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Date Posted: 07:23:10 09/06/04 Mon
Author: Aparecida
Subject: Re: Task 1
In reply to: Kátia 's message, "Task 1" on 10:30:18 09/01/04 Wed

Learners of EFL who have inaccurate pronunciation will have problems with listening comprehension.

Everytime I ask a student which skill in English he/she would like to improve the answer is – the listening comprehension, mostly. Because of this I have started to observe them and I came to the following conclusion:

1. Students do not have any experince with phonology whatsoever.
They aren’t able to identify what the phonetic symbols mean. They have never been taught stress and intonation . They are not aware that each language has its own melody.

2. They have never studied the ending sounds of the present continuous, simple past and 3rd singular simple present. So they pronounce wrongly and when listening to a tape or conversation they can not identify the correct verb tense.

3. They may have first language interferance, which includes dialets, etc.
The “R” is most critical, as in each region of this country the “R” pronounced in a different way.

4. They also have parents’ language interferece, mainly the ones who came from another country. If the family keeps the accent of origin,which is a fact, their kids will also inherit it.

5. They have never been in touch with authentic material of the target language, which is a paramount in laguage teaching.

As outlined above, this is a really serious issue which should be a concern to the schools of language and teachers as well.In fact it is a great responsibility and it does not matter if the teacher is not a native of the target language, what really matter is if this professional or the institution is prepared to teach.

To end I want to leave a quote : “To communicate effectively , language learners need to become proficient in using semantic, synthactic, lexical, morphological elements of the language being learnt” (Herbert, J.PracTESOL: It’s not what you say but how you say it! In: Richards, K:Renadya pp:188-200).

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