Psychological characteristics of pronunciation relevant for teaching English

It should be emphasised that pronunciation habitsare of the most automated nature. The speaker is absolutely unaware of them. If a teacher of English knows the psychological peculiarities of pronunciation as a skill he will be able to choose adequate methods for teaching it and neutralise mother tongue interference.

These peculiarities are as follows:

1) The reproduction of a sound chain is based on inseparable interaction of articulation and aural analysers. Pronouncing words, we simultaneously hear them, i.e. our hearing controls the degree of accuracy of their pronunciation. Therefore we can correct our own mistakes on hearing them.

2) Oral speech reception suggests interaction of a number of analysers: aural, articulation and visual. We can hear absolutely correctly only the sounds we can reproduce. Just listening to the samples of correct pronunciation is not enough to master it.

3) In case of a visual analyser, the object of its reception is not speech sounds as acoustic signals but articulation movements. Aural sensations are reinforced by visual ones while a listener sees the speaker’s gestures, articulation movements, mimics and general body posture.

Thus, listening and pronunciation habits compose an inseparable unity. They are based on interaction of articulation, aural and visual analysers. In the process of speaking the articulation analyserfunctions as a performer, while aural and visual analysers perform the function of control.

Standards of acoustic imagesof sounds as well as intonemes of English should be imprinted in a speaker’s long-term memory to fulfil the function of control. The heard and pronounced sounds are matched to these standard images. If our memory lacks the corresponding images or if these images are not valid enough, the heard or pronounced speech items are assimilated to the mother tongue items (sounds, intonemes). The result of such non-validity is reflected in various pronunciation mistakes.

Speech hearing

All this determines the importance of speech hearingin teaching pronunciation. Speech hearing is a specific linguistic ability of an individual:

1) to perceive by ear and 2) simultaneously reproduce in his inner speech all the phonological language means, as well as 3) to match these means to the standards kept in his long-term memory.

The main function of speech hearing is to provide listening comprehension and to control speaking.

Speech hearing is subdivided into 1) phonemic; 2) phonetic and 3) intonation hearing.

1) Phonemic hearing is defined as the ability to distinguish meaningful characteristics of phonemes, e.g. to define whether the vowel is long or short, wide or narrow, etc.

2) Phonetic hearing consists in reception and accurate reproduction of non-meaningful, purely phonetic characteristics of speech. Development of phonetic hearing is an indispensable condition of mastering phonetically faultless, accent-free pronunciation, which is relevant for future teachers and interpreters.

3) Intonation hearing is the ability to distinguish intonation contours of L2 phrases and to match them to the language intonation invariant. As speech is framed into definite intonation contours, adequate reception of oral utterances is impossible without developed intonation hearing.

Thus, mastering correct target language pronunciation presupposes development of consolidated auditive and pronunciation habit. This, in its turn, requires development of students’ speech hearing. Assimilation of the articulation basisof L2 is another indispensable condition for mastering target languagepronunciation. In order to work out effective pronunciation teaching exercises one should take into account peculiarities of the target language articulation basis as compared with that of L1. Teaching pronunciation exercises will have to include both receptive and productive drills.