Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro.

Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper Pronunciation Doctor : Speech Analysis Introduction Pronunciation is a crucial element in language which can be diagnosed, and developed through effective study and activities. Through the assignment, we were to analyze the speech samples for problem of each students pronunciation areas and to identify the features of the persons pronunciation that most inhibit intelligibility. The analysis portion was preceded by following steps: First, collect pronunciation speech samples using a diagnostic test, second diagnose pronunciation problems by analyzing the results of a pronunciation diagnostic test, last prescribe teaching and practice activities that address the pronunciation problems we found. The samples in my group come from three people: a girl from Hong Kong, two boys from Korea. There are basically two main purposes of this project. The first is to diagnose the pronunciation mistakes of these non-native English speakers. The second is to suggest the appropriate corrections in order to ensure that they are on the right path to having their English be universally understood. We analyzed the samples based on intelligibility, segmentals and suprasegmentals. In order for the reader to get a better understanding of the speech quality of each participant, I will give some background information on each of them. Types of Tests The materials we used to carry our diagnostic tests are picture description speech activity, the Prator Diagnostic Passage, and six Access Analysis Sentences. For the open speech sample, the non-native speaker was asked to tell a brief story using their own words with the help

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper of four given illustration. The second, which is a Prator Fiagnostic passage, is a choice between two reading passages, either My Exercise Program or Paying with Plastic. The Prator passage is provided to measure non-native speakers ability of their segmental and suprasegmental features including, word stress, sentence stress, and intonation. The Accent Analysis Sentences is designed to identify tutees individual and specific vowel sound. It also allows to measure level and their frequency of accuracy in the speakers pronunciation of certain segmental. These specific tests were used to evaluate where the students were pronunciationwise. I will focus on rating each sample in each of these following areas: Segmentals, Suprasegmentals, and Intelligibility. Participant #1 Background Information The first student tested is named Eva from Hong Kong. I supposed her English is influenced by British English. She was born and raised in Hongkong and has been living in the United States for approximately three years. She is currently a student here at BYU Hawaii. She has little self-esteem in speaking English because she thinks her English has strong accent, and wants to improve her pronunciation. For this speech sample, I gave the speaker the following ratings: 6 for segmentals, 5 for suprasegmentals, and 6 for intelligibility. Segmentals Consonants

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper I found only two problems in total with her pronunciation of consonants. The first is when she said the word various, she pronounced it /fis/ instead of using the appropriate /v/ phoneme. It is important to note that the /f/ and the /v/ phonemes are both labio-dentals, which might make it difficult for her to pronounce them differently. The second was with her ds at the end of words. This problem showed in the Paying with Plastic reading passage. In one instance she said /fot/ instead of afford. A few moments later, she made the same mistake when she said /cat/ where it should be pronounced as card. This is actually a common mistake for native Chinese speakers as they many times replace the /d/ consonant at the end of words and replace it with a /t/. The Third problem is two phonemes that I also noticed she had a hard time with was the /l/ and the // sounds. This is a well-known problem with Chinese speakers. For the word groceries, she pronounced it with an /l/ in place of both of the /r/s so it sounded like /glolis/. I know that she is aware of this problem in particular, and is especially willing to work to improve it. Suprasegmentals Intonation Now, when discussing intonation, the variation in font sizes indicates the ups and downs of the speakers intonation and not word or sentence stress. She made a few errors while she was reading off a list in the Paying with Plastic passage. I noticed she doesnt breath much as she was reading the passage which made her sound quite nerves and anxious somehow. The rhythm and pitch of her speech was very limited, it does not change much. Overall Intelligibility

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper Despite her main problem with a few key consonants, Evas pronunciation is improving little by little. I believe that others can understand her just as well because they will at least know what she is saying through the context, even though her consonants may not be perfect.

Pedagogical Suggestions I feel it would be beneficial to her to do a bit of drilling with the /t/ and /d/ phonemes. Because they are both Alveolar Plosives, they may be hard for her to make them sound different from one another. Participant #2 Background Information Second participant is a young man from Korea(we were not given a name). He has been at BYU-Hawaii for few years and taking the last EIL classes. Information was not given on what her motivation/confidence/anxiety might be like at the time of the recording of the speech samples. I was not provided with any other information. I gave the speaker the following ratings: 7 for segmentals, 6 for suprasegmentals, and 7 for intelligibility. Segmentals Consonants This seemed to be the area that he struggled with the most, and in my opinion, the one that will affect his intelligibility the most. The biggest problem that I noticed was his pronunciation of both the and phonemes as in the words this and the. He replaced both of these with the /d/ sound at the beginning of the words. Two other consonants proved to be difficult for him. The

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper first one was //. The word probably was pronounced /pabbli/ with the // sound was completely dropped. The second was /l/. In the Accent Analysis Sentences, this time an // was put in place of the /l/, making the word flew pronounced as /f u/. Also, the word flight was said as /ft/. This is a well-known issue that many native speakers of Korean have; both the /l/ and the // are often mistakenly used in place of each other.

Vowels In this area, I identified two main vowel sounds that I feel would benefit him most to improve on. The first would be the /I/ phoneme. In the Accent Analysis Sentences, he kept replacing this sound with /i/. It is important for Korean to at least be able to understand that there is, and be able to enunciate vowels that are distinct from one another. This is because a listener needs to be able to differentiate between these two sounds, as it greatly affects the meanings of words. Suprasegmentals Intonation In the category of suprasegmentals, intonation is the one I think that he would, at this point, benefit the most from learning how to use it. Also, I noticed that when she reads off lists (such as in the My Exercise Program passage) his intonation drops where it should actually stay the same until the last item is named off. Word Stress

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper In one of the passages, he made the mistake of putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable of the word, switching the meaning of the word. This shows that he did not necessarily understand the context and perhaps was not even aware that there are two separate ways to say the word that determine whether it is a noun or a verb. I noticed that he struggled with a few words and tried to figure out how to pronounce them properly. An example is when he said REcord instead of reCORD. Another example is when he said the word sleeping at the end of the My Exercise Plan passage. He divided the word into its appropriate syllables-slee and ping. However, instead of stressing the first syllable, he gave equal emphasis to each syllable. The result of this was his sounding robotic when he said the word.

Stress Timing In My Exercise Program, many of the sentences that he produced were heavy with his syllabic-timed native accent, sounding almost robotic-like at times. The sentence Now I wake up in the morning, put on my exercise clothes. was one of the sentences where this habit showed through. Instead of placing stress on the appropriate words in the sentence such as wake, morning and exercise clothes, each word sounded shortened, and received an equal amount of emphasis. Overall Intelligibility As I stated before, I think that Koreans intelligibility level would benefit most with some training in the area of consonants, particularly with the / / and / / sounds. Also, his use of intonation will either greatly help or hinder other peoples ability to comprehend what he is saying. Though he struggled with his intonation in his reading passages, I am going to make a

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper good guess that he is aware of how and where correct intonation should be applied, and therefore not really a problem for him in his own free speech. Pedagogical suggestions In the case of making his /i/ and /I/ vowels different from one another, a teacher or tutor could explain to him the proper tongue positioning. A mirror could also be brought for the Korean to look at so that he can see the difference of the positioning of his lips when enunciating these two phonemes. The last thing that could be taught to him to help him understand would be to show him the tense and lax feelings of the tongue, right under the jaw. You could have him place his fingers under your jaw to see the difference and then have him try it on himself.

Participant #3 Background Information This young man is another Korean participant named Mingee. For this assignment, He has only been here at the school for a period of a few months and is in the EIL program. I was told that he does not have a huge motivation to practice his English. This of course, may definitely affect his ability to recognize and seek to correct errors with his own pronunciation. I handed the material to her so that she could look it over a couple times before I began the recording. I gave the speaker the following ratings: 6.5 for segmentals, 6 for suprasegmentals, and 7 for intelligibility. Segmentals Consonants

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper Just like the previous participant, this is the category in which he struggles with the most. However, there are different challenges for him. He demonstrates that he has some pretty big L1 habits in this area to overcome in order for people to easily recognize what he is saying. I identified three major issues. First of all, just from listening to one of his passages, I became very aware of the fact that he does not know how to say the / / sound. He replaced it with /s/ every time, without fail. The word shopping became /sapi/. On a side note, when she said the word social, she made the same mistake, and pronounced it /sosl/. However, I attribute this particular mistake to my assumption that he simply is not aware that the word social holds the // in it as the word may look a bit tricky to those who are not familiar with the way some of the English letters are pronounced when they are together. Nevertheless, I feel like // is a very important phoneme to be able to pronounce well, as it appears in so many words within the English language.

Vowels The main vowel issue that I identified here, much like the other participants, is his problem with placing the /i/ and /I/ phonemes in there appropriate places. For example, he replaced /I/ in the words bit, slim, trim and hints with /i/. Suprasegmentals Intonation Regardless, he mixed up his intonation on quite a few sentences. This became especially noticeable in the My Exercise Program reading. For example, his pitch rose at the end of a statement when he said looking very physically fit. It should have dropped here to show that it

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper was a statement. However, because the incorrect intonation was applied, it ended up sounding like a confusing question instead. Mingee reads over the passages once before I had her read them aloud. That being said, he did fairly well in this category. I did catch a couple of times where her intonation dropped where it should have gone up. These instances occurred in sentences in which he was listing things; an example of this is when she said, ..and tennis shoes(.), drink some Orange Juice and take off. The sentence sounded like it could have ended after tennis shoes by the way that his pitch dropped and the whole sentence sounded a bit unnatural as a result. However, I believe that he was aware of these mistakes and that he really does know how to use intonation with sentences properly. Stress Timing Coming from a syllable timed mother tongue, this habit proves to be a difficult one for Mingee to break- especially when it comes to reading in English. During My Exercise Program, this problem is apparent as his syllabic time first language shows heavily through her speech. I did notice, however, that this problem disappeared a little bit during the Make-Up story part of the test. I think this shows that his syllabic timing of sentences comes out more when he is concentrating on reading and getting the words right. He is definitely still adjusting to the new stress-timed patterns of the English language.

Overall Intelligibility His speech is near perfect (at least to me). He demonstrates that he is proficient in English because she has mastered what I consider to be the details of the language-

Juyeon Seo 11/8/2013 Bro. Wolf Pronunciation Doctor Paper suprasegmentals. He uses appropriate word stress and even sentence stress (which I find impressive, as he comes from a syllable timed L1). Pedagogical Suggestions The best thing that I think Mingee could work on to improve his pronunciation is of course his consonants. Also, it is important that he is shown how to articulate the // as I believe he is unaware how to do so. In the cases with /r/ and /l/ and /i/ and /I/, the teacher or tutor could read off minimal pairs and have her hold up one finger (for first phoneme) or two fingers (for second phoneme). I have used this exercise a few times with her and she loves it! This type of exercise can also be used with teaching sentence stress. A teacher could read off several sentences and have her listen and try to hear which words had the most emphasis placed on them. She could then read them herself and try to stress the appropriate words. Afterwards, it could be explained to her which types of words are typically stressed (i.e. content and function words). Conclusion By carrying out Pronunciation Doctor Assignments, it indeed helped me deepen my insight on why pronunciation matters, and how to approach to the concept. I was able to make my point more clearly in terms of elaborating why certain sounds pronounced in certain ways and how to give feedbacks.

(One of our group members didnt submit his sample, so analyzing only three samples is fine according to what Bro.Wolf said)