Teaching English /r/ and /l/ to Asian EFL learners: a lexical approach
Part I
Charles Jannuzi
University of Fukui, Japan
Introduction
English /r/, /l/ and contrasts between these two categories of sounds are often cited as pronunciation and listening perception problems for a variety of EFL learners, most from E. Asia. The language backgrounds most often associated with these problems are Japanese, Korean, Chinese and some languages of SE Asia (e.g. Thai but also Cantonese Chinese). Other language speakers have also expressed an interest in improving their pronunciation of English /r/ and /l/, including Russian and German EFL learners.
Perhaps the most well-known group to have a problem with the two categories of sounds is Japanese EFL learners. This could be because their native language background creates the most difficult problems to overcome. It could also be because Japan attained affluence before most of the rest of Asia and hired native speakers of English to help teach and model the language. So a lot of information based on knowledge and experience of Japanese and Japanese learners of EFL has been exchanged and discussed in 'global ELT'.
In the case of Japanese learners of English, just what is the issue? The most common account is based on a simple 'contrastive analysis'. Japanese is said to have one categorical sound (or phoneme) whereas English has two. The Japanese sound is often referred to as a type of [r] that is tapped, flapped or trilled. The Japanese sound never closes a syllable and has a very limited distribution in Japanese. One form of the Japanese /r/ helps to form the syllables used in grammatical inflections (such as verb forms). Word-initial Japanese /r/ is limited to words of foreign origin.
English-speaker descriptions of the Japanese sound or of the Japanese learner of English's sound represent the Japanese sound as variably resembling English /l/, /r/, or /d/ (especially [d] in the middle of a word, like in the word 'middle'). Phonetic descriptions have also said that the American medial voiced [t] of words such as 'little' are quite like the Japanese /r/.
However, it is not really clear how useful a cross-linguistic, contrastive analysis of phoneme inventories is in diagnosing the problems or in helping Japanese learners of English to overcome them. For one thing, the often-read argument that Japanese has only ONE phoneme, Japanese /r/, is arguably wrong. That is because, using structuralist criteria for determining what is and what is not a phoneme, we can isolate at least two Japanese [r] sounds that are distinct: initial [r] in the word 'rou' ('candle') from palatalized intial [r] in 'ryou' ('dormitory').
It is also misleading to teach EFL learners that there is one English /r/ and one English /l/. That is because they will hear native and fluent speakers of English make a wide array of both sounds in actual speech. In terms of articulation, there is a wide variety within both categories of sounds. Interestingly, the distribution in the lexicon of English [r] sounds strongly parallels English [l] sounds: word-initial ('right' vs. 'light'), word-initial cluster unvoiced ('crime' vs. 'climb'), word-initial cluster voiced ('grow' vs. 'glow'), post-vocalic ('fear' vs. 'feel'), medial ('correct' vs. 'collect'), and unstressed syllabic ('batter' vs. 'battle').
There is some complementary distribution if we consider clusters: [tr-] as in 'true' but no [tl-], [sl] as in 'slide' but no [sr-], [shr-] as in 'shred' but no [shl] (except some loan words), and [l] can cluster with [r] post-vocalically, as in 'girl' or 'world' but not vice versa. Moreover, since both of these sound categories tend toward 'vowel-like', it is not surprising that in some cases they might reduce to a vowel or vowel lengthening in some accents, dialects and word contexts (such as post-vocalic [r] in London, Boston and NY Englishes, or the lost [l] of the word 'chalk').
Given the variety of English /r/ and /l/ sounds and how they parallel each other in the lexicon of English, it is little wonder that EFL learners, even after they have practiced making an English /r/ vs. /l/ distinction, lose the ability when actually communicating orally. Therefore, it is best to teach--over a period of time and through a variety of activities--the full parallel variety of English /r/ and /l/ sounds as found in the most frequent words of the lexicon. A proposed sequence is this: first the variety of English /r/s, then the variety of English /l/s, then /r/ vs. /l/ contrasts in common words, then a follow up on the variety of post-vocalic [r]s in rhotic accents, such as US and Canadian Englishes.
In the next installment we will look at an instructional sequence which includes explanation of basic classroom procedures and many examples from the beginner's lexicon of English.
ELT-J Issue Archive
- ELT in Japan Issue #4 (October 2011) as online readable/downloadable documents
- ELT in Japan Issue #4 (October 2011)
- ELT in Japan Issue #3 (August - September 2010)
- ELT in Japan Issue #2 (March 2010) as online readable/downloadable documents
- ELT in Japan Issue #2 (March 2010)
- ELT in Japan Issue #1 (December 2009) bonus article
- ELT in Japan Issue #1 (December 2009) as online readable/downloadable documents
- ELT in Japan Issue #1 (December 2009)
28 November 2010
20 November 2010
Basics of Vocabulary Study in TOEIC Practice Class
Basics of Vocabulary Study in TOEIC Practice Class
Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan
Introduction
Teaching and studying vocabulary are a major part of EFL classes. However, are we helping students to acquire a broad, deep and nuanced lexicon? Many TOEIC practice textbooks on the market here in Japan include a vocabulary section. Usually this is presented as a pre-reading or pre-listening task. Often it is a list of key words taken from the reading or listening exercises of a given unit. And the units are often 'themed': food and drink, shopping, at the airport, recreation, etc. So the themes and the TOEIC practice texts 'select' the vocabulary.
Also, textbook writers like to stick with the most frequent vocabulary of English because they know the TOEIC test writers do. The vocabulary pre-reading or pre-listening tasks most preferred here in Japan are (1) the bilingual word list (i.e., a list of English words requiring translation into Japanese) and (2) the matching exercise (i.e., a list of English words that are matched with their Japanese translations and/or English-language definitions). This article looks at ways to make better use of these vocabulary sections.
Pre-listening, pre-reading tasks
Activity One
If a unit has a specific theme, why not try, as pre-listening or pre-reading task, to get the students to pool their English vocabulary to make a simple themed semantic map on the board. Students are asked to activate their own vocabulary in anticipation of the key vocabulary in the unit that they are going to study. For example, a simple concept map of a chapter on 'the airport' might produce: check-in, tickets, ticketing, passports, passport clearance/immigration, customs, etc.
Be prepared to give examples. Encourage students to put bilingual words and phrases on the board so that the other students, who may not know the item, can understand it (this works in Japan because most students are either native speakers of Japanese or are studying it as a second or foreign language). When the first map is complete, go over the vocabulary with the students, practicing pronunciation.
Activity Two
Being able to match key terms with equally immportant or even more basic synonyms is an important skill for taking language proficiency tests. You can practice it in this task. From the first map that you and the students did together, choose key items. For this task, ask students to see if they can produce synonyms, synonymous phrases or near equivalents for the key terms that you have chosen. For example:
baggage: luggage, suitcases, bags
confirm: check, make sure, verify
restroom: toilet, WC, washroom
restaurant: cafe, snackbar, grill, cafeteria
allowed: permitted
It might be useful to isolate some key action verbs and verbal phrases:
get: buy, purhcase
get: arrive
depart: take off, embark
arrive: land, touch down, disembark
When words are not clear synonyms, it is a good opportunity for the teacher to explain the similarities and differences. For example, we disembark from the plane after we have arrived.
Activity Three
Another task that will help students to activate language that participates the language of the listening or reading units of the textbook is the generation of key collocations. Some collocations are so strong that they overlap with what is a lexical item. Ask students to come up with some key collocations for some of the words that they have already come up with so far. Be prepared to give examples to get the process started.
For example:
Get: some food, some drinks, some cigarettes, some rest (a meaning or use of 'get' not listed above but relevant to the given theme, airports, air travel, etc).
Restroom: use the restroom, go to the restroom
Allowed: smoking is not allowed, entry beyond this point is not allowed
Buy: buy duty-free goods, buy a magazine, buy a newspaper, buy some snacks
Lexical items that pair common words but result in idiomatic meanings:
get in, get down, get up, take off (as a verb), touch down, etc.
The teacher should again be prepared to give sentences that show the particular meaning in use:
Get up from the seat.
Could you get that bag down for me?
It's hot, so I'm going to take off my jacket.
The airplane was delayed by a half hour before it could take off.
Variations on Activities One-Three (above)
Since one of the basic tasks for TOEIC listening is to choose the correct description of a photograph (such as people checking in at an airline's counter in an airport, someone getting off an airplane, etc.), you might have students generate their own descriptions of the photographs in the TOEIC practice textbook:
There is/are....
The people are....
He/she/they is/are....
It's a .....
The airplane (is parked on the runway).
The airplane (is taking off).
The airplane (is landing).
Activity Four
TOEIC is known as a test of everyday spoken English (e.g., for travel) and business English (e.g., communications for a trading company). This preconception can be misleading. TOEIC is marketed as a test for general learners of English as a Foreign Language and for EFL learners in business and company settings. This distinguishes the test from TOEFL, which is famous as a test required to get into universities and colleges in North America. However, more and more the tasks on the two tests have come to resemble each other: the TOEFL has become more practical in some of its content, and the TOEIC has become more difficult and demanding of short-term memory than before. One area where the TOEIC can still present difficulty is in SUB-TECHNICAL vocabulary--that is, vocabulary that is not informal, and knowledge of it is supposed to reflect a basic cultural (Anglophone), scientific and technical 'literacy'.
This activity has been designed to help students study and practice for the sub-technical vocabulary they will encounter on the TOEIC. To start, you can have students brainstorm terms that they relate to a specified theme. For example, 'breakfast'. This might help them to generate words like: croissant, toast, bread, coffee, tea, cereal, milk, cream, butter, eggs, etc.
Next, choose at least one term to use an example of the need to learn and review sub-technical vocabulary. For example, 'cereal'. What is cereal made of? Grains like corn, wheat, and rice. In the case of a Japanese-speaking EFL class, a lot can be made of a cereal box that is written in Japanese. Can students find the terms on the box that are related to ingredients and nutrition? If they can, it should generate word lists like
Nutrition
Ingredients
Calories
Energy
Protein
Carbohydrates
Vitamins
Minerals
Fat
Cholesterol
Transfat
Allergy
Another communicative situation that quickly requires knowledge of sub-technical vocabulary is a weather report (and these find their way onto TOEIC):
precipitation
gale force winds
typhoon
hurricane
high pressure
low pressure
trough
rain front
moist tropical air
jetstream
monsoon
rainy season
floods/flooding
avalanche
landslides
mudslides
Post-listening, post-reading
Often where EFL teachers fail is not so much in preparing students for listening or reading units but rather in review, revision, consolidation and follow-up practice. One of the best ways to recycle vocabulary is to give sets of multiple-choice questions the week after a TOEIC practice unit. Also, as the semester progresses, the teacher will want to choose the most important vocabulary from all the previous TOEIC lessons.
Example multiple choice questions
1. While breakfast cereal can be a good source of ______________ to start your day, some cereals are very high in sugar, carbohydrates and total calories.
a. nutrition b. partition c. division d. ingredients
(Answer: a. nutrition)
2. A: Brrrr. It's cold outside, isn't it?
B: Yes, it is. The weather report said that there would be a 50% chance of ______________, with rain turning to snow.
a. nutrition b. participation c. perception d. precipitation
(Answer: d. precipitation)
3. What is XXXXXXXX?
a. At some companies and in some countries, it is difficult to _______________ a union.
b. Some fish in the open oceans _______________ themselves into large schools.
c. If you want to _______________ a surprise birthday party for a friend, it is a lot of work to get everyone to cooperate and participate.
a. plan b. originate c. succeed d. organize
(Answer: d. organize)
Here 'organize' is used in three different contexts and it reveals a meaning, connotation or use that might not be so clear simply from consulting a bilingual or English-English learner's dictionary: To organize can mean to to plan, but plan doesn't cover the other areas of meaning with organize.
TOEIC also tests an EFL learner's mastery of inflectional and derivational morphology. Distractors for multiple-choice questions can focus on these aspects. For example:
4. Last week my friends and I got together and ________________ a surprise birthday part for Sue, and this week we held the party successfuly.
a. to organize b. organizing c. organism d. organized
(Answer: d. organized)
Conclusion
Preparation for high-stakes exams, such as TOEIC and TOEFL, is now a major part of EFL classes in Asia. Teachers can supplement comprehensive English courses with textbooks and materials designed to help practice for such language tests. Some include 'language building' tasks, most often as pre-listening or pre-reading tasks. But even the use of such materials does not guarantee students will get sufficient, effective and systematic practice of the key vocabulary that they need to boost their scores. Whether or not the ideas presented above prove useful to your classes, it might be helpful to keep the following principles in mind as you integrate vocabulary learning in your own classes:
1. It is o.k. and even advisable during language building tasks, such as vocabulary learning, to confirm the meanings of words in dictionaries, including bilingual ones (good bilingual dictionaries can be sources for synonyms and example sentences).
2. Have students as individuals, pairs, small groups or as an entire class come up with synonyms for the key vocabulary of a given unit. More basic and frequent synonyms are perhaps the most important (e.g., use over utilize, use over utilization, etc.).
3. Have students brainstorm key collocations and idioms that at least partially contextualize the key vocabulary. As teacher be prepared to give lots of examples of your own.
4. Flesh out collocations and idiomatic phrases with longer examples, such as sentences or small dialogues that show the words being used.
Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan
Introduction
Teaching and studying vocabulary are a major part of EFL classes. However, are we helping students to acquire a broad, deep and nuanced lexicon? Many TOEIC practice textbooks on the market here in Japan include a vocabulary section. Usually this is presented as a pre-reading or pre-listening task. Often it is a list of key words taken from the reading or listening exercises of a given unit. And the units are often 'themed': food and drink, shopping, at the airport, recreation, etc. So the themes and the TOEIC practice texts 'select' the vocabulary.
Also, textbook writers like to stick with the most frequent vocabulary of English because they know the TOEIC test writers do. The vocabulary pre-reading or pre-listening tasks most preferred here in Japan are (1) the bilingual word list (i.e., a list of English words requiring translation into Japanese) and (2) the matching exercise (i.e., a list of English words that are matched with their Japanese translations and/or English-language definitions). This article looks at ways to make better use of these vocabulary sections.
Pre-listening, pre-reading tasks
Activity One
If a unit has a specific theme, why not try, as pre-listening or pre-reading task, to get the students to pool their English vocabulary to make a simple themed semantic map on the board. Students are asked to activate their own vocabulary in anticipation of the key vocabulary in the unit that they are going to study. For example, a simple concept map of a chapter on 'the airport' might produce: check-in, tickets, ticketing, passports, passport clearance/immigration, customs, etc.
Be prepared to give examples. Encourage students to put bilingual words and phrases on the board so that the other students, who may not know the item, can understand it (this works in Japan because most students are either native speakers of Japanese or are studying it as a second or foreign language). When the first map is complete, go over the vocabulary with the students, practicing pronunciation.
Activity Two
Being able to match key terms with equally immportant or even more basic synonyms is an important skill for taking language proficiency tests. You can practice it in this task. From the first map that you and the students did together, choose key items. For this task, ask students to see if they can produce synonyms, synonymous phrases or near equivalents for the key terms that you have chosen. For example:
baggage: luggage, suitcases, bags
confirm: check, make sure, verify
restroom: toilet, WC, washroom
restaurant: cafe, snackbar, grill, cafeteria
allowed: permitted
It might be useful to isolate some key action verbs and verbal phrases:
get: buy, purhcase
get: arrive
depart: take off, embark
arrive: land, touch down, disembark
When words are not clear synonyms, it is a good opportunity for the teacher to explain the similarities and differences. For example, we disembark from the plane after we have arrived.
Activity Three
Another task that will help students to activate language that participates the language of the listening or reading units of the textbook is the generation of key collocations. Some collocations are so strong that they overlap with what is a lexical item. Ask students to come up with some key collocations for some of the words that they have already come up with so far. Be prepared to give examples to get the process started.
For example:
Get: some food, some drinks, some cigarettes, some rest (a meaning or use of 'get' not listed above but relevant to the given theme, airports, air travel, etc).
Restroom: use the restroom, go to the restroom
Allowed: smoking is not allowed, entry beyond this point is not allowed
Buy: buy duty-free goods, buy a magazine, buy a newspaper, buy some snacks
Lexical items that pair common words but result in idiomatic meanings:
get in, get down, get up, take off (as a verb), touch down, etc.
The teacher should again be prepared to give sentences that show the particular meaning in use:
Get up from the seat.
Could you get that bag down for me?
It's hot, so I'm going to take off my jacket.
The airplane was delayed by a half hour before it could take off.
Variations on Activities One-Three (above)
Since one of the basic tasks for TOEIC listening is to choose the correct description of a photograph (such as people checking in at an airline's counter in an airport, someone getting off an airplane, etc.), you might have students generate their own descriptions of the photographs in the TOEIC practice textbook:
There is/are....
The people are....
He/she/they is/are....
It's a .....
The airplane (is parked on the runway).
The airplane (is taking off).
The airplane (is landing).
Activity Four
TOEIC is known as a test of everyday spoken English (e.g., for travel) and business English (e.g., communications for a trading company). This preconception can be misleading. TOEIC is marketed as a test for general learners of English as a Foreign Language and for EFL learners in business and company settings. This distinguishes the test from TOEFL, which is famous as a test required to get into universities and colleges in North America. However, more and more the tasks on the two tests have come to resemble each other: the TOEFL has become more practical in some of its content, and the TOEIC has become more difficult and demanding of short-term memory than before. One area where the TOEIC can still present difficulty is in SUB-TECHNICAL vocabulary--that is, vocabulary that is not informal, and knowledge of it is supposed to reflect a basic cultural (Anglophone), scientific and technical 'literacy'.
This activity has been designed to help students study and practice for the sub-technical vocabulary they will encounter on the TOEIC. To start, you can have students brainstorm terms that they relate to a specified theme. For example, 'breakfast'. This might help them to generate words like: croissant, toast, bread, coffee, tea, cereal, milk, cream, butter, eggs, etc.
Next, choose at least one term to use an example of the need to learn and review sub-technical vocabulary. For example, 'cereal'. What is cereal made of? Grains like corn, wheat, and rice. In the case of a Japanese-speaking EFL class, a lot can be made of a cereal box that is written in Japanese. Can students find the terms on the box that are related to ingredients and nutrition? If they can, it should generate word lists like
Nutrition
Ingredients
Calories
Energy
Protein
Carbohydrates
Vitamins
Minerals
Fat
Cholesterol
Transfat
Allergy
Another communicative situation that quickly requires knowledge of sub-technical vocabulary is a weather report (and these find their way onto TOEIC):
precipitation
gale force winds
typhoon
hurricane
high pressure
low pressure
trough
rain front
moist tropical air
jetstream
monsoon
rainy season
floods/flooding
avalanche
landslides
mudslides
Post-listening, post-reading
Often where EFL teachers fail is not so much in preparing students for listening or reading units but rather in review, revision, consolidation and follow-up practice. One of the best ways to recycle vocabulary is to give sets of multiple-choice questions the week after a TOEIC practice unit. Also, as the semester progresses, the teacher will want to choose the most important vocabulary from all the previous TOEIC lessons.
Example multiple choice questions
1. While breakfast cereal can be a good source of ______________ to start your day, some cereals are very high in sugar, carbohydrates and total calories.
a. nutrition b. partition c. division d. ingredients
(Answer: a. nutrition)
2. A: Brrrr. It's cold outside, isn't it?
B: Yes, it is. The weather report said that there would be a 50% chance of ______________, with rain turning to snow.
a. nutrition b. participation c. perception d. precipitation
(Answer: d. precipitation)
3. What is XXXXXXXX?
a. At some companies and in some countries, it is difficult to _______________ a union.
b. Some fish in the open oceans _______________ themselves into large schools.
c. If you want to _______________ a surprise birthday party for a friend, it is a lot of work to get everyone to cooperate and participate.
a. plan b. originate c. succeed d. organize
(Answer: d. organize)
Here 'organize' is used in three different contexts and it reveals a meaning, connotation or use that might not be so clear simply from consulting a bilingual or English-English learner's dictionary: To organize can mean to to plan, but plan doesn't cover the other areas of meaning with organize.
TOEIC also tests an EFL learner's mastery of inflectional and derivational morphology. Distractors for multiple-choice questions can focus on these aspects. For example:
4. Last week my friends and I got together and ________________ a surprise birthday part for Sue, and this week we held the party successfuly.
a. to organize b. organizing c. organism d. organized
(Answer: d. organized)
Conclusion
Preparation for high-stakes exams, such as TOEIC and TOEFL, is now a major part of EFL classes in Asia. Teachers can supplement comprehensive English courses with textbooks and materials designed to help practice for such language tests. Some include 'language building' tasks, most often as pre-listening or pre-reading tasks. But even the use of such materials does not guarantee students will get sufficient, effective and systematic practice of the key vocabulary that they need to boost their scores. Whether or not the ideas presented above prove useful to your classes, it might be helpful to keep the following principles in mind as you integrate vocabulary learning in your own classes:
1. It is o.k. and even advisable during language building tasks, such as vocabulary learning, to confirm the meanings of words in dictionaries, including bilingual ones (good bilingual dictionaries can be sources for synonyms and example sentences).
2. Have students as individuals, pairs, small groups or as an entire class come up with synonyms for the key vocabulary of a given unit. More basic and frequent synonyms are perhaps the most important (e.g., use over utilize, use over utilization, etc.).
3. Have students brainstorm key collocations and idioms that at least partially contextualize the key vocabulary. As teacher be prepared to give lots of examples of your own.
4. Flesh out collocations and idiomatic phrases with longer examples, such as sentences or small dialogues that show the words being used.
Why is 'research' in ELT/TEFL/TESOL/AL/SLA so irrelevant?
Here is a slight revision of an earlier piece.
Why is 'research' in ELT/TEFL/TESOL/AL/SLA so irrelevant?
Glossary of terms for those who are not familiar with this field:
AL=Applied Linguistics (most usually the application of some version of linguistics to second or foreign language teaching and learning)
ELT=English Language Teaching
FL=Foreign Language
FLT=Foreign Language Teaching
LL=Language Learning
SLA=Second Language Acquisition
TEFL=Teaching English as a Foreign Language
TESOL=Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Why is 'research' in ELT/TEFL/TESOL/AL/SLA so irrelevant?
by Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan
While most of the research in support of and about ELT is produced in academia, most actual language teaching and language learning are done outside academia. Even when FLs get taught at universities, the people who often end up with the teaching duties are not in the sort of university posts that are meant for research.
However, I believe the single largest issue is the institutional approach to science and knowledge which falls under the overwhelming intellectual influences of the past half century. In short, research that is supposed to be in support of ELT is largely irrelevant, invalid and not applicable to teaching and learning because of two academic traditions: structuralism and behaviourism.
Structuralism comprises the linguistic framework for much of ELT, and yet structuralism is an historic relic of linguistics. The linguistic 'units' and 'models' and 'key concepts' of ELT are largely based on structuralist ones (and rather simplistic notions of the structuralist concepts at that). This tends to have a stultifying effect on research because it is considered bad form to question or otherwise problematize the inadequacies of ELT's simplistic versions of structuralist concepts.
The other stultifying inheritance is behaviourism (and little surprise then that most structuralists operated under behaviourist assumptions). Most research in academic SLA (an emergent field from AL that has mostly nothing to do with linguistics now, ironically enough), for example, is based on basically behaviourist preconcpetions about how to elicit 'language learning behaviour' (e.g., mastery of a 'form') from a study's subjects. The interpretation of the results (such as they are) become even more muddled because the researchers typically are not clear about whether they are looking for a psychological/psycho-linguistic OR a sociological insight about the particular population they are using as subjects (often without specifying just what population it was that they were supposed to have sampled in doing their research).
Other deficiencies abound and glare out at the teacher attempting to use SLA research to inform teaching: Very small subject groups, lack of clarity over linguistic concepts that are supposed to underlie the research, inappropriate use of statistics (often parametric), un-normed/un-normable populations, etc. If you look at the entire SLA enterprise at a calm distance, it is possible to view it as the following: basically a series of related quasi-experiments that produce mild, often tautological sociological statements (e.g., 30 learners out of a population of 500 million, not normed) about what are supposed to be psycholinguistic insights regarding language learning (did better on grammar-focused tasks after being trained on grammar-focused tasks).
And yet an often-read, automatic defense of such research is that it, unlike qualitative research, is GENERALIZABLE. Which is simply to BEG the question, because such apologists never specify to which population they want to generalize the findings. I would add, however, that I know of absolutely no finding from SLA research that is generalizable to my students, let alone one that generalizes to all of the human race now learning a FL. Moreover, it all gets even more muddled if you go back to the objection over psychological/pscyho-linguistic/cognitive goals vs. sociological ones (in which case, for example, complex differences across cultures, age groups, gender, social class and economic background, etc. become very important).
Most 'research' is done by individuals, groups and networks of people in academic posts. About the only time classroom teachers engage in such activity is when they go back to do a master's or doctoral degree under such academics.
Finally, perhaps the larger issues are the following:
(1) Within a socially delimited field such as 'ELT', what constitutes knowledge and who has the right to claim it as such?
(2) Are experimental and statistical procedures (mostly derived from the field of education's understanding of positivism, empiricism and probability) written up in academic journal studies the most appropriate for developing ELT/FLT and LL in most institutional settings worldwide?
(3) Why does so much institutional ELT/FLT, with its AL and SLA arms, suppress language teachers from sharing research with other language teachers?
AL=Applied Linguistics (most usually the application of some version of linguistics to second or foreign language teaching and learning)
ELT=English Language Teaching
FL=Foreign Language
FLT=Foreign Language Teaching
LL=Language Learning
SLA=Second Language Acquisition
TEFL=Teaching English as a Foreign Language
TESOL=Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Why is 'research' in ELT/TEFL/TESOL/AL/SLA so irrelevant?
by Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan
While most of the research in support of and about ELT is produced in academia, most actual language teaching and language learning are done outside academia. Even when FLs get taught at universities, the people who often end up with the teaching duties are not in the sort of university posts that are meant for research.
However, I believe the single largest issue is the institutional approach to science and knowledge which falls under the overwhelming intellectual influences of the past half century. In short, research that is supposed to be in support of ELT is largely irrelevant, invalid and not applicable to teaching and learning because of two academic traditions: structuralism and behaviourism.
Structuralism comprises the linguistic framework for much of ELT, and yet structuralism is an historic relic of linguistics. The linguistic 'units' and 'models' and 'key concepts' of ELT are largely based on structuralist ones (and rather simplistic notions of the structuralist concepts at that). This tends to have a stultifying effect on research because it is considered bad form to question or otherwise problematize the inadequacies of ELT's simplistic versions of structuralist concepts.
The other stultifying inheritance is behaviourism (and little surprise then that most structuralists operated under behaviourist assumptions). Most research in academic SLA (an emergent field from AL that has mostly nothing to do with linguistics now, ironically enough), for example, is based on basically behaviourist preconcpetions about how to elicit 'language learning behaviour' (e.g., mastery of a 'form') from a study's subjects. The interpretation of the results (such as they are) become even more muddled because the researchers typically are not clear about whether they are looking for a psychological/psycho-linguistic OR a sociological insight about the particular population they are using as subjects (often without specifying just what population it was that they were supposed to have sampled in doing their research).
Other deficiencies abound and glare out at the teacher attempting to use SLA research to inform teaching: Very small subject groups, lack of clarity over linguistic concepts that are supposed to underlie the research, inappropriate use of statistics (often parametric), un-normed/un-normable populations, etc. If you look at the entire SLA enterprise at a calm distance, it is possible to view it as the following: basically a series of related quasi-experiments that produce mild, often tautological sociological statements (e.g., 30 learners out of a population of 500 million, not normed) about what are supposed to be psycholinguistic insights regarding language learning (did better on grammar-focused tasks after being trained on grammar-focused tasks).
And yet an often-read, automatic defense of such research is that it, unlike qualitative research, is GENERALIZABLE. Which is simply to BEG the question, because such apologists never specify to which population they want to generalize the findings. I would add, however, that I know of absolutely no finding from SLA research that is generalizable to my students, let alone one that generalizes to all of the human race now learning a FL. Moreover, it all gets even more muddled if you go back to the objection over psychological/pscyho-linguistic/cognitive goals vs. sociological ones (in which case, for example, complex differences across cultures, age groups, gender, social class and economic background, etc. become very important).
Most 'research' is done by individuals, groups and networks of people in academic posts. About the only time classroom teachers engage in such activity is when they go back to do a master's or doctoral degree under such academics.
Finally, perhaps the larger issues are the following:
(1) Within a socially delimited field such as 'ELT', what constitutes knowledge and who has the right to claim it as such?
(2) Are experimental and statistical procedures (mostly derived from the field of education's understanding of positivism, empiricism and probability) written up in academic journal studies the most appropriate for developing ELT/FLT and LL in most institutional settings worldwide?
(3) Why does so much institutional ELT/FLT, with its AL and SLA arms, suppress language teachers from sharing research with other language teachers?
Why don't text-to-'speech' programs process IPA or other such phonemic, phonetic or phonological scripts?
Why don't text-to-'speech' programs process IPA or other such phonemic, phonetic or phonological scripts?
Charles Jannuzi
University of Fukui, Japan
What language would such a program put out? Text-to-speech/spoken language
programs basically work on the principle of recognizing whole words in a
language (based on their relatively unique spellings and the spaces in between
each word) and matching them up with the recordings of pronounced whole words.
The misconception here is that, when we speak, we somehow 'generate' phonemes or allophones and these are strung together into something that adds up to 'real speech'. There is no phonemic or allophonic model of a language that can do that--which is why speech recognition programs work only if you train them and bark simple words and phrases at them. Even the most
algorithmically powerful ones depend on you speaking to them not in sense or breath groups of fluent speech but in a greatly slowed down form of 'clear speech', with more pauses added.
Phonemes and their allophones are really only written descriptive models of language and as such simplified idealizations. They can't be found in articulation, they can't be found in the acoustic stream, and no one has shown convincing evidence that they form some sort of phonologically bottom-up unit in language comprehension (for one thing, such models slow the process down way too much to account for comprehension such as how humans actually do it).
I suppose an IPA program could be created by assigning an IPA-based spelling to each word in a given language's lexicon. Since EFL learners dictionaries use such notation to show some sort of 'phonemic', canonical pronunciation of the word, such whole words written in IPA characters could be used just as English spelling conventions are. I guess no one so far has seen such a step as useful or necessary. Do learners of EFL need to learn the English lexicon as spelled in IPA too? Most would balk, as would a lot of EFL teachers.
I did see a pronunciation-training program back in the Win 98/NT era of computing that seemed to be based, not on whole words, but syllable types and morphemes. You typed a word, and the program basically produced pronunciations for the word you typed. The animation seemed to be a sequencing of photo stills of a woman's face showing 'visemes'--the visual equivalent of a phoneme (e.g., an open round mouth for the English sound [ou]). By playing around with the
input, I tried to 'back engineer' this program in my head to see how they analyzed the language. This seemed to be:
1. Prominent phonemes
2. Their visual equivalents in oral gestures--visemes
3. Pronunciations of syllables (syllable types)
4. Pronunciation of whole words
It seemed to be quite a clever bit of programming to make the sequence of stills match up and produce connected speech that wasn't just whole word sequences. However, the visual oral gestures were much simpler than the ones in real speech (think of the tricks animators know to give the visual illusion of a face speaking, which our own brains fills in and makes match the soundtrack we are listening to). Also, it didn't sound like very natural speech for phrases.
I think audio-visual files of whole words and phrases should be compiled into an audio-visual lexicon--for example, Ogden's Basic English plus the 3800 most frequent words and lexical phrases of spoken English. Today's technology makes it possible. The state of ELT and its publishing make it a mostly undesired niche.
Charles Jannuzi
University of Fukui, Japan
What language would such a program put out? Text-to-speech/spoken language
programs basically work on the principle of recognizing whole words in a
language (based on their relatively unique spellings and the spaces in between
each word) and matching them up with the recordings of pronounced whole words.
The misconception here is that, when we speak, we somehow 'generate' phonemes or allophones and these are strung together into something that adds up to 'real speech'. There is no phonemic or allophonic model of a language that can do that--which is why speech recognition programs work only if you train them and bark simple words and phrases at them. Even the most
algorithmically powerful ones depend on you speaking to them not in sense or breath groups of fluent speech but in a greatly slowed down form of 'clear speech', with more pauses added.
Phonemes and their allophones are really only written descriptive models of language and as such simplified idealizations. They can't be found in articulation, they can't be found in the acoustic stream, and no one has shown convincing evidence that they form some sort of phonologically bottom-up unit in language comprehension (for one thing, such models slow the process down way too much to account for comprehension such as how humans actually do it).
I suppose an IPA program could be created by assigning an IPA-based spelling to each word in a given language's lexicon. Since EFL learners dictionaries use such notation to show some sort of 'phonemic', canonical pronunciation of the word, such whole words written in IPA characters could be used just as English spelling conventions are. I guess no one so far has seen such a step as useful or necessary. Do learners of EFL need to learn the English lexicon as spelled in IPA too? Most would balk, as would a lot of EFL teachers.
I did see a pronunciation-training program back in the Win 98/NT era of computing that seemed to be based, not on whole words, but syllable types and morphemes. You typed a word, and the program basically produced pronunciations for the word you typed. The animation seemed to be a sequencing of photo stills of a woman's face showing 'visemes'--the visual equivalent of a phoneme (e.g., an open round mouth for the English sound [ou]). By playing around with the
input, I tried to 'back engineer' this program in my head to see how they analyzed the language. This seemed to be:
1. Prominent phonemes
2. Their visual equivalents in oral gestures--visemes
3. Pronunciations of syllables (syllable types)
4. Pronunciation of whole words
It seemed to be quite a clever bit of programming to make the sequence of stills match up and produce connected speech that wasn't just whole word sequences. However, the visual oral gestures were much simpler than the ones in real speech (think of the tricks animators know to give the visual illusion of a face speaking, which our own brains fills in and makes match the soundtrack we are listening to). Also, it didn't sound like very natural speech for phrases.
I think audio-visual files of whole words and phrases should be compiled into an audio-visual lexicon--for example, Ogden's Basic English plus the 3800 most frequent words and lexical phrases of spoken English. Today's technology makes it possible. The state of ELT and its publishing make it a mostly undesired niche.
16 November 2010
Japan's Rakuten, Uniqlo opt for total immersion in global English
The Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER) has published a report about how two new 'new economy' companies in Japan, Uniqlo (casual clothing similar to the Gap) and Rakuten (a web-based 'shopping mall'), are making English the official language of their company.
These bold, controversial decisions come about mostly because their executives see overseas markets as the key to future growth. Moreover, Uniqlo is a retailer centered in Japan, but its clothing and accessories are almost entirely manufactured overseas, in China.
Japan, with its low birth rate and aging society, has actually started to record decreases in population. Although the economy has been alternating between government-subsidized low growth and stagnation for the better part of two decades, Uniqlo and Rakuten have both experienced rapid (if at times uneven) growth. Long before this, Sony Corporation, an OLD 'new economy' company (they still relied on hardware manufacturing for most of their sales) said that it was going to use English as its primary language for international operations, but it didn't ban Japanese.
The JCER piece is here, and can be downloaded in .pdf.
http://www.jcer.or.jp/eng/research/pdf/maeda20100715e.pdf
Japan Times ran an article on the phenomenon, found at the link and excerpted below.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20100822bj.html
Why so drastic an approach? Rakuten says English skills will be critical to achieve its plan of entering 27 overseas markets, where it expects to become the leading player, particularly in the field of online shopping. That part of the plan isn't so surprising. Many of Japan's major corporations are eyeing overseas markets, having largely given up on Japan's, which has been stagnating for the last decade or so and where the population is graying rapidly.
Nor is Rakuten's take-no-prisoners approach to English unique. Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., purveyor of Uniqlo casual clothing stores, announced its own in-house English-only policy this spring. Meetings with at least one non-Japanese in attendance are all to be conducted in English, and internal reports will need to be written in the language. Staff are being asked to achieve a score of at least 700 on the Test of English for International Communication, or TOEIC.
CNN recently ran TV and online stories also, link and excerpt below.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/11/15/ilist.japan.englishization/index.html?eref=rss_latest&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Most+Recent%29
By 2012, Mikitani's pledge is to make Rakuten an English-only corporation. All communication, verbal and email, would be sent not in Japanese, but in English. It's a daunting task for a Japanese company headquartered in Tokyo.
Last year's Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) rankings showed Japanese test takers scored second worst in the East Asia region, below North Korea and Myanmar. Only Laos ranked lower than Japan.
Additional multimedia coverage is available at Japan Probe.
http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/08/12/english-only-at-rakuten/
These bold, controversial decisions come about mostly because their executives see overseas markets as the key to future growth. Moreover, Uniqlo is a retailer centered in Japan, but its clothing and accessories are almost entirely manufactured overseas, in China.
Japan, with its low birth rate and aging society, has actually started to record decreases in population. Although the economy has been alternating between government-subsidized low growth and stagnation for the better part of two decades, Uniqlo and Rakuten have both experienced rapid (if at times uneven) growth. Long before this, Sony Corporation, an OLD 'new economy' company (they still relied on hardware manufacturing for most of their sales) said that it was going to use English as its primary language for international operations, but it didn't ban Japanese.
The JCER piece is here, and can be downloaded in .pdf.
http://www.jcer.or.jp/eng/research/pdf/maeda20100715e.pdf
Japan Times ran an article on the phenomenon, found at the link and excerpted below.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20100822bj.html
Why so drastic an approach? Rakuten says English skills will be critical to achieve its plan of entering 27 overseas markets, where it expects to become the leading player, particularly in the field of online shopping. That part of the plan isn't so surprising. Many of Japan's major corporations are eyeing overseas markets, having largely given up on Japan's, which has been stagnating for the last decade or so and where the population is graying rapidly.
Nor is Rakuten's take-no-prisoners approach to English unique. Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., purveyor of Uniqlo casual clothing stores, announced its own in-house English-only policy this spring. Meetings with at least one non-Japanese in attendance are all to be conducted in English, and internal reports will need to be written in the language. Staff are being asked to achieve a score of at least 700 on the Test of English for International Communication, or TOEIC.
CNN recently ran TV and online stories also, link and excerpt below.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/11/15/ilist.japan.englishization/index.html?eref=rss_latest&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Most+Recent%29
By 2012, Mikitani's pledge is to make Rakuten an English-only corporation. All communication, verbal and email, would be sent not in Japanese, but in English. It's a daunting task for a Japanese company headquartered in Tokyo.
Last year's Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) rankings showed Japanese test takers scored second worst in the East Asia region, below North Korea and Myanmar. Only Laos ranked lower than Japan.
Additional multimedia coverage is available at Japan Probe.
http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/08/12/english-only-at-rakuten/
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