Page 6 - ELG1601 Dec Issue 442

Page 6 ELpeople December 2016

1. What is Lingua Franca Core? Foreign accent? Don’t stress!
In a nutshell, LFC is a pronunciation syllabus based
on research carried out initially by Jennifer Jenkins in
the late 1990s and since replicated by numerous oth-
ers, who were all interested in which pronunciation Marek Kiczkowiak of the University of Leuven reveals six things he
features are important for intelligibility in international
settings. It turns out that many of the sounds or pro- wishes he’d known about pronunciation as a newly qualified teacher
nunciation features we typically focus on in class
and consider important are inconsequential in inter-
national contexts. Other pronunciation features seem ’d always assumed that the
particularly important if we want to help our learners more ‘native-like’ your pro- 4. Having a foreign accent is OK
be more intelligible. Inunciation is, the better. This
had been made very clear during If you’re a ‘non-native-speaker’ teacher, you’ve probably worried at some point
my BA in English philology. As about sounding foreign. Or about not sounding ‘native’ enough. What will my stu-
a result, I’d always considered dents think? What if I teach them ‘bad’ English? Have I just mispronounced this
word?
2. Pronunciation features ‘native-like’ pronunciation as the I’ve had these thoughts more than once. They can be really debilitating, because they
ultimate (if unachievable) goal
unimportant for intelligibility for language learners – myself tend to spiral out of control into an almost obsession-like level, where as ‘non-native speak-
included – until I came across ers’ we beat ourselves down and think we’re horrible teachers because we sound foreign.
Pick any two general English course books. Take Lingua Franca Core (LFC). So one thing I really
a look at the pronunciation syllabus and count how wish I’d known is that
many times word stress, connected speech, weak there’s nothing wrong
forms and stress timing appear on it. I’ll wait. with having a for-
The short answer is probably: a lot. As a teacher, I’ve eign accent. In fact,
focused on these with my students countless times. foreign accents are
And before as a learner too, I’d stress over getting the lovely. Think about
stress timing right, and stress out when I misplaced that tinge of Spanish
the word stress. in Antonio Banderas’
The idea is that getting all this right makes you voice. It would be a
sound much more ‘native-like’ – and as a result, more horrible shame if he
intelligible. However, the vast majority of our learners sounded completely
will not communicate exclusively or even mainly with American or British.
‘native speakers’. As a result, a group consisting only It just wouldn’t be like
of ‘native speakers’ judging learners’ pronunciation, Antonio Banderas any
as has been the case with 99 per cent of research on more.
pronunciation, can lead to skewed findings. After all, your accent
Indeed, typical features of ‘native-like’ pronunciation, is an important part
such as stress-timing and weak forms, can actually of your linguistic
hinder intelligibility in more diverse and international identity, and there is
contexts where the interlocutors will have a variety of no reason why you
different L1s. This is illustrated by points 6 and 7 in the should hide it behind
table (right) from Walker and Zoghbor (2015, p. 439). a ‘native-like’ pronun-
If none of the above is important, which pronuncia- ciation.
tion features should we focus on in class then?

3. How can we help our learners 5. Intelligibility and accent
be more intelligible? are not the same thing

According to research, it seems that paying more Our obsession with ‘nativeness’ in ELT in general, and
attention to LFC syllabus in class can improve stu- in pronunciation in particular, has led to a situation
dents’ intelligibility more than a focus on either where ‘non-native speakers’ are frequently depicted in
Standard British English or the General American course books either as learners or tourists and hardly
syllabus. According to the table from Walker and ever treated as valid models of language, let alone
Zoghbor (above), the pronunciation features that are of pronunciation. It shouldn’t be surprising then that
very important if we want our students to be intelligi- some students do still see ‘native speakers’ as better
ble to a wide variety of interlocutors are: language models, and by extension as better teachers.
• All consonants, except the voiced and voiceless <th> However, over a decade ago Vivian Cook argued that
• Consonant clusters (especially at the beginning and it is time we based language teaching on successful
in the middle of a word) second language users. From a practical perspec-
• The contrast between long and short vowels (how- tive, using ‘non-native speakers’ as valid models of
ever, vowel quality is much less important) language (pronunciation included) can have many
• Aspiration after voiceless consonants starting a benefits. For example, it:
word, e.g. pot • Reflects the reality of the English language and its
• Nuclear or tonic stress users – there are at least three times as many ‘non-
So while you might want to raise your students’ native speakers’ out there, many of them highly
awareness and practise weak forms for receptive skills proficient;
to help them improve listening, there is little point • Reflects who many of our students will interact with
in spending a lot of time on getting your students to outside their classes;
produce weak forms. This time would be much better • Can be very motivating – seeing an example of a suc-
spent focusing on consonants, for example. cessful second language user who can also speak
the same first language as you do, for example, can
help students gain confidence;
6. ‘Non-native speakers’ can be • Is a more achievable model – let’s be honest, how
many students will actually be able to pass off for
great models of pronunciation ‘native speakers’?
• Prepares students for the variety of English(es) out there;
OK, that sounds very nice, but wouldn’t a foreign • Avoids the ‘native speaker’ fallacy, or the belief that
accent have a negative effect on intelligibility? In any ‘native speaker’ is a priori a better model and a
other words, won’t people have problems under- better teacher of the language;
standing me if I sound foreign? The short answer is a • Gives students a choice about how and which Eng-
resounding NO! lish they’d like to use in the future;
A more nuanced answer is: it depends how strong • Raises their awareness of the incredible diversity of
your accent is. However, this also goes for ‘native world Englishes.
speakers’ – many of their accents are completely unin-
telligible to outsiders. In fact, ‘native speakers’ are
notorious for being the least understood in international In conclusion, while in most hinder intelligibility in inter-
settings where English is used as the lingua franca. pronunciation teaching we do national contexts.
So in a nutshell, you should only worry about your still takes for granted that stu- If you’d like to learn more about
students sounding foreign if this affects intelligibility, dents should imitate a standard how you can help your learners
since most researchers agree that accentedness and ‘non-native speaker’ model, improve their pronunciation and
intelligibility are at least partially independent. research shows that a focus prepare them for the global nature
Finally, if as a teacher you have a foreign accent, on LFC can actually yield bet- of the English language, take a
there is no reason to despair either. A study con- ter results. Of course, many look at my online course ‘How to
ducted this year (Levis, Sonsaat, Link, & Barriuso, questions still remain, but one teach pronunciation: the ELF per-
2016) showed that there was no difference in learn- thing we know for sure is that spective. A 6-step practical guide
ers’ improvement in pronunciation between those who ‘native speaker’ pronuncia- for English teachers’ (http://tefl-
were taught by a ‘native speaker’ and those taught by tion isn’t necessarily the best equity-courses.teachable.com/p/
a ‘non-native speaker’ model. In fact, some typi- how-to-teach-pronunciation-elf-
cally ‘native-like’ features can perspective). n

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