Quote:
Originally Posted by tropic of cancer
The reason Asia is so desperate for native-speaking teachers (as I see it anyway) is because of their problems with pronunciation.
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i think asians major problem is being able to communicate. shyness and reluctance seems to be a bigger hurdle. even bad pronunciation can be dealt with. how many studetns do we all have that just struggle to get out coherent ideas?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tropic of cancer
Pronunciation is important and something they can achieve in.
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the kicker is how can we assess them on it?
in my opinion, assessing pronunciation is very complicated. there are so many ways students ca go awry. in my teaching, ive liked the general criteria of "stess - clarity - speed".....but to achieve in pronunication implies some very concrete steps.
when we make the articulation of any language very concrete, rigid and step-by-step, you put an enormous burden on the assessor- and the criteria for assessment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tropic of cancer
my colleague...can barely understand a word he says.
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not to assume too much fro you...but i think this is why many teachers feel strongly that pronunciation practice is important.
what i havent seen, from my own colleagues, is that even after years of studying, they cant get it right. the ones who have "mastered" pronunication have almost always, almost 100%, have either travelled or spent considerable time abroad.
that fact (as i see it) means that they didnt have concrete skills per se, but were given severe error correction- to the point that people just wouldnt undertand them back home. when they said something horribly wrong, they got laughed at, ignored, got the wrong food, or worse. so spending time where pronunciation matters for the outcome made them correct themselves.
the question then would be: if exposure and demanding contexts make people correct their speech (if they want X)...how can we make situations in an EFL classroom which implicitly make the students need to pronounce correctly?
1. we need a fixed Y to assess the speech (the gatekeeper could be the native speaker)
2. we need a situation where they have to use their own original, non-reading english
3. there needs to be a gentle rebuke for incorrect speech. this could be in the form of a not-getting X, or a recieving the wrong thing, etc. the problem with this is that there just isnt enough repetition to make a long term difference.
students simply dont lern pronunication from skill-based tasks. they can acquire skills, but none of it is long term, where they can get native like from just methods alone. if there was 1 great method, we'd all be teaching it right now.
we have the let them get into authenitc situations and let them fail. let them not get what they want and have to say it right. this needs to repeat itself, while changing the context of the interaction.
very difficult to do with big classes. even more difficult to do when you see them 2-3 hours a week.
i understand the desire of some teachers to teach the skills in leu of having the time or abilities to veer outside a mainstream thai curriculum (past tenses one week, reported speech the next...)
if i had a vote, id say let them be like your colleague, who knows english well, but hasnt been faced with situations where he NEEDED to get it right. he kinda always got away with it. no one ever called him out on it.
sometimes people go abroad and still dont learn. the issue there is they tend to isolate themsevles with their own kind. i saw this in going to a city university..but saw it more when i mentored 8 tawianese studetns for my internship in grad school. the 2 kids (guys) who participated in sports, met lots of americans, were making huge strides in their communication and pronunciation.
the girls, except 1 in particular, tended to stay inside and talk chinese throughout the day with only their close friends- and not the scaaary americans. they were still shy, still saying "dogu" (dog) and were tough to get them to be genuinely communicative.
so even travelling needs to be qualified to be: interacting and losing your safety net of "i am always understood"
how can we get our studetns in an EFL environment to both lose that safety net where everyone understands them even when they butcher an english word? i dont have the answer to that million dollar Q, but i know that it involves the native speaking teacher as a kind of judge/gatekeeper, and it also means a lot of time invested, as you can really only listen to one student at a time (we cant both listen to and correct the pronunciation of 3 at once)
pronunciation is the gem in the tefl industy. many authors have tried cracking the code, only to repeat the failures of the books and methods before them. personally, i have only seen thais speak well when they have returned from travelling. anywhere.
Tee, hee, hee 
