Pronunciation raps - for my students

This one is about all my wonderful students at the Institute of Languages at UNSW in Sydney

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxYwAo_OVGpeeDkzUnprQXBVZEU/view?usp=sharing

We’ve come to Sydney to improve our English

We’re from the world over but have one wish

And that’s to have fun while we learn in the sun

Academic English , general or FEEC,

English for law  or try and reach your peak

With an IELTS score of 7 or more

Grammar and reading speaking and listening

And media studies but who reads the paper

Now teaching how to write on fb might

Help us to improve and then we’d be right

To speak to our mates and go out on dates

Cause how ta fix a boiler or what he had for supper

Is not what Aussies say and the third conditional

past perfect continuous  is far too medicinal

And show me an aussie who says If I were rich

But don’t correct the grammar of your  new aussie friends

Cause if I were rich I’d be able to stay

 in SydneyForever but I know it depends

On my final test score

And Had I been listening I would have learnt more

Pronunciation raps

Discovered a new resource that is a poetry and rhyme based approach to pronunciation and used one of the exercises at my student's graduation ceremony. It was a HUGE success.

The work we were doing was how to listen  to and understand fast, spoken Australian and linked expressions such as:
What are you doing - whatcha doin
Did you want to go out to dinner - didja wanna go ta dinner or even dja wanna
Where do you want to go - Where dja wanna go.

Listen and enjoy and beat out the rhythm
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxYwAo_OVGpedWI3NHQxb2VOaE0/view?usp=sharing

Chinatown

 Where dja wanna go       Whatcha wanna do

I’m not sure now       I’ll leave it ta you

Dja wanna go ta town       ta see a show

I don’t know now     but I’ll let you know

Can’t ya tell me right away

I’m not sure yet      do I have to say

Where dja wanna meet     won’t ya tell me where

Let’s just meet in Leicester square

Did ya tell the others       where we’re going ta meet

I said in the centre      didn’t say which street

Dja wanna have a meal or      dja like ta sit down

YA fancy a meal in Chinatown

Whacha recommend and      where dja like ta dine

Here’s very good       the fish is fine

How’s the fish cooked      with lots a spice

Just a bit a ginger     it’s really nice

Whatcha like ta drink      whenya eat chinese

Just a pot a tea       it’s sure ta please

How dja like the meat       dja like the fish

It was really great       what’s the name a the dish

I don’t know the name      it wasn’t written down

It’s often the way in Chinatown

Watch this space for more of these!!!!

Vowel practice

https://soundcloud.com/deborah-corbett/vowel-practice



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Tongue twisters

https://soundcloud.com/deborah-corbett/she-sells



She sells sea shells by the sea shore,                                              







  
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Listening to Australia

Listening to Australia 4 (Advanced) written by yours truly and Pornswan Braun is a great resource to train the ear to listen to fast authentic Aussie speech

My favourite scenarios are the women gossiping at work and the male version gossiping (yes men gossip) at the pub. They were both authentic conversations.

Transcriptions

For advanced students or those of you who feel your English is pretty good but you just need a little bit of 'touching up'. transcribing a recording, exactly word for word, mistake for mistake is a very good way of finding out what type of grammar and pronunciation errors you are making.
It goes without saying that you must be exact in your transcriptions otherwise the exercise is useless.

1. Record yourself or your student talking about their research or a project at work.
2.  Listen bit by bit and transcribe exactly how it is spoken. 
3. Listen again 2 or three times to make sure you have everything exact.
4. Go through together and do an error analysis and offer suggestions or invite the student to correct.
5. Write out the passage corrrectly and the student or you read and record again

The following text is writtten word for word with pronunciation errors as well.

We mainly focussed on za development of catalysts to biofue generation and sometimes we also to design new catalysts for za green chemical process such as za fine chemical generation, petrol chemical process and sometimes pharmaceutical generation.

We are mainly focussed on the development of catalysts to biofuel generation and sometimes we also to design new catalysts for the green chemical process such as za fine chemical generation, petrol chemical process and sometimes pharmaceutical generation. (Intonation corrections were also noted such as rising for listing two or three items.)

Yes intonation patterns

Listen to these intonation patterns for "yes". Some have a certain degree of " no-ness" in them. One student said to me yesterday "why do you say "yes" if you mean "No"!!!!!

https://soundcloud.com/deborah-corbett/yes-intonation

The fall rise tone

The fall rise tone

Intonation

Intonation is change of spoken pitch ( rising or falling ) that is  used for a range of functions such as:

• ·        indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker,
• ·        signalling the difference between statement and question
• ·        signalling the difference between different types of question,
• ·        focussing attention on important elements of the spoken message
• ·        helping to regulate conversational interaction.

Attitudinal function (for expressing emotions and attitudes)

example: a fall from a high pitch on the 'mor' syllable of "good morning" suggests more excitement than a fall from a low pitch

Grammatical function (to identify grammatical structure)

example: it is claimed that in English a falling pitch movement is associated with statements, but a rising pitch turns a statement into a yes–no question, as in He's going ↗home?. This use of intonation is more typical of American English than of British.  

Focusing (to show what information in the utterance is new and what is already known)

example: in English I saw a ↘man in the garden answers "Whom did you see?" or "What happened?", while I ↘saw a man in the garden answers "Did you hear a man in the garden?"

Discourse function (to show how clauses and sentences go together in spoken discourse)

example: subordinate clauses often have lower pitch, faster tempo and narrower pitch range than their main clause,^[6] as in the case of the material in brackets in "The Red Planet [as it's known] is fourth from the sun"

Psychological function (to organize speech into units that are easy to perceive, memorize and perform)

example: the utterance "You can have it in red blue green yellow or ↘black" is more difficult to understand and remember than the same utterance divided into tone units as in "You can have it in ↗red | ↗blue | ↗green | ↗yellow | or ↘black"

Indexical function (to act as a marker of personal or social identity)

example: group membership can be indicated by the use of intonation patterns adopted specifically by that group, such as street vendors or preachers. The so-called high rising terminal, where a statement ends with a high rising pitch movement, is said to be typical of younger speakers of English, and possibly to be more widely found among young female speakers.

Today I interviewed a new client. He is employed in a boutique business writing and publishing firm and is Mandarin speaking from Malaysia.. What really impressed me was the attitude of his employers. They really respected his work and his ability to communicate visually. His work was definitely an asset to the company and they were trying very hard to provide him with  whatever it took to improve his communication skills.His employers have agreed to fund a five week one-on-one class focusing on pronunciation and writing skills. My  main message to him will be ( to use a sporting expression) "It's now time for you to step up to the plate".
Changing your pronunciation patterns can take a long time but it IS possible if you put in the time and effort. It requires practising the drills over and over again, recording yourself and listening for and correcting your errors. My new client will be able to change but it is up to him to put in a real effort to show he appreciates what his workplace is doing for him.

I probably sound like an old school principal but I can't reiterate enough the necessity for practise, practise, practise.

Rhythm work

My latest favourite trick is lots of rhythm work. By this I mean clapping, tapping, clicking, walking - anything to get the rhythm of English. Limericks, Jazz Chants and Rhymes and Rhythm A poem based course for English pronunciation are my most used tools.
Initially a lot of work is done on word and sentences stress so the concept of stressed syllables and words is understood ( and practised) Rhythm work can be the 'fun' part of pronunciation although some students are a little embarrassed about it.
I do like to start the idea of rhythm in English by the borrowed story of 4 conductors all tapping out a beat with their bat
Conductor one
one                         two                      three                      four
Conductor 2
one and            two and            three and             four and
Conductor 3
one and a         two and a            three and a         four and a
Conductor 4
one and then a two and then a   three and then a   four and then a

This little story easily shows the idea of patterns of stress and 'unstress' and how all the 'little' words need to fit into the rhythm. I have found this to be particularly useful for french speakers who seem to have difficulty losing the classic 'French' accent. It is also very useful for many of the South East Asian languages to get over the 'staccato' and jumpy nature of their English. it is also good for those coming from India whose English is almost their first language but the rhythm of their speech makes it hard to understand sometimes.

The Great vowel shift

In the late-fifteenth century printers began printing books written in the form of London English which had already become a kind of standard in manuscript documents. Between 1475 and about 1630 English spelling gradually became regularized. There are noticeable differences in the look of printed English before the mid-seventeenth century, but after that date it is largely the same as modern English, the major difference being the use of the long s (∫) in all positions except finally.

Pronunciation change and the Great Vowel Shift

By the sixteenth century English spelling was becoming increasingly out of step with pronunciation owing mainly to the fact that printing was fixing it in its late Middle English form just when various sound changes were having a far-reaching effect on pronunciation.

Chief among these was the so-called ‘Great Vowel Shift’, which can be illustrated (with much simplification) from the three vowel sounds in mite, meet, and mate. In Middle English these were three long vowels with values similar to their Latin or continental counterparts [i:], [e:], and [a:] (roughly the vowel sounds of thief, fete, and palm); the spelling was therefore ‘phonetic’.

 After the shift:

• long i became a diphthong (probably in the sixteenth century pronounced [əi] with a first element like the [ə] of the first syllable in ago)
• long e took its place with the value [i:]
• long a became a front vowel, more like that of air to begin with, but later [e:].

A parallel change affected the back vowels of mouth and moot. Hence the mismatch of the long vowel sounds of English with their counterparts in other European languages.

Additionally, during the period a number of sets of vowel sounds that had formerly been distinct became identical, while their spelling distinction was largely maintained, resulting in a further mismatch of spelling and pronunciation.

Important examples are:

• the long vowel a in mane and the diphthong ay or ai in may, main
• the long mid vowel o in sloe, so and the diphthong ow or ou in slow, sow (= cast seed)
• the diphthong represented by u in due and the diphthong ew, eu in dew, neuter.

English is tough stuff 2

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
======================

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.

Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

-- Author Unknown

English is tough stuff

Sometimes English spelling and pronunciation are so absurd that one wonders how we arrived at the particular pronunciation.

Intonation practice

How to get rid of that pesky high rising terminal or in other words that rising intonation at the end of EVERYTHING. Neighbours and Home and Away have a lot to answer for. Some regional Australian accent variations do rise at the ed of every sentence or chunk of speech but really when newsreaders start doing it something has to change!

Try this little exercise which may  help your fluency, vocabulary and pausing as well as trying to understand good ol' Aussie English.

There are many good resources on the Internet and the podcast of the ABC morning current affairs show AM is one of them.

It has the audio as well as the script for each story. You will get a variety of speakers ranging from the presenter, to other journalists to 'Aussies" on site at various new incidents.

The trick is to grab the little moving audio cue and keep moving it back again and again until you get the same intonation as the speaker. Eventually you will be able to read the text at the speed (and with the same intonation) as the speaker.

Intonation practice using AM podcast

Good Luck

Pass the mirror

The mirror is a very useful tool in a pronunciation class. When trying to get the tongue in place for /l/ or the lips for /r/ or opening the mouth a little wider for vowel sounds a lot of giggling happens when looking in the mirror. it lightens the mood a little.
Accent reduction or pronunciation training can get a little 'depressing' as you are focussing on your errors rather than your achievements so a little laughter goes a long way.

My first 'Aussie'

I had previously worked with a Czech head chef at a well known Sydney restaurant and tthe Operations Manager invited me back to work with the sommelier who also had to answer the phone during busy periods ( as he was behind the bar a lot) and try and deal with the demanding VIP customers ringing with all sorts of requests.

It was noted one evening that he was slurring his words. (Later he confessed to me that he doesn't always spit so had had a few sips of wine!) The phone rang and the boss overheard him on the phone 'slurring' his words a little. They decided that he needed a little 'elocution' type work as they really appreciated his work and wanted to help him.

As you can imagine this is a very sensitive topic and difficult to approach the person who needs help. This case was no exception so we didn't get off to a good start but being mature adults we quickly ironed out the problems and had a very successful three by two hour session course
The initial brief was that he slurred his words and didn't speak clearly over the phone. I decided we needed to work on final consonant sounds and linking. Then on meeting my client included chunking, pausing and pacing.

By the end of three sessions and much practicing at home and a LOT of recordingand playing back ,y client ad developed a beutifully clear 'telephone voice'.

I must give credit where credit is due and acknowledge a very good site:
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/speakforsuccesscourse/a/speechlesson1.htm

Practise on youtube

Practise consonant, vowels, linking and pausing on my youtube site. If you need more information but contact me via email djcorbett@optusnet.com.au 

Pronunciation New Year resolutions

I went to a new gym yesterday to take out a membership and as I work flexible hours can go to the gym at down times. I asked the young manager when would be a good time to come, that is when there are not so many people. he said at the moment with all the New Year resolutions still fresh it's pretty full nearly all day.

So while there is still a New Year resolution feel in the air let's make some pronunciation training New Year resolutions.

The one thing most of my students benefit from is my constant 'nagging' as my daughter would say to
S  L  O  W      D  O  W  N. Most people often equate fluency with speed. This is definitely not the case.
here are a few slowing down tips.

1. Physically just slow down your speech at least twice as slowly as you are now speaking
2. Pause longer between 'chunks' of speech
3. Record short passages of your speech then listen and try to slow it down - adding emphasis and stress on the key words

Listening materials for PEAT test

Hey dudes I've just come back from two weeks in New York, staying in Harlem and eating soul food. New Yorkers, especially those who live in  Harlem where I was staying, love to talk. So I had plenty of chance to listen to that great New York accent. However, some of the Harlem speak needed my full attention to decipher.

I realise that the accent I thought was typically a New York accent was more an Italo- American accent.

Anyway - holiday over and back to work for a short while before Christmas,

One of my current clients is sitting for the NSW PEAT test which is the English assessment for Overseas trained teachers to be able to teach in NSW government and private schools.  The oral component is, rightly so, quite a difficult assessment as is the listening. Pronunciation Matters gives one-on-one classes to prepare students for the oral and listening components of the assessment.

The listening test is more than just listening to facts, it involves processing the information and interpreting attitude, intended meaning, shared knowledge as well as facts. This is quite difficult and often native speakers have trouble with the listening.

There are virtually no materials in libraries or book shops to use to practice these role plays or listening texts. My client said her TAFE teacher uses my publication (through NSW AMES), Listening to Australia 4 as practice for authentic listening. She also said that she can never get a copy as they are so popular in the library and there are no other relevant resources.

This finally leads me to my latest project - developing PEAT listening resources and other authentic listening materials.

Please contact me at djcorbett@optusnet.com.au  if you have any ideas on what should be included in these resources.