This post contains a 5-minute video with song excerpts highlighting some of the ways in which vowels, semi-vowels and consonant sounds are linked in English.
Elsewhere on this blog I have argued that pronunciation does matter and deserves far more attention than it’s been getting from mainstream ELT. I have tried to go beyond the old “what matters is intelligibility” paradigm and argued that we can’t ignore, for example, how annoyance potential might impact communication. I have also made a distinction between teaching pronunciation for production (i.e., enabling students to sound better) and teaching pronunciation for comprehension (i.e., highlighting features of linking, weak forms, sound discrimination etc.) and argued that perhaps we should place increased emphasis on the latter.
As I was feeling particularly musical last week (!), I decided to put together a short, self-contained video with five song excerpts, as well as on-screen questions, to help you raise students’ (B1 and above) awareness of sound linking in English. Before you click play, bear with me for a few more seconds:
1. I originally intended to devise a comprehension-based activity (identifying sounds, filling in the blanks etc), but the songs are so well-known that most students would probably recognize the words and maybe even feel like humming / singing along anyway. This means that I wound up creating something a little more output-oriented than the original plan.
2. As I wrote the activity, I kept going back to Michael Swan’s six criteria for good rules (truth, demarcation, clarity, simplicity, conceptual parsimony and relevance) and I must confess that, in hindsight, I fear I ended up sacrificing truth and demarcation for the sake of simplicity and conceptual parsimony. But they’re probably good enough for the average student, I think.
3. The pink rectangles on the video are meant to show students how the highlighted sounds blend. I’ve focused on the last letter of each word, rather than on the syllable itself. For example: all eyes o n us. Otherwise, “all eyes”, for example, would be boxed together, which students would probably find confusing.
If you do decide to use this video – or part of it – in class, let me know how it goes. I’ve never used it with real students, so any sort of feedback is welcome.
Thanks for reading. And watching.
Just used this with two ‘real’ adult students whose weakest areas are listening and pronunciation and they found it really helpful. It shows some linking points in an interesting and fun way – thanks.
Good to hear, real.language.solutions! I haven’t tested it yet, so any feedback is welcome!
Entertaining way of presenting and practicing the linked sounds. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m planning on doing so. Also, when Skype Classes Luisa is big we are going to hire you to produce our online content. You rock!
Thanks, Luisa. Let me know how it goes, ok?
Hey Luiz, I was preparing a class based on your amazing video and I realized that in Rihana’s song you explain the Z sound but the highlighted part is “in the” intead of “diamonds in”. I just thought you should know. I’ll be using it tomorrow, after that I’ll let you know how it went. Thank you!!
Hi, Luisa.
Thanks for the heads up, but I’ve just re-watched the video… and the highlighted part is where it should be: linking the “s” and the “i”. Or am I missing something? Sorry…
Hi Luiz, first of all I used the video and it was very helpful. I started by showing her some sentences and asking her to read them her own way and them I read them linking the sounds. Finally we used the video to shock her even more. She loved it!The part that I mention is on the slide “Learn this!” It’s written: “S” has a /z/ sound if the sound just before it is voiced…” then you wrote the example in parenthesis (diamonds in the sky) and here the highlighted part is “in the”
*correction of my comment- and *then I read them
Hi Luiz,
As usual, this is an incredibly interesting post, and the videos you create… man!
I’ll post a link to this post… everywhere, OK?
Thanks for the INCREDIBLE work you do here.
H
Higor, I really appreciate your words and the sharing. Thank you, thank you.
Just amazing. Students really manage to sing along after being taught (guided, better) what spoken language really is. I always ask them to say “deixe eu ver”, as quickly as they can and they inevitably come with “dechovê”. They then, realise what I mean by “linking sounds”. Very useful material indeed. Thank you.
Hi, Luiz
Thank you!
I’m still astounded by how popular this activity turned out to be.
But, anyway, I’m glad the overriding principle struck a chord with so many teachers: Good pronunciation and good listening go hand in hand.
By the way, love the “deixe eu ver” example. Love it.