Or you give them a solid foundation on which to later build fluent, conversational English.
Joesax makes a great point, though.
There’s not much to argue about here; teaching pron in this way has been standard practice for years. Take a look in pretty much any internationally published coursebook. Check out Cutting Edge by Longman, English File by OUP or Interchange by CUP or any of the major US ones.
I’m not talking about teaching ‘gonna’ as a grammatical form because it’s not; it’s a pop culture way of writing down what we’ve been saying for hundreds of years, but talking about teaching the actual sounds of English instead of falsely teaching them that English more phonemically linked to the written form than it actually is.
Sorry, folks, I’m not sure but I think I may have caused some confusion. I’ve been in irony mode since venturing into the politics forums earlier today. I hope no-one really thinks I’m against grammaticalization. Sounds like hard work, with King Canute-ish overtones.
I just thought people might be interested to discuss the fact that it’s not just an issue of pronunciation we’re talking about here. It would be odd for several reasons to say “I’m gonna Climax, Michigan.” One of the reasons is that gonna is actually an auxiliary verb.
It is? You cheeky monkey, you!
I’ve briefly used Cutting Edge and Interchange, though I’ve mainly dealt with American Headway, Inside Out, International Express and Market Leader. These books generally don’t introduce the concept of the schwa and weak forms like “gonna” and “wanna” until the Pre-Intermediate or Intermediate level – certainly not for Starter or Elementary.
You’re doing GEPT with Starter level students? Is there no end to the stupidity of the Taiwanese English teaching industry?
Or you give them a solid foundation on which to later build fluent, conversational English. [/quote]
Or not. If, in the real world, more often than not, “to” is “tuh,” “for” is fr, “or” is “r,” “and” is “n,” etc etc. then by not deliberately working those variations into lessons you are teaching the wrong thing.
What happens actually is that those pronunciations are deliberately “not” included in langauge meterials. Taiwanese will then complain constantly that native speakers speak too fast. It literally takes weeks to get them anywhere close to understanding that relaxed, connected speeh isn’t just fast, it is different from the way the words would be pronounced in islolation. It takes another two months to convince them that they should focus on it and another six months to even begin making any progress on it. For most adults it is just too late. They have been learning by reading and all the while they’ve been reading they’ve been sounding out the words with a full pronunciation. Not only that but they have been listening and learning from programs that were produced with stunted speech.
The students are supposed to have passed the twelve levels at Joy, but most of them haven’t. The majority of students studying GEPT at Joy are actually at a low Elementary level – some of them even Starter. They speak in broken sentences and always use the present simple tense.
Well, I guess you’re all fucked either way!
Yup. Sounds horrendous.
Oh well, here’s a last-ditch attempt to get bob interested in the wonderful world of ongoing language change:
[quote]I read The Unfolding of Language: an evolutionary tour of mankind’s greatest invention, by Guy Deutscher, and it was awesome.
…
Somewhere in the introduction, he starts by insisting that “gonna” isn’t just verbal slang- it’s really becoming a new word. Look at it this way: [b]How would you describe “gonna”? Where did it come from? Most people would give a simple explanation- it’s a result of people just being lazy speakers. It’s a slang contraction for “going to.” But if you look closer, you’ll see that “gonna” is actually becoming a grammatical element- more specifically, an auxiliary verb.
For example, the sentence “I’m going to buy that book” is a perfect candidate for the use of the word gonna- “I’m gonna buy that book.” But what about another example- “I’m going to the baseball game.” Would you ever say “I’m gonna the baseball game”?
I was blown away. I’d never noticed this before! (I’m really unobservant, but still.) I’d always thought that “gonna” was just a slang contraction, but obviously even I thought of it slightly differently, if only on a subconscious level. The trick is this- we use “going to” as an auxiliary verb in the first example.[/b] We can substitute another auxiliary verb, “will,” without much of a change in meaning. “I will buy that book” means pretty much the same thing. But in the second example, “going to” isn’t an auxiliary, it’s the main verb of the sentence. And therein lies the difference- “gonna” is emerging as a grammatical element, another way of expressing the future tense. I thought this was absolutely amazing, and thus my new love affair with linguistics was born.
Thanks joe. I am will study the issue with more strenuous.
This is certainly true; many listening activities have the people speaking in generic, perfectly pronounced English.
Most people here seem to be suggesting that teaching students to use the proper forms of words leads to robotic English. But is it possible it’s simply an issue of personality? The students may simply lack the creativity and/or self-confidence to use English effectively.
Yep. Thankfully, I don’t usually teach the GEPT classes.
Partly. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to discover they learned what we taught them.
I wouldn’t call them “proper” forms either. “Full” forms might be better. The relaxed form is frequently more musical and usually more efficient (“usually” because it is not very efficient if it isn’t understood) .
[quote=“barfomcgee”]
Most people here seem to be suggesting that teaching students to use the proper forms of words leads to robotic English. But is it possible it’s simply an issue of personality? The students may simply lack the creativity and/or self-confidence to use English effectively.[/quote]
No, it’s not ‘robotic’, it’s simply incorrect. Listen very carefully, the next time you hear a native speaker dialogue, either on TV, or two friends. Listen to the exact sounds you hear. You are thinking on a word level, not on a sentence level. You are confusing sound and writing. Or even read my post at a normal speed. Which sounds ‘disappear’? Which run into the next word? This is what you need to teach, and that’s what ‘gonna’ is an example of, not a preference. It’s not a different form of ‘going to’, it’s how ‘going to’ is pronounced in many phonemic environments.
Personality, sure. Kids with undeveloped communication skills don’t practice as much. Learning English can help in their overall education, as long as they don’t get scarred for life with it…
[quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“barfomcgee”]
Most people here seem to be suggesting that teaching students to use the proper forms of words leads to robotic English. But is it possible it’s simply an issue of personality? The students may simply lack the creativity and/or self-confidence to use English effectively.[/quote]
No, it’s not ‘robotic’, it’s simply incorrect. Listen very carefully, the next time you hear a native speaker dialogue, either on TV, or two friends. Listen to the exact sounds you hear. You are thinking on a word level, not on a sentence level. You are confusing sound and writing. Or even read my post at a normal speed. Which sounds ‘disappear’? Which run into the next word? This is what you need to teach, and that’s what ‘gonna’ is an example of, not a preference. It’s not a different form of ‘going to’, it’s how ‘going to’ is pronounced in many phonemic environments.
Personality, sure. Kids with undeveloped communication skills don’t practice as much. Learning English can help in their overall education, as long as they don’t get scarred for life with it…[/quote]
What a concise, brilliant post. Thank you.
[quote=“Buttercup”]
No, it’s not ‘robotic’, it’s simply incorrect. [/quote]
How is fully pronouncing a word incorrect? Everyone has their own distinct way of speaking, and there are hundreds - if not thousands - of distinct English dialects. How can you say that one kind of pronunciation is “incorrect”?
If a student actually pronounces “going to” instead of the more common “gonna,” but is comfortable with the language and able to effectively communicate ideas, how is that incorrect?
In the end it seems to boil down to a teaching of accents, and a non-native speaker trying to assume a native American or British accent generally sounds absurd.
Because we don’t pronounce words, we pronounce strings of sounds. There are small personal differences which don’t have much effect on perception of meaning; ‘going to’ and ‘gonna’ are not choices that we as native speakers make based on accent or personal preference. We all use both at different times, without any awareness that we do it. It’s very important that students have a receptive understanding of this, even if it’s too soon for them to produce it (they’ll produce it naturally as they progress anyway, as native speakers do).
I’m not trying to pull the wool over your eyes, or propound some ‘out there’ new theory I made up; if you think I’m talking crap, that’s your choice.
If you want to learn some more about it, I could recommend a few books you could have a look at, if you’re interested?
Haha, nice. I don’t think you’re talking crap, I just disagree about when students should be taught it. I think extremely low level students - such as Starter and Elementary - first need to be taught the basics before they learn to string it all together. However, I will concede that chain pronunciation drills are useful even at a low level.
I guess the confusion here is stemming from the fact that I teach students to speak like me; I am very careful to pronounce words precisely even in normal conversation. I may join words together, but I try to avoid altering the pronunciation of the word. For example, I am very careful to pronounce “to” as “too,” not “ta.” I also consciously avoid using terms like “gonna” and “wanna” during spoken English, because to me they sound lazy and unintelligent.
I think I might be highly unusual in this regard, though. Most people don’t recognize me as American from my accent; most often they think I’m from somewhere in the UK.
I’m interested.