KK is so great that the rest of the world will soon adopt it.
Utterly unnecessary. That’s an ‘a’ it has the ‘short a’ sound. That is a_e (or ay, ai) it has the ‘long a’ sound. Don’t need a symbol for that.
You can’t? Coffee is a short ‘o’. Father is the same as the ‘ar’ sound (or maybe a short a in American English). Walk is the sound of the word ‘or’ or perhaps the short a in American English.
Honestly, maybe my ‘Amercian’ isn’t up to scratch. Do you really see those threee vowels as the same? If so what is the sound?
Brian
Bob, as long as you didn’t defecate, I’m fine. I happen to agree that fine distinctions in sound would be lost on many of the students that I’ve come into contact with.
So now, a follow-on question that has been discussed somewhat – is ANY phonetic system useful in TEFL, regardless of system, or are they all just too scientific for the majority of EFL students to effectively use?
Seeker4
[quote]
TS - I think you need to decide whether or not the house is built yet or not. In one sentence you tell me you don’t think my analogy is sound and in the next you use it yourself. At least that is what I think you did. To be honest it is hard to tell what with all the attempts to use a hammer to build a house that came preassembled and all I got a little confused. Are we still talking about sex? In any case TS what with seven years uinder your belt and all I am sure you know of what you speak. [/quote]
WTF? Just a question: Is writing garbage like the above the way one becomes a “village idiot” on this site?
Really “Bob.” You knew what I meant. Grow up.
Brian - They are all short o basically. It is o.k. to call “short a” “short a” when speaking but the two es doing a 69 are better for writing. Cheers.
Seeker4 - A guide is fantastically useful if it is basically a simplified version of IPA so that not to much confusion is caused if and when students make the transition. That pretty much desrcibes KK I think.
TS - Honestly I had no idea. Sorry.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Coffee is a short ‘o’. Father is the same as the ‘ar’ sound (or maybe a short a in American English). Walk is the sound of the word ‘or’ or perhaps the short a in American English.
Honestly, maybe my ‘American’ isn’t up to scratch.[/quote]
Yes, that is the problem. You are thinking British/New Zealand English. The KK system was designed specifically to represent American English, although, as I said, that can be done quite as well…better, in fact, with the IPA.
[quote]Yes, that is the problem. You are thinking British/New Zealand English. The KK system was designed specifically to represent American English, although, as I said, that can be done quite as well…better, in fact, with the IPA.
[/quote]
I realise that of course, but I don’t think KK produces an American accent. It produces this grotesque exaggerated parody of an American accent. It’s goddamn awful. The KK accent.
I’ve asked quite a few Americans to say tyhose three words, and never met one who produces the vowels in coffee, walk and father the same.
Advantages and disadvantages:
A proper phonics program
- You learn to actully read English
- There are many words you won’t know how to pronounce without first hearing
- You just have to remember how to spell the word in English
KK
- You will be able to pronounce any word for which KK is given
- If you’re reading a book or newspaper there won’t be any KK
- you get dependent on KK
- you’ll have a horrible accent
- you have to memorise the spelling and the KK
You really got me confused now Brian. What do you mean by a “proper” phonics program. Is it one with no phonetic symbols?
A phonetic system is neccessary because it is not always easy to get from the spelling to the pronunciation in English. IPA and KK help with this for a couple of important reasons: 1) It helps them to understand that the same sounds can sometimes be represented by different letters. For example the “z” in zoo and the “s” in cans are very similar (certainly close enough for this game of horseshoes). The “y” in funny, the two "ee"s in see, and the “i” in ski are other examples, as are the “aw” in saw and the “o” in hot.
2) Phonetic symbols also help them to undertsand that some letters can have different pronunciations. The “a” in ate is different from the “a” in can, which is different from the “a” in law or the second two "a"s in Canada. If you can write the phonetic transcription beside the regular spelling it helps to make this point clear. It also helps to describe the sort of contexts where, for example, “s” is pronounced “z” or “s”, where “ed” is pronounced “d” or “t” or when any of the vowels are pronounced long, short or with a schwa.
There are a number of things that affect pronunciation and choice of phonetic guide is just one of them. The notion that somebody has bad pronunciation simply because they studied using KK is absolutely crazy.
It could be beacuse they are dumb as a sack of hammers, or because they have tin ear, or because they had a taiwanese pronunciation teacher, or beacuse they never had much of a chance to practice or started too late in life…There are a million reasons. KK is not one of them.
I have about 3000 hours of experience teaching pronunciation using my own phonetic system which is actually a slightly simplified form of KK. The simplification happened a long time ago though so I imagine that if I were to really study the original KK I would agree to a few changes. Not that anyone is likely to ask me. Too bad. My system is probably the most practical one in existence.
[quote]You really got me confused now Brian. What do you mean by a “proper” phonics program. Is it one with no phonetic symbols?
[/quote]
No, I mean a programme where you teach students to read, by teaching them what sounds the letters (and groups of letters) make most of the time.
Primary sounds of the letters.
Blends like ‘sl’ etc
Special blends like ‘th’
Long vowel sounds
r and w controlled vowels
vowel combinations like ‘oo’
soft and hard g and c
etc
It’s not difficult.
Not always easy, but most of the time it is. Teach the students the most common ‘sight words’ well, and they jsut memorise the pronounciation of the rest as they come up.
[quote]The notion that somebody has bad pronunciation simply because they studied using KK is absolutely crazy.
It could be beacuse they are dumb as a sack of hammers, or because they have tin ear, or because they had a Taiwanese pronunciation teacher, or beacuse they never had much of a chance to practice or started too late in life…There are a million reasons. KK is not one of them.
[/quote]
KK bloody well is one of them. The ‘KK accent’ is a horror to hear.
We native speakers never used a KK system. Not necessary.
If you teach using KK, how can you show a student a new word (without KK writtten next to it) and expect them to be able to pronounce it?
Brian
Brian I use KK as a way of helping them to see the relationship between spelling and sound. That’s all. I don’t use it all the time. It is basically what you are doing, but you are doing it (I guess) with no phonetic symbols. I just don’t get it. I mean wouldn’t it be easier for you and everybody if, for instance, you had two symbols for the “Th” sounds, one voiced and one voiceless?
Taiwanese pronunciation may sometimes be a horror but it has nothing to do with KK. More like the way KK was taught.
My problem with KK is that it didn’t seem to help the students at our buxiban who were taught it. It just seemed to give them two spellings for one word that they had to memorize. If you asked them to pronounce a new word just from the KK, they couldn’t. Sometimes they could if they just saw the regular English spelling. They could pronounce the words they knew, but KK didn’t help them learn new words.
Most children here learn from teachers who will be modelling the words for them; they don’t really need a phonetic system to know how to pronounce the words.
Knowledge of some phonetic system is only necessary when the students are older and are doing a lot of reading on their own - they need to be able to look up a word in the dictionary and know how to pronounce it. Since most advanced English dictionaries don’t use KK, I can’t see any reason to teach it.
The government seems to be phasing out its use as well.
[quote]I mean wouldn’t it be easier for you and everybody if, for instance, you had two symbols for the “Th” sounds, one voiced and one voiceless?
[/quote]
No. I think imposing an extra level of symbols is unnecessarily complicating things.
I’d say: there are two different ‘th’ sounds. Let’s get some examples. OK, these ones on this side of the board, these ones over here. Yep, thin is one, over here or over here. Is there a pattern, no, not for this, you just have to remember.
I still disagree with you abotu KK creating a terrible accent though. I’m certain of this. It uses the same symbols fro sounds that are actually different, which leads to awful pronounciation.
Brian
Brian - I am guessing that the awful pronunciations you are hearing are actually the result of some knuklehead teaching students that they could actually “figure out” how to pronounce the language using some system (KK or otherwise) without actually listening to tons of the language, mimicking it, being corrected and trying to use it to communicate. Believe me when I say I know KK is not the complete answer.
bababa - But baba (had to say that) “how” were they taught KK? Apparently not very well. And anyway KK is frequently better used as a visual cue when pointing out a problem with one sound within a word. I very seldom give people an entire word written in KK and then ask them to pronounce it; although, as you say, that is a useful skill to possess when using a dictionairy.
By the way Brian there is a bit of a pattern with “TH” insofar as it is usually voiceless, especially at the end of words. The reason voiced TH is actually a common “sound” is because it occurs at the beginning of high frequency function words: the, this, that, these, those, they them, there, therefore, their, than (thee?) The content words: theatre, thief etc. are pronounced with a voiceless sound. This is the sort of pattern that is well worth pointing out especially to more advanced students.
Oops. I think there is a tendency for “TH” to be voiced in the middle of words too.
my take …
many theories of L2 learning believe that it can be beneficial to make mistakes on any of the levels of performance: phonological, morphological, syntax …, and that through making these mistakes, the language will be more natuarally acquired. could kk be seen as a form of “over-learning”, a way to avoid natural mistakes of pronunciation (ala Audiolingual)? and perhaps this has to do with many forms of phonetic spelling? is this due to the lack of time most students have to spend on english - ie. if they skip the errors phases, they can progress faster?
not to say that phonemic alphabets can’t be helpful, but i think they are sometimes relied on too much, especially in terms of the 2 hours a week student (who doesn’t bother with english the rest of the week … sorry, other than the extra hours at school memorizing isolated vocab words :fume: ). the silent way made extensive use of charts (and rods), and we have for the most part moved on to other methods.
The “it’s natural to make mistakes theory” is one that I find easier to apply to myself than to my students. Funny how that works. Anyway I still appreciate it when someone points out my mistakes and my students appreciate it when I point out theirs. I think you just need to be sensitive. If someone is struggling to blurt out anything, it hardly makes sense to interupt him with corrections. If, however, you are dealing with an over confident motor mouth whose English is full of errors, it makes sense to stop and correct him. Most students fall somewhere in the middle. These days I get my students to tape record every class so I frequently just repeat what they said, minus the errors. No stress no strain that way.
I am not sure how the “it’s natural to make mistakes” theory applies to KK. I teach adults and most of them are least somewhat familiar with it already. What happens is that I teach them pronunciation and their listening improves. After that every aspect of the language is easier to acquire and master. A written representation of the things I teach them - thought groups, unstressed syllables etc. - may not be essential but it sure seems helpful.