The purpose of this research was to examine the different ways of teaching English Liquid sounds /l/ and /r/ and identify the possible difficulties that students of English as a second language face in learning the sounds. The target was grade seven students who exhibited difficult in the pronunciation of these sounds. The research focused on instructional strategies and lessons that could help in teaching sounds /l/ and /r/ with identifying the difficulties a key focus. Some of the areas discussed in the research were the position which sounds most difficult in the pronunciation of /l/ and /r/ sounds. The research employed a descriptive qualitative method in teaching the lessons and examining the lessons that students faced. Data was taken from each English liquid words pronounced by the students. It emerged clearly that there were excellent strategies for teaching sounds /l/ and /r/ but the students still had difficulty using the sounds at the same time.
Introduction
In every form of communication, language is very significant. It is language that enables human beings to interact with each other and understand what they are talking about. Language stands as an instinctive method of communicating ideas and emotions by means of voluntary symbols. Thus, language is the only wat people can express their thoughts, feelings, ideas, and experiences.
When expressing our thoughts, feelings and desires, we do so through speaking. Speaking his one of the most important skills in language teaching. Speaking skills requires one to have competence in grammar, listening skill, vocabulary mastery and pronunciation. Pronunciation is a way in which sound or sounds are pronounced so that the receiver can perceive it correctly. It involves where we place the stress and we use pitch and intonation to show our feelings and meaning.
The pronunciation of the liquids /l/ and /r/ has proven very challenging for many speakers of English as a Second language. The problem has been on the methodologies used by the teachers to teach the sounds and address the challenges. Thus, paper addresses the problem of how best a teacher can teacher the phonemes /l/ and /r/ and address the possible challenges that may arise. The need to do a study on how to teach these phonemes remains significant because of the following reasons:
Theoretically, this research paper is hoped useful for the readers who want to expand and have a further knowledge about the English liquid sounds.
Practically, it is also hoped that this research paper will become a reference for someone who wants to analyze the English liquid sounds
Literature Review
The Concept of Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the manner in which a language, word or sound is pronounced (Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary, 2010). Richard " Schmidt (2002) defines pronunciation as the way a certain sound is produces. Pronunciation focuses more on the way the hearer perceives the sound. Pronunciation is the manner in which we produce sound of a language and where we place the stress (Harmer, 2007). Therefore, pronunciation is a way of speaking a certain word by considering the symbol used in representing the sound. In the process of teaching English, pronunciation is very vital for students because it makes them understand and improve their ability to communicate.
Goals in Teaching Pronunciation
A teacher should teach pronunciation with several goals in mind. First, a teacher of English should aim to achieve functional eligibility. Eligibility involves speaking English with less distracting accent. Most of the students fail in achieving native like pronunciation. Thus, teaching pronunciation should be accent-free. Despite that, it is fine for learners to won their accent when speaking English.
Secondly, the teacher should aim to achieve the functional communicability. While doing this, the learner should demonstrate ability to function successfully within the specific communicative situations he/she faces. Therefore, a teacher should focus on teaching students how to employ pause, pitch movement and stress in order to achieve communicative goals. This will enable the students to achieve functional communicability.
Another aim of teaching pronunciation should be to instilled self-confidence in the learner. A student with self-confidence will communicate in a clear and eloquent manner. In addition, teaching pronunciation can enable learners pay attention to their own speech as well as that of others. The learners will then learn to make better use of the input they receive.
The Indicators of Pronunciation
A teacher of language has to pay attention to the four indicators of pronunciation. Djiwandono (2008) names the four indicators of pronunciation as: intelligibility, fluency, accuracy and native-like. Intelligibility is when pronunciation is achieved clearly without any misunderstanding. Fluency is when an entire text can be pronounced fluently while accuracy is when words and text are pronounced correctly. Finally, a student should achieve pronunciation in a manner a native speaker would do. Therefore, while pronouncing words, we have to pay attention to words, phrases and sentences as major indicators.
Supra-Segmental Aspects of Pronunciation
Every form of pronunciation should have suprasegmental features such as segments and phonemes. The suprasegmental features that are vital in the teaching of English pronunciation are stress, intonation, and speech sounds connections. Stress depends on the amplitude of the vocal cords during the production of speech sounds. Intonation involves how the voice goes up and down when we are speaking. Intonation plays a fundamental role in the way we express our own thoughts and understand each other. It can either be the falling or rising of the voice to various pitch levels during articulation utterances. Pitch helps in determining the intonation of an utterance. Pitch relies on the tension of the vocal cords and how air passes through the glottis.
The Difficulties of Pronunciation
Difficulties in pronunciation come as a result of manner of ear-training. Ear-training involves readily recognizing various speech sounds that occur in the language when we hear them pronounced. This also extends to remembering the acoustic qualities of those sounds. Difficulties in pronunciation also starts with failing to understand the characteristics of certain sounds and syllables. Therefore, a language student should learn proper usage and know the necessary details with regard to length, stress and pitch. Students also find difficulty making foreign sounds with their own organs of speech. They fail to use the sounds in their proper places in connected speech. This later extends to student’s inability to distinguish and pronounce isolated sounds together with the sequence to use in a word or sentence.
Concisely, teachers must help learners to catch sounds, to join each sound of sequence on to the next and to pronounce the complete sequence rapidly and without stumbling. Because English cannot be avoided directly, language teachers must work hard with the students to ensure the students improve in their difficulties.
Factors Affecting Pronunciation
Every person has a native language which can be recognized by people who are non-native speakers. The native language, or rather the mother tongue language affects every person’s speech pattern. As a result, a good language teacher would diagnose pronunciation difficulties in their students before teaching pronunciation.
Another factor that affects pronunciation is age. Children under the age of puberty stands a good chance to speak native-like sounds especially if they continue to get exposure in authentic concepts. There is not much difference with an adult maintaining the same foreign accent especially if all factors are equal.
Also, the exposure a student gets matters a lot. Exposure here means spending more time learning the language and taking advantage of people who know the language best. Apart from exposure, innate phonetic ability also matters. Referred to as ‘an ear for language’, some students may show a phonetic coding ability while others may not. At times, a child who gets exposure to a language will have the phonetic coding ability.
In many cases, if a person has had an exposure to a foreign language as a child, this “knack” is present whether the early language is remembered or not. Others are simply more attuned to phonetic discriminations. Lastly, a teacher needs to motivate and show concern to learners for them to learn good pronunciation. Some learners are never just interest in learning pronunciation, while other are. Therefore, the extent to which learners get intrinsic motivation propels them towards improvement and this helps them get the strongest influence of all the six factors.
Teaching Sounds /l/ and /r/
The sounds /l/ and /r/ are two tough sounds especially because many non-native speakers mix them up. However, with proper teaching through different learning activities, one can learn that they very different. The problem in pronunciation of these two sounds is common with students of Asian origin especially Japanese and Chinese. The two groups normally have problems with these two sounds because the sounds do not exist in their L1, thus they cannot hear the difference.
For one to produce the /l/, there must be a large flap of the tongue. A student should bend the tongue as far back as he/she can in the mouth and flick it forward as they say /l/. In cases where a student has difficulty, he/she can control the tongue by holding one hand next to the mouth with his/her fingers in the same position as the tongue, then flick his/her fingers at the same time as the tongue.
The sound /r/ is pronounced in many different ways in various English-speaking countries. Therefore, its pronunciation doesn’t basically rest on what native speakers do with their mouths. Despite that, making distinction is very important as it is always better to exaggerate the differences between the two sounds.
For speakers of English, /r/ is very different from /l/. Some people tend to pronounce it more like /w/. A student seeking to draw a distinction should move their tongue as little as possible when making the sound.
Methodology
The purpose of conducting research was to examine the learning activities that enhance effective teaching of the sounds /l/ and /r/ in English language. The research involved conducting a lesson to two students of Japanese origin. The need to do the research came after interacting with many Japanese speakers and learning their weaknesses when it came to pronunciation of sounds /l/ and /r/.
Conducting the Research
The students undertook three lessons in a week for a period of two weeks with each lesson having different learning activities. The learning activities involved stages in learning the pronunciation of /l/ and /r/ as directed by the teacher. The teaching of the sounds was divided into three categories: description and analysis of sounds /l/ and /r/, listening discrimination of sounds /l/ and /r/, controlled practice and feedback on /l/ and /r/, guided practice and feedback for lessons /l/ and /r/, and communicative practice and feedback for sound /l/ and /r/.
Learning Activity 1
The first learning activity involved describing and analyzing the sounds /l/ and /r/. with the two Japanese students in focus, the lesson began with information about these two sounds contrasts using sagittal section diagrams and the consonant chart (Appendices 1 and 2). The purpose of these diagrams and charts was to indicate the difference in points of articulation of these two consonants. For the sound /l/, I reminded the students to ensure that the tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth at the alveolar ridge. For sound /r/, students had to ensure that their tongue doesn’t touch anything; while saying ‘uh’ the students had to roll their tongue up and back and then unroll it as they say red. The next step involved raising the students’ consciousness on where the sounds typically occur. Thus, the pronunciation of the sounds was shown in different contexts: colors, directions; professions, library, body parts, comparatives and superlatives, and personal names (Appendix 3)
Learning Activity 2
This lesson involved listening discriminatively to the sounds /r/ and /l/. the listening discrimination lesson was conducted as per the contents of Table 1 (appendix 4).
Learning Activity 3
This lesson involved a controlled practice exercise to get feedback on correct pronunciation of sounds /l/ and /r/. This lesson involved using stick of different sizes and colors as explained in appendices 5. The students practiced color names as well as vocabulary such as here/there, left/right, and longer/shorter. There was a dialogue for the students to read and perform in class. The students were reminded to pay attention to the pronunciation of sounds /l/ and /r/.
Lesson Activity 4
This lesson involved guided practice with feedback. The students were given guided example in the slight difference between sounds /l/ and /r/. The lesson was guided using a person’s daily plan (Appendix 6).
Lesson Activity 5
Once the two students had taken part in controlled and guided practice, they engaged in communicative practice using the same consonants contrasts. The students were provided with a context and key words that contain the targeted sounds. Each student was given a list of words and having them create a story by selecting their favorite words (appendix 7).
Results and Discussion
In the process of teaching of sounds /l/ and /r/, the students exhibited phonological problems with the sounds un question. The two students had serious challenges with pronouncing the sounds /l/ and /r/ at the first lesson. In describing and analyzing the sounds, the students confessed that there was no equivalent of sound /r/ in their language. Therefore, they often replaced it with the closest approximation of sound /l/. The students had difficulties in discriminating the sounds especially in the words ‘ride and room’. Through the guided practice and controlled practice, the feedback was positive. The activities were adequate enough for the students to learn the sounds. Their attitude was positive towards learning the sounds.
Limitations of the Study
This study was limited to the study of sounds /l/ and /r/. The selection of the candidates for the exercise was also limited to the Japanese especially because the aim was to find the best learning activities that could help the students of Japanese differentiate the two sounds.
Conclusion
This report presents a challenge to language teachers who teach students who take English as a second language. The teachers need to learn different ways of incorporating the phonetic and lexical components to help students acquire the required pronunciation and prevent the habitual mistakes Japanese students make with sounds /l/ and /r/. The lesson activities used in this study can benefit Japanese students and other speakers of English as a second language in two ways. First, the students will be able to produce sounds /l/ and /r/ with the right pronunciation. Secondly, the students will acquire a reflective aspect because they can observe how listeners perceive speaker’s pronunciation of the sounds.
References
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Minimal Pairs /l/ and /r/ | Pronunciation | EnglishClub. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/minimal-pairs-l-r.htm
Pronunciation Lesson Plan: Differentiate Between /L/ And /R/. - Lessons - Tes Teach. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.tes.com/lessons/ETkDXKSee5Tflw/pronunciation-lesson-plan-differentiate-between-l-and-r
Pronunciation - American English Pronunciation Lessons for English Learners. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.talkenglish.com/extralessons/pronunciation.aspx
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Zakhareuski, A. (2018). How To Teach "R" and "L" Sounds. Retrieved from https://busyteacher.org/3595-how-to-teach-r-and-l-sounds.html
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Sagittal Section Diagrams
Appendix 2: Consonant Chart
Appendix 3:
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6
Appendix 7
