How not to teach pronunciation
“Japanese college students who’d had little exposure to spoken English underwent 12 sessions listening to exaggerated “Ls” and “Rs” while watching the computerized instructor’s face pronounce English words. Brain scans — a hair dryer-looking device called MEG, for magnetoencephalography — that measure millisecond-by-millisecond activity showed the students could better distinguish between those alien English sounds. And they pronounced them better, too, the team reported in the journal NeuroImage.”
I can teach an Asian student to recognise and pronounce /r/ and /l/ better in five minutes, as can most other teachers I know who’ve been here more than a couple of years. There are loads of different techniques, but mine include making the students hold their hand at the side of their mouth palm down to represent their tongue and flapping it along with their tongue every time they say /l/ and holding it down every time they say /r/. Doesn’t mean they instantly get the ability to say it that way in natural speech, but even being able to stop and make an effort to say something that is clearly distinguishable when someone has misunderstood you (the best I ever achieved with Spanish “pero” and “perro”, as even my Rs in English sound a bit /w/ if what my Turkish students wrote during dictations is anything to go by) is no small feat. Someone give me a huge research grant, and I’ll find out how much it sticks!
Still, interesting piece of research. If only there hadn’t been some idiot journalist determined to use it to prove that babies are the best learners of L2. SPEND FIVE MINUTES TEACHING THREE YEAR OLDS, ANYWAY YOU LIKE, AND THEN TELL ME THEY PICK UP LANGUAGE LIKE SPONGES, MORON! And then teach them again after the three week summer break and see how much they remember. And then wait until they get to school and lose interest in the language because the lessons are too easy and they are embarrassed about looking like a geek in front of their classmates, etc etc…
All the evidence suggests that the most time efficient time for learning languages if you are not going to move to the country is in your teens, with adults second and little kids long behind. There are a million things I want to know about how to teach my adult students better (and about tips I can give them to help them learn better on their own), and few if any can be answered by looking at native speakers babies.
Also being talked about by Ask Auntie Web and The Linguist on Language. And more good science linked to bad journalism on Language Log here.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:01 pm
This is great. Jumping right into the ring. OK, three year olds won’t do anything sometimes, let alone sing a little English song – unless they’re raised in a bilingual household (like me). It actually makes you think more about how authetic foreign lessons are in each age group, and how teaching anything that isn’t really related to experience and has potential for a person that age is crap.
Re tongues and gums and such: I had a terrible experience with an Argentine student who couldn’t distinguish between g and w in would and good, though he could say world and girl. I tried all sorts of tricks, including gargling water with him, to no avail. He’s moved, sadly, otherwise I’d love to try this weird “motherese” on him, which is supposed to work. But can a real live teacher pull it off? I’d be laughing all over the place.