English spelling among the top priorities in pronunciation teaching: Polglish local versus global(ised) errors in the production and perception of words commonly mispronounced

Marta Nowacka

doi:10.1515/rela-2016-0002

Authors

Marta Nowacka Uniwersytet Rzeszowski

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/rela-2016-0002

Keywords:

words commonly mispronounced, spelling-induced mispronunciations, local and global pronunciation errors, Polglish, letter-to-sound correspondence

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a questionnaire and recording-based study on production and recognition of a sample of 60 items from Sobkowiak’s (1996:294) ‘words commonly mispronounced’ by 143 first-year BA students majoring in English. 30 lexical items in each task represent 27 categories defined by Porzuczek (2015), each referring to one aspect of English phonotactics and/or spelling-phonology relations.
Our aim is to provide evidence for the occurrence of local and globalised errors in Polglish speech. This experiment is intended to examine what types of errors, that is, seriously deformed words, whether avoidable, ‘either-or’ or unavoidable ones, as classified in Porzuczek (2015), are the most frequent in production and recognition of words. Our goal is to check what patterns concerning letter-to-sound relations, are not respected in the subjects’ production and recognition of an individual word and what rules should be explicitly discussed and practised in a phonetics course.
The results of the study confirm the necessity for explicit instruction on the regularity rather than irregularity of English spelling in order to eradicate globalised and ‘either-or’ pronunciation errors in the speech of students. The avoidable globalised errors which have turned out to be the most numerous in a production task include such areas of English phonotactics as: the letters <-old> and <oll>, ‘mute consonant letters’, ‘isolated errors’ and two categories related to the reduction of unstressed syllables: ‘reduce the vowel in stress-adjacent syllables and in syllables following the stressed one to /ə/ or /ɪ/’ and ‘reduce <-ous>, <-age>, and <-ate> in nouns and adjectives.’ The hope is also expressed that once introducing spelling-to-sound relations becomes a routine procedure in pronunciation training, the strain on part of the students of memorizing a list of true local errors, phonetically challenging pronunciation exceptions, will be reduced to the absolute minimum.

References

Avery, P. and S. Ehrlich. 1996. Spelling and Pronunciation. In P. Avery and S. Ehrlich (eds.), Teaching American English Pronunciation, 3-9. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Bryła-Cruz, A. 2013. English. Irish and Scottish listeners’ perception of Polish-accented English: a comparative study. [unpublished PhD]. Lublin: Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej.
Google Scholar

Carney, E. 1994. A Survey of English Spelling. London: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Celce-Murcia, M., D. M. Brinton and J. M. Goodwin. 1996. Chapter 9: The Sound System and Orthography. In M. Celce-Murcia et al. (eds.), Teaching Pronunciation: a reference book for teachers of English to speakers of other languages, 269-288. Cambridge: CUP.
Google Scholar

Collins, B. and I. M. Mees. 2008. Practical Phonetics and Phonology. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Cruttenden, A. 2008. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. 7th edn. London: Hodder Education.
Google Scholar

Crystal, D. 2012. Spell it out: the singular story of English spelling. London: Profile Books.
Google Scholar

Dalton, Ch. and B. Seidlhofer. 1994. Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Dickerson, B. W. 1978. English orthography a guide to word stress and vowel quality. IRAL. Vol. XVI/2. 1, 127-148.
Google Scholar

Dickerson, B. W. 1981. Bisyllabic laxing rule: Vowel prediction in linguistics and language learning, Language Learning 31(1), 283.
Google Scholar

Dickerson, B. W. 1985. The visible Y: a case for spelling in pronunciation learning. TESOL Quarterly 19/2, 303-316.
Google Scholar

Dickerson, B. W. 1987. Explicit rules and the developing interlanguage phonology in Sound Patterns in Second Language Acquisition. Studies on Second Language Acquisition 5, 121-140.
Google Scholar

Dickerson, W. B. 1992. Orthography: a window on the world of sound. In A. Brown (ed.), Approaches to Pronunciation Teaching, 103-117. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited.
Google Scholar

Dickerson, B. W. 2015. Using Orthography to Teach Pronunciation. In M. Reed and J. Levis (eds.), The Handbook of English Pronunciation, 488-503. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Digby, Ch. and J. Myers. 1993. Making Sense of Spelling and Pronunciation. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall.
Google Scholar

Gilbert, J. B. 2008. Teaching Pronunciation: using the Prosody Pyramid. Cambridge: CUP.
Google Scholar

Hahn, L. D. and W. B. Dickerson. 1999a. Speechcraft: Discourse Pronunciation for Advanced Learners. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press.
Google Scholar

Hahn, L. D. and W. B. Dickerson. 1999b. Speechcraft: Workbook for Academic Discourse. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press.
Google Scholar

Hancock, M. 2004. English Pronunciation in Use: self-study and classroom use. Cambridge: CUP.
Google Scholar

Hewings, M. 2004. Pronunciation Practice Activities: a resource book for teaching pronunciation. Cambridge: CUP.
Google Scholar

Kelly, G. 2000. How to Teach Pronunciation. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Google Scholar

Kenworthy, J. 1987. Teaching English Pronunciation. New York: Longman.
Google Scholar

Kreidler, Ch. W. 1971. Teaching English Spelling and Pronunciation. [paper presented at the fifth Annual TESOL Convention]. New Orleans. La. March 6.1971.
Google Scholar

Lewis, J. W. [no date]. English Spellings vis a vis Phonemes. Available from: http://www.yek.me.uk/spellings.html [Accessed on 2 March 2016].
Google Scholar

Majer, J. 2002. Sick or Seek? Pedagogical Phonology in Teacher Training. In: E. Waniek-Klimczak and P. J. Melia (eds.), Accents and Speech in Teaching English Phonetics and Phonology, 153-176. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar

Marks, J. 2007. English Pronunciation in Use Elementary: self-study and classroom use. Cambridge: CUP.
Google Scholar

Nowacka, M. 2008. Phonetic Attainment in Polish University and College Students of English: a Study in the Productive and Receptive Pronunciation Skills, [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Lublin: UMCS.
Google Scholar

Nowacka, M., P. Cymbalista and G. A. Kleparski. 2011. Sally Meets Harry: Practical Primer to English Pronunciation and Spelling. Rzeszow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego.
Google Scholar

Pęzik, P. and M. Zając. 2012. Developing a corpus-based index of commonly mispronounced words. Paper presented at Accents 2012 – VIth International Conference on Native and Nonnative Accents of English, Łodź, Poland, 6-8 December, 2012.
Google Scholar

Porzuczek, A., A. Rojczyk and J. Arabski. 2013. Praktyczny kurs wymowy angielskiej dla Polaków. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Google Scholar

Porzuczek, A. 2015. Handling Global and Local English Pronunciation Errors, In E. Waniek-Klimczak and M. Pawlak (eds.), Teaching and Researching the Pronunciation of English: Studies in Honour of Włodzimierz Sobkowiak, Second Language Learning and Teaching, 169-187. London: Springer.
Google Scholar

Roach, P. 2009. English Phonetics and Phonology. A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Scheuer, S. 1998. Interference-motivated pronunciation errors in Polish students of English. A corpus-based study. [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Adam Mickiewicz University. Poznań.]
Google Scholar

Sobkowiak, W. 1996. English Phonetics For Poles. Poznań: Bene Nati.
Google Scholar

Szpyra-Kozłowska, J. 2005. Intelligibility versus Polish accent in English. Studia Phonetica Posnaniensia. An International Journal for Linguistic Phonetics Vol. 7, 59-73. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Poznań.
Google Scholar

Szpyra-Kozłowska, J. 2013. On the irrelevance of sounds and prosody in foreign-accented speech. In E. Waniek-Klimczak and L. Shockey (eds.), Teaching and Researching English Accents in Native and Non-native Speakers, 15-29. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Google Scholar

Szpyra-Kozłowska, J. 2015. Pronunciation in EFL Instruction: A Research-Based Approach. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Google Scholar

Szpyra-Kozłowska, J. and S. Stasiak 2010. From focus on Sounds to Focus on Words in English Pronunciation Instruction. Research in Language, vol. 8, Doi: 10.1478/v10015-010-0012-7.
Google Scholar

Szyszka, M. 2003. Efekty dydaktyki wymowy języka angielskiego w oparciu o transkrypcję fonetyczną. In W. Sobkowiak and E. Waniek-Klimczak (eds.), Dydaktyka fonetyki języka obcego II, 145-149. Konin: Wydawnictwo PWSZ.
Google Scholar

Upward, Ch. and G. Davidson. 2011. The History of English Spelling. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Google Scholar

van den Doel, R. (2006) How Friendly are the Natives? An Evaluation of Native-speaker Judgements of Foreign-accented British and American English. Utrecht: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT).
Google Scholar

Waniek-Klimczak, E. 2015. Factors Affecting Word Stress Recognition by Advanced Polish Learners of English. In E. Waniek-Klimczak and M. Pawlak (eds.), Teaching and Researching the Pronunciation of English: Studies in Honour of Włodzimierz Sobkowiak. Second Language Learning and Teaching, 189-204. London: Springer.
Google Scholar

Wells, J. C. 2000. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow: Longman.
Google Scholar

Wells, J.C. 2008. English accents and their implications for spelling reform. In B. Collins and I. M. Mees (eds.), Practical Phonetics and Phonology, 257-264. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Zając, M. 2015. Compiling a Corpus-Based list of Words Commonly Mispronounced. In E. Waniek-Klimczak and M. Pawlak (eds.), Teaching and Researching the Pronunciation of English: Studies in Honour of Włodzimierz Sobkowiak, Second Language Learning and Teaching, 153-167. London: Springer.
Google Scholar