Hi, I am a native English language teacher. I am doing some research about English Pronunciation. Just want to know if anyone uses, or doesn't use, the phonetic alphabet for learning English pronunciation and why or why not. Just a few sentences is fine ;-) Thanks! Marianne
Marianne Jordan
Native English language teacher, specialising in pronunciation traiining
Transcriptions used by English speakers (the ones where /i:/ is -ee-) are really perplexing.
We understand 'ee', and we don't understand what is meant by really many of other 'analogies' used by native speakers.
Native speakers often write : yyyyyy is pronounced as xx-xxx-x (imagine some symbols at place of yyyyyy and xxxxxx).
I normally understand what is xxx and, say, -x, though not sure, but xx- raises question: xx- like in what?
xx- like in zxxzzz, or like in xxzz or like in zzzzxx? And how is it proboubnced un xxzz, by the way?
Possiby teaching this thing: the way English speakers perceive their letters, their idea what their combinations must be read etc. in situation when in actual words they always read differently:) - is a nice idea:)
But many Russians - those who have been using English-to Russian dictionaries - are used to IPA.
Hi Marianne,
Do you have any IPA class or training material for learning English? I've seen kinds of below IPA table and understand it's important to learn any foreign language as well as English but many of those pronunciation is not familiar to me.
http://ic-migration.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/icfiles/ic/lsp/site/IPA.html
In short I agree that the phonetic alphabet for learning English pronunciation is important to learn a foreign language but there are not many chances to get trained.
I touch on it briefly in class, but I never expect my students to learn the phonetic alphabet. However, teachers should know about it.
When there's some pronunciation issue to manage (eg. pronouncing work vs walk), I usually give the students other words to match the sounds with, eg. "I heard the third bird works." It's much more effective than trying to match the written English with a phonetic letter - which may or may not be in the usual alphabet - and then expecting the students to make all the mental connections before they speak.
I do make my students aware of how the schwa works, so at least they'll recognise what that upside-down e means.
