W Sobkowiak Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL Soczewka

W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 1

Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL Włodzimierz Sobkowiak School of English Adam Mickiewicz University W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 2

Problems: • • IPA typography arrangement of symbols picture mnemonics phonetic keywords W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 3

IPA typography • symbol size and position: • symbol shape (chroneme): W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - vs. 4

Arrangement of symbols: vowels Articulatory arrangement? Tense vs lax vowels? Other? W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 5

Arrangement of symbols: consonants By manner of articulation? By place of articulation? Natural grouping? W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 6

Picture mnemonics 1 go or zielone światło? zoo or elephant? look & run or eyes & legs? water or kropla? van or car? W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 7

Picture mnemonics 2 caption________Maciej parrot tie thumb vase mother yacht leg right singer jazz chess egg bull boot computer owl ear tourist bird koszula (P) hand flowers baby boat foot sign sing W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - song horse to do jajka (P) cow foot keyboard bird head camera 8

Phonetic keywords W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 9

Pronouncing difficulty index The idea of the index is that it is a global numerical measure of the phonetic difficulty of the given English lexical item for Polish learners. The index combines: • the most salient grapho-phonemic difficulties such learners are known to have reading English, i. e. mostly spelling pronunciation, • some commonest phonemic L 1 -interference problems known from the literature and my own teaching experience, • some of the notorious developmental L 2 -interference pronunciation errors observed in all learners of English regardless of their L 1 background. W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 10

Interference from Polish in PD index • • the three centring diphthongs, the mid central lax vowels, the velar nasal, the word-final voiced obstruents, • the /-Vn. C-/ sequence (prone to end up as / C/ in Polglish), • the sequence voiced obstruent + /s/, as in absorb (prone to level to voiceless /s/), • secondary stress (which is often ignored in Polglish), • compounds (stress-wise difficult), • interdentals / / and / /. W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 11

Better keywords (PD-wise)? • flower (PD=5) face, fish, file (PD=0) • shower (PD=5) ship, shoe, shelf (PD=0) • monkey (PD=4) meal, meat, mill (PD=0) • singer (PD=4) bank, king, drink (PD=1) W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 12

Conclusion To be truly facilitative, EFL phonetic transcription wallcharts must be seriously researched: pedagogically, lexicologically, psycholinguistically and graphically. Intuition alone is not enough! W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 13

Questions? Comments? Thank you W. Sobkowiak: Phonetic transcription wallcharts in EFL; Soczewka 11 - 14