Pronunciation Practice 2

obligatory courses

Second part of the pronunciation practice course. Its aim is: [a] to sensitize students to the characteristic features of English pronunciation, with the focus on global features, supra-segmental phenomena including word stress, weak forms and syllable reduction, nuclear tones, rhythm and intonation, and [b] to gradually eliminate typical un-English articulations arising from Polish interference. Techniques include listening to natural fast speech and discriminating sounds, syllables and words, identifying stressed and accented syllables and weak syllables; imitation of the recorded models with linking, proper timing, rhythm and intonation; reciting memorized rhymes, acting out dialogues; practicing the skill of interpretative reading of expository passages.

Second part of the pronunciation practice course. Its aim is to:

- sensitize students to the features of standard English pronunciation at both suprasegmental/prosodic and segmental level;

- help them diagnose their own pronunciation and eliminate errors arising from subconscious use of sound segments, morpho-phonemic rules, and prosodic features of their native language;

- make them aware of tonic accent and stress-timed rhythm and its organizing role in producing English utterances;

- help them improve accuracy and fluency by developing consistency in producing English sounds, controlling word stress, maintaining dynamic contrast between the stressed and the unstressed, and using weak forms, elisions, linking, and assimilations;

- help them express communicative intentions, as well as feelings and attitudes, through intonation.

Work will concentrate, in parallel, on three levels:

- suprasegmental/prosodic (word stress, logical accent/nuclear tones, rhythm of utterances, intonation patterns);

- segmental (articulation of individual sounds - vocalic and consonantal;

- global - connected speech phenomena (weakening of unstressed syllables and vowel reduction, weak forms of function words, linking, elision of consonants, assimilation phenomena).

Techniques will include listening and discrimination, listening and imitation, reading of transcribed phrases, utterances and texts, interpretative reading of short expository texts, and acting out excerpts from fiction or drama.

Mimi Ponsonby. How Now Brown Cow? A course in the pronunciation of English. Prentice Hall. + audio recordings.

Michael Vaughan-Rees. Rhymes and Rhythm. A poem-based course for English pronunciation. Macmillan, 1994. + audio recordings.

Barbara Bradford. Intonation in Context. CUP, 1999. + audio recordings.

Martin Hewings. English Pronunciation in Use Advanced. CUP, 2007 + audio recordings.

L.G. Alexander. Advanced Grammar of English (12 texts for fluent reading practice).

Ian Wilson-Morris. English Phonemic Transcription. Basil Blackwell Limited Oxford 1984 (12 texts for fluent reading practice).

K_U05 The student is able to monitor and diagnose the correctness of the Polish and English languages in use.