English language learners of different backgrounds have different types of difficulties. According to many ESL learners, the most difficult, but most important, skill to acquire is speaking. This difficulty varies depending on the phonology systems of different mother tongues (MT). In this small case study, I am going to study some of the phonological problems for Sam, a Chinese overseas student whose proficiency level is upper-intermediate. She is doing her Masters of marketing at the University of Glasgow. She started her courses two months ago. She is taking intensive courses, 8-hour workshops and marketing case studies. She prepares for presentations on marketing for well known companies. Sam aims at improving her marketing skills for a professional purpose, so she should have honed her communication skills by the time she returns to china.

After recording an interview with her, this paper should discuss three significant phonological problematic features in Sam’s speech and propose strategies or exercises that may help Sam overcome these problems.

Less Vowel Contrast, Wrong Stress Shifting

During the interview, Sam was noticeably mixing between vowels, mainly short and long vowels. She pronounced /ʌsˈpekt/[i] for /ˈæspekt/, /prʊˈgres/[ii] for /ˈprəʊgres/, and /fəstˈli:/[iii] for /ˈfɜ:stlɪ/. She seems to have a problem in making distinctions between the long vowels and the shorts vowels simply because ‘there are more vowel contrasts in English than in Chinese’. That is, in English articulation system, the vowel sounds are closer to each other than in Chinese (Swan & Smith, 1987, p.225). This use of short vowels results in another problem. When the vowels /æ/, /əʊ/, and /ɜ:/ are stressed in the correct pronunciation of the intended meaning, Sam uses short vowels /ʌ/, /ʊ/, /ə/. Consequently, she shifts the stress to the second syllable. Therefore, the mixing between /əbˈʤekt/ and /ˈɒbʤɪkt/, /ˈkɒntest/ and /kənˈtest/ is possible in Sam’s speech.

Although the listener can impatiently grasp the intended meanings of the wrongly stressed words, it is critical because it can confuse and annoy the listeners, especially if the speaker’s job is marketing! Certain word stresses have strong effects in terms of persuading the listener and hooking their attention if we bear in mind Sam’s level of education. It is worth noting that in some words Sam places the word stress on the right syllable but is still confused with the vowels length and contrast, as in British /ˈbri:tɪʃ/[iv] instead of /ˈbrɪtɪʃ/ and study /ˈstædɪ/[v] instead of /ˈstʌdɪ/.

Problem Treatment

As an English teacher, considering Sam’s case of being busy with long-time classes and workshops, I would prepare a list of two-syllable words with the long and short vowels being highlighted in different colours. This is important because Sam still needs to recognize the vowel contrast and the use of long vowels instead of the short ones on the proper syllables. Thornbury (1997) suggests some good activities on vowels where similar vowels (short and long) are being focused on and practiced (Thornbury, 1997, p.31-32).

Confusion Between /l/, /r/, and /w/

Another obstacle Sam faces in her articulation of English, as any average Chinese speaker would face, is the difficulty in distinguishing the differences between the velarized lateral approximant /l/, the alveolar approximant /r/, and the labio-velar approximant /w/ (Swan & Smith, 2008).  It is only after I listened to the recorded interview again and again that I knew Sam had said Well[vi] not Wow! She has a problem in pronouncing the final /l/ in any word. The same happened when she pronounced will as /wɪw/ or /wəʊ/[vii] instead of /wɪl/ and school as /skəʊw/[viii] instead of /sku:l/ . This is not due to the fact that English has more than one allophones of the /l/ sound. If it is due to Sam’s inability to pronounce the dark [ɬ], she could have replaced it with the light [l] that exists in Chinese. Technically speaking, ending the already shaped and pronounced vowel with a /w/ sound that precedes the consonant /l/ is much easier and relaxing for the mouth. The articulation ends with the lips rounded not spread and the tongue free not touching the hard palate. This allows the air to go through the lips not from the sides of the tongue as neither in the dark [ɬ] nor between the tip of the tongue and the hard palate. To be sure, the same confusion occurred when she could not pronounce a clear /r/ and almost replaced it with /w/ at the beginning of right, remember, and reason. She pronounced them as /waɪt/[ix], /wɪmembə/[x], and /wi:zn/[xi]. Whereas mispronunciation like ‘/wɪw/ go’ and ‘the /wi:zn/ why …’ are understandable to some extent or to some audience, other mispronunciations can radically change the meaning and, as a result, cause confusion and misunderstanding. See the table 1 below:

Utterance	One possible meaning	Another possible meaning
/aɪfi:əʊ/ like being alone..	I feel like being alone..	A few like being alone..
/wi:stɔ:/	Restore (order)	We store (statement)
/wi:p/	reap	Weep

Table 1. Possible meanings that can be ambiguous to the listener

Sam’s program requires a good skill of communication in terms of clarity and smoothness in the utterance. So, in order to achieve that, she needs to make good efforts to get rid of above discussed confusion.

Problem Treatment

English teachers for Chinese students should be aware of the confusion between these three approximants /l/, /r/ and /w/. In Sam’s case, I would suggest that she gets trained on the placement of the English /r/ and /l/. First, I would show her the sounds’ manners of articulating the Chinese /l/ and the light and dark English /l/ before articulating the /l/ in the words. Identifying the place of the tongue is very essential. Then, I would list words that end in /l/ sound in a column and list opposite to them another words that might be results of replacing the /l/ with /w/ or other rounded vowels, such as /u:/, /əʊ/ and /aʊ/. See Table 2 below. Later, I can give Sam sentences that have awareness-raising combination of words as in Table 2, and ask her to read whole sentences focusing on the /l/ sound. After enough practice, articulation of English final /l/ should become automatic. The same procedure and exercises can be designed to solve the /r/ sound problem that is discussed above.

1.      Feel /fi:l/	2.      Few /fju:/
3.      School /sku:l/	4.      Rescue /resku:/
5.      Deal /di:l/	6.      Dew /dju:/
7.      Nil /nɪl/	8.      New /nju:/
9.      goal /gəʊl/	10.  go /gəʊ/
11.  still /stɪl/	12.  stew /stju:/
13.  rationale /ræʃənɑ:l/	14.  now /naʊ/

Table 2. Shows how the meaning can change if the final /l/ sound is mispronounced and replaced by /w/ sound.

Rhythm

Stressing on the fact that good marketing needs good and effective presentation skills moving to a super-segmental problem, Sam needs to improve the rhythm of her speech. English is a stress-timed language, so their utterances, speakers of English should be careful about when stressing and unstressing the syllables of the sentence. Throughout the discussion we see Sam has a problem in placing and lengthening the stress with single words. To improve her rhythmic speech (now talking about the whole sentence or phrase), she needs a lot of efforts. It is clear that she distributes almost the same amount of stress to most of the verbs. See her utterances:

“English is a course of our daily studies you know ..” [xii]

 “So I think most of us will have a long time – long period to study English”[xiii]

“most of our primary school came from UK”[xiv]

“Oh. It’s a lit bit like complaining”[xv]

Almost all the syllables in these sentences recur at equal intervals of time. In number 4, Sam tends to speak fast, but she unstressed all the syllables and the word complaining was given the same time given to the previous syllables in the sentence!

Problem treatment

I would give Sam a number of sentences first and draw her attention to the content words in the sentence that needs to carry the stress and the function words that should not be stressed, and practice reading the sentence with a smooth flow. I would also suggest that she listens to authentic English as in the news and pay attention to the speaker’s syllable-timed rhythm. She can also listen to some English radio channels on her phone while walking to and fro the university. I should draw her attention to the relation between sentence flow, stressed and unstressed words and the emotions, feelings and focus of the speakers.

To conclude, Sam, being a marketing student at the University of Glasgow, needs to pay more attention on the vowel contrast in English, to the distinction between the /l/, /r/, /w/ approximants in English, and finally to the stress-timed rhythm of English.

[i] 00:03:09

[ii] 00:04:17

[iii] 00:03:16

[iv] 00:01:99

[v] 00:02:38

[vi] 00:03:03  and 00:05:36

[vii] 00:35

[viii] 00:00:58

[ix] 00:05:02

[x] 00:04:09

[xi] 00:06:48

[xii] 00:01:11

[xiii] 00:01:18

[xiv] 00:01:54

[xv] 00: 05:05

 

Reference

 

Swan, M. & Smith, B., 1987. Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thornbury, S., 1997. About language: Tasks for teachers of English. New York: Cambridge University Press.