and protomorphology in language acquisition. Yearbook of Morphology 1994: 99-122.

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, Katarzyna. 1990. A Theory of Second Language Acquisition within the Framework of Natural Phonology: a Polish-English Contrastive Study. Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University Press.

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, Katarzyna. 1997. Pre- and proto- in Polish phonology and morphology and their interrelations. PSiCL 33. 159-171.

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, Katarzyna. 1998. Self-organization in early phonology. In Puppel, Stanislaw (ed.).1998. Scripta Manent. Publikacja wydzialowa z okazji 10-lecia istnienia Wydzialu Neofilologii UAM 1988-1998. Poznan: Motivex. 99-112.

Karpf, Annemarie. 1990. Selbstorganisationsprozesse in der sprachlichen Ontogenese. Tübingen: Narr.

Zborowska, Justyna. 1997. Self-organization in second language acquisition. The case of phonostylistics. Unpublished MA thesis. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.

¹ ie Linguistics, literature, methodology of teaching English as a second language (TEFL), culture of the English-speaking peoples and practice in using English.

² Further parts are: syntax, history of English and contrastive Polish-English grammar.