Una Cunningham

Models and Targets for the Pronunciation of English in Vietnam and Sweden

Models and Targets for the Pronunciation of English in Vietnam and Sweden This paper aims to account for the factors that lie behind the choice of models and targets for the pronunciation of English by learners of English in Vietnam and in Sweden. English is the first foreign language in both Vietnam and in Sweden. English is used as a language of international communication in both settings. Swedish learners have much more exposure to spoken English than do Vietnamese learners and the Swedish language is more similar to English than is Vietnamese. These reasons, among others, explain why Swedish accents of English are typically considerably more intelligible than Vietnamese accents of English. Given that the majority of English speakers in the world are not native speakers, it is argued that the traditional learner target of approaching native speaker pronunciations is not appropriate for either group, but especially not for the Vietnamese learners. Instead maximal international intelligibility is a more useful target. To this end, learners need to be exposed to a variety of native and non-native models.

Teachability and Learnability of English Pronunciation Features for Vietnamese-Speaking Learners

Anyone who has tried to learn a language with a very different sound system will understand the challenges faced by speakers of a language as different as Vietnamese who are attempting to learn to speak English in a way that is intelligible to non-speakers of Vietnamese. Many learners have very limited opportunity to hear model pronunciations other than their teacher’s, and no opportunity at all to speak in English outside the classroom. Vietnamese-accented English is characterised by a number of features which ride roughshod over English morphosyntax, resulting in speech that is extremely difficult to reconstruct for the non-Vietnamese-speaking listener. Some of these features appear to be more difficult to learn to avoid than others. Phonotactic constraints in L1 appear to be persistent even in L2, and L1 phonological rules will, apparently, often apply in L2 unless they are blocked in some way. Perception of salient (to native listeners) target pronunciations is often lacking, and learners may not be aware that their pronunciation is not intelligible. Despite years of language study, many learners are unable to produce some native speaker targets. Vietnamese learners typically exhibit a set of characteristic pronunciation features in English, and the aim of this study is to see which of these are susceptible to remediation through explicit teaching. This explicit teaching is compared with a less direct, less interactive kind of teaching, involving drawing native and native-like pronunciation of problematic features of English pronunciation to the learners’ attention. The results of this study can then be interpreted in terms of teachability and learnability, which do not always go hand in hand. If we understand what kinds of phonetic features are teachable and how learnability varies for different features, we can target those features where there is a good return for effort spent, resulting in efficient teaching.

Language, Ethnicity, and Belonging for the Children of Migrants in New Zealand

The children of migrants grow up with influence from at least two cultures, and they must negotiate their path to adulthood through one or more ethnicities and one or more language varieties that may set them apart from the majority population. We asked how teenagers born to migrant parents in an English-speaking context appeal to the cultures and/or ethnicities they identify with to explain their language choices and perceptions of belonging. More than 50 interviews were carried out with teenagers who identified as speakers of the minority language of their parents (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Korean, or Spanish), and one or both parents of such young people. The focus of the interviews was the minority language, but they became narratives of belonging. Thematic analysis of the transcribed and (where necessary) translated interviews revealed patterns in the perceptions of the teens and their parents. The reported self-perceived proficiency of the teenagers in the minority language, their perception of their ethnicity (particularly but not exclusively for the Chinese and Korean teens) and the culture of the host country, diasporic, and home country communities- were factors in when and how the teens chose to use the minority language, and in how they identified as, for example, Dutch. More than 160 languages are spoken in New Zealand; 25% of the population was born elsewhere, yet the country is one of the most monolingual in the world. This study reveals tensions affecting the willingness of New Zealand–born young people to openly identify with their parents’ ethnicity and to use their languages. Lessons learned from those who raised bilingual children in New Zealand in the face of minimal official support and overwhelming pressure from English will be valuable to other parents and caregivers in New Zealand and elsewhere.

Teaching English Pronunciation Online to Swedish Primary-School Teachers

This paper presents an online course devised to meet the needs of Swedish primary school teachers who need to teach English to their pupils despite not having studied the language themselves more than minimally at tertiary level. Over a hundred teachers took the course as an online summer course. The course was on the learning and teaching of English pronunciation and grammar. Since Swedish primary school teachers often have significant Swedish accents and many cannot write a text in English without a number of characteristic grammatical errors, the course was designed to focus on a limited number of features of English grammar and pronunciation that are both frequently difficult for Swedish speakers and particularly salient, in addition to introducing the teachers to general principles of language education. Because the teachers were not all in Sweden at the time, it was deemed desirable to minimize the real-time interaction needed for the course. This produces particular challenges for the teaching of pronunciation. Ten strategies for teaching English pronunciation online at tertiary level were implemented. This paper reports the process of identifying the most prominent non-native features of each teacher’s pronunciation and working intensively to improve their pronunciation for these features. The strategies are presented and their effect on and reception by the teachers is accounted for with reference to previous research in the teaching and learning of pronunciation and in online learning. The lessons drawn from the first iteration of the course and how these have informed the upcoming second iteration are discussed.

Using Nigerian English in an international academic setting

Abstract This study examines the English pronunciation of a group of Nigerian students at a university in Sweden from the point of view of their intelligibility to two groups of listeners: 1) native speakers of English who are teachers at the university; 2) nonnative speakers of English who are teachers at the university. It is found that listeners who are accustomed to interacting with international students do better than those who are not, and that native speakers of English do no better or worse than non-native listeners. The conclusion is drawn that locally useful varieties of Nigerian English may not easily be used as for wider communication and that students preparing to study abroad would find it useful to gain access to a more widely intelligible variety.