You taught the vocab, you practiced the grammar, drilled the pronunciation, checked the concepts, played the listening and… the students understood next to nothing. But why?! We ask Mark Hancock (author of Pronunciation Games, English Pronunciation in Use and Pron Pack) what makes authentic English listening so difficult for students and what teachers can do to help learners understand connected speech
Understanding Connected Speech - Transcript
Ross Thorburn: Hi, Mark. Thanks for joining us. To start off with, what is connected speech? What makes it difficult for students? Is there ever a time when we speak English where we're not using connected speech?
Mark Hancock: Well, if you imagine an old fashioned robot saying, "Salt and pepper, salt and pepper, I want the salt and pepper." That's English with no connected speech about it. Each word is separate, as if it were the dictionary version of the word.
Salt and pepper, actually used that as an example. Salt and pepper, we've got the t of salt appears to join the and, salt and pepper, t and pepper, t and pepper, salt and pepper. That's called linking. You've got the a of the and is reduced to a weak vowel. Salt and pepper. So that's called a weak form.
Then you've got the d of and disappears, that's called elision. Instead of ‘and’ you've got ‘n’. Then finally, the ‘n’ of and changes into something like a ‘m’. Because if the ‘p’ in pepper involves the lips being closed together. In preparation for that when the mouth is saying ‘n’, it tends to want to say ‘m’, so that it's ready for the pepper that comes later.
That's called assimilation. Those are all examples of connected speech. As you can probably tell that they are features for the benefit of the mouth, like the n changing to m is not so that I'm going to be more intelligible to you, so it's easier for me to say it. These features of connected speech are about streamlining the articulation.
Ross: Obviously, there's lots of things there that are really hard for students in terms of listening to connected speech. I think often when we do listening activities in class, the way we run them, maybe doesn't actually help students very much, right?
Mark Hancock: Yeah. It's interesting that in teaching listening, teachers often assume that the problem is going to be with difficult vocabulary or difficult grammar, and they pre‑teach the new vocabulary in the listening. Then they focus on listening comprehension questions.
If the students get them wrong, just play their audio again and say, "No, no, no, listen again. Do you hear it now?" If a student goes, "No, I don't hear it still." It's nothing to be done about it. What the teacher is missing here is that the problem wasn't with the long words.
The problem was with the short words or the common words that the student is not familiar with, in the connected speech form. For example, in connected speech, there are five words which may be reduced to homophones, like the word a, the. I can't say it right now, but there's a lot of different words end up sounding exactly the same.
If this student is expecting them to sound the way that they sound in the dictionary or said separately, then they're not going to be ready for that, what they're not ready for is the way that the words blend together.
What we can do I think is, devote some class time to focusing specifically on the way that words blend together in connected speech for the purpose of making the students better equipped as listeners.
Ross: As part of the problem there, Mark, that when we teach new words or phrases, we tend to drill them in a way that sounds a bit more like Robby the robot saying salt and pepper, rather than saying salt‑and pepper.
Mark Hancock: I think your student is probably going to store it in their memory in something like a dictionary citation form. You're saying that that might be a problem because when they hear it in the flow of speech, it might not have that form.
I think you could probably do it in two stages. In the first stage, they would learn it as a separate form in the case of a word like salt. Then in separate stage, learn how it sounds in a joined up way, think it might be a bit much to do it all at once. However, with other words, which are typically reduced, like, and.
I probably wouldn't teach the word and in a citation form because it's never cited on its own. It's always in the flow of speech. It depends on the word really. Another example for a longer word would be actually. Actually is rarely, if ever, pronounced the way I just did it then.
It's something like a discourse marker and it can be heavily reduced to things like act‑ly, or in the flow of speech. That was actually very easy. It's actually quite a good idea.
Some words are more reduced than others, and actually is one of them because it's not used in its literal meaning necessarily. It's used something more like a discourse marker. You would need to make students aware of the way that words like that tend to be severely reduced.
Ross: I guess also it's difficult for teachers to know how these words are actually pronounced in connected speech because dictionaries don't actually have this information in them. There's also no pronunciation equivalent of a corpus to see how language is actually pronounced in real speech.
Mark Hancock: It's difficult to find out. In fact, it's not really been dealt with systematically before, until now we have the work of Richard Caldwell. He has started to work trying to systematically focus on the way in which words are eroded in connected speech. They're much more eroded than following the rules that I just mentioned before about linking, weak forms, assimilation, illusion.
Those are relatively minor compared to some of the forms of the words that are reduced in natural, fast speech. He has started to work on systematizing our understanding of the ways that these words are reduced. Yeah, you're right. This material is not easily available. In fact, it hasn't been seen as a need, anything that was needed before.
People haven't really been aware of it. I guess the people who speak the language aren't really aware of it because we don't hear objectively. We hear what we expect to here. When people hear something like, act‑ly, the mind fills in the gap, so it sounds like they're hearing actually. They're not aware that it could be problematic for the non‑native listener.
It is problematic for the non‑native listener of course, because what the evidence they're getting through their ears is much reduced. They probably think it's their own fault for not having good hearing, whereas in fact, it's the speaker who is reducing it that way.
Ross: What can teachers do then, Mark, to help raise students' awareness of connected speech, so that they can understand more when they're listening to authentic audio?
Mark Hancock: Although the purpose of this is for listening as I've said, I do think the best way of raising awareness of these features for listening purposes, is through getting students to try to say them, to say articulate them that way themselves.
I use various kinds of drilling, coral drilling or individual drilling to get the students saying these pieces of connected speech, so that they become hyper aware of the way that they sound, because there's nothing more awareness‑raising than attempting to do it yourself. You could take a short phrase like salt and pepper again, salt and pepper, salt and pepper.
If you run repeat Multiple times that very short section or even shorter sections. Let's try it. I'll go, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper, tmpepper. I've taken a part of that phrase, not necessarily complete word.
I've taken the t out of salt and added it to the rest of the and pepper. I put it on a loop, repeating it. If you do that, put it on a loop. It makes it sound weird, because it stopped sounding like the meaning of it and starts just sounding like a piece of sound. It helps I think, the listener to perceive the way it sounds rather than the way they expect it to sound.
I use quite a lot, this kind of micro loop with multiple repetitions of a very short segment, getting students to try saying it that way themselves, and it's quite good fun. It really raises their awareness of connected speech as well. That's a technique, micro drilling.
Ross: You've obviously written a whole books on activities for students to practice pronunciation. What are some other activities that you like to do to help students become more aware of connected speech?
Mark Hancock: An activity that I use for drilling to focus the students' attention on features of connected speech, is something I call bricks and mortar. That's a metaphor. The bricks are the content words, and the mortar are the grammar or functional words that go between the bricks and tend to be crushed and misshapen.
In order to take the attention off the content words, I have just replaced the content words with numbers. I say the one, two, three, four with the different segments of connected speech you stuff in between and get the students to listen and then try to produce. For example, one or a two or a three or a four, one and a two and a three and a four, one and a two and a three and a four.
That's the easier level getting more difficult. Things like, one has been two has been three has been four, one must be two must be three must be four. One could be two could be three could be four.
Then students would have to notice things like the t in must, tends to be inaudible or elated, cut dropped, or the d in could, will sound like a b, coulb, could be one could be two. That kind of thing.
That's a very simple activity. Easy to invent your own version of it. Just have one, two, three, four and any segment between that you think might be tricky for the students listening. You can drill it and that way you saying the phrase and then repeating. That's a simple activity, to focus these students' attention, not on the content words, but on the function words that go between them.
Ross: Finally, Mark, when do you integrate pronunciation activities into a class? Like for you, where do you put them in a lesson plan or in your stages of a lesson?
Mark Hancock: That's interesting because I just finished a intensive month at the school here in Chester, where I live doing a full‑time summer program. We have to go through the course books. The course books tend to have very little space left over for our pronunciation, as you may have noticed.
What I found was really interesting, was to flip the presentation phase of the lesson. Let's say that your main point of the lesson was some grammar construction. Then afterwards, there'll be some example sentences pulled out and they might be listening repeat the pronunciation right at the end.
I have took them out at the beginning and wrote them on the board these example sentences before we even analyze the grammar or anything.
I did some of this pronunciation work, like doing these looped repetitions and this drilling work, focusing on the pronunciation of those three or four example sentences very thoroughly, and getting the students completely familiar with them before they studied the grammar.
Then when you kick into the lesson, there is already three dimensional pieces of language. They've already got a mental trace of how it sounds. When they come to study the grammar in it, as in the course book, they're already old friends. It seems so natural to do it that way around.
Yeah, flipping the presentation, instead of leaving the pronunciation to an afterthought, put it right at the beginning and bring the language alive. Make it three dimensional for the student before you go into the more cerebral grammar exploitation of the language.