PORTFOLIO METHODOLOGY 5

NOMBRE: MANUEL ADOLFO BARTRA

PORTUGAL

ROOM: 103

HOUR: FROM 7:30 TO 9:00 PM

TEACHER: ALCIDES FELIPE VEGA

IZQUIERDO

2014
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Research on segmental features (sounds)
(personal opinion)

2. Research on suprasegmental features (stress and

rhythm, intonation, or connected speech)
(personal opinion)

3. Research on Error correction. (personal opinion).

 Research on segmental features (sounds)

Segmental aspects of accent and pronunciation are individual sounds, also

known as phonemes, meaning consonants and vowels. Syllables and one-
syllable words are considered as segmental aspects of accent and
pronunciation, as well. Segmental aspects of accent and pronunciation are
not heard as being affected over more than one sound segment. For
example, the first “s” in business always sounds like “z”.

SOUNDS

Segmental features are considered as a unit or segment of a word and

phrase. Bottom up approach know all the phonemes and build from there.

The phonetic Alphabet

Sounds :

Vowels
Consonants

What are the sounds of English

England Canada Australia Jamaica India The U.S. Nigeria. Belize.

Consonants are one sound that cannot be mistaken for another sound.
Allophones.
What does a teacher to know about dealing with consonants.
-Advantages of knowing the phonetic alphabet:
-Imitations are not always effective or the imitator( often the teacher)
doesn’t model the word correctly.
-You can independently figure out the pronunciation of any word with
the help of a dictionary.
-Many people learn better with a visual cue.
-Having an alternative method of learning aids any other method of
learning.
-There is a one to one correspondence of one phoneme (sound) with one
symbol so there can be no confusion.
TIPS:
1. Raise awareness with activities that show same sounds with different
spellings so that students realize that sounds can be represented by
different letters, but not different phonetic symbols.
2. Begin by confusing, the listening and transcribing different sounds.

Personal opinion:
In my opinion is very important to teach pronunciation in class that
is divided on segmental and suprasegmental features. Learning how
to pronounce the words and train the ear is valuable. The phonemes,
units of sounds are important to know the accent of English in the
world because are various kinds of English.
We can learn with visual cues that way we can see how people
pronounce individual sounds of the consonant and vowels.
Research on suprasegmental features (stress and
rhythm, intonation, or connected speech)
Suprasegmental refers to how speech sounds function and are affected at
the sentence and discourse level, which means multiple sound segments
that combine to make phrases, clauses, and sentences. Improvements in
suprasegmental aspects of English accent and pronunciation play an
important role in the production of comprehensible speech patterns in
English and are key factors in accent reduction and speaking ability in
general.

Suprasegmental aspects of accent and pronunciation are intonation, added

stress, time-stress, tone, linking and connecting, thought groups, volume,
speed, reduction, assimilation, deletion, weak forms of function words,
conversational contractions, and standard contractions which are also used
in writing.

Length- the amount of time it takes to produce a sound

Some sounds are longer than others.

Beat Bead

If you were to pronounce both words with longer vowels, the pronunciation
might seem strange but the meaning is not lost, the meaning of beat and
bead are the same.but in other languages, vowels length actually changes
the meaning of words. Therefore pronunciation of the lengthened sound is
very important because the words means something completely different.
In English you can express your emotions by lengthening certain sounds in
sentences. By varying the tempo of the words (such as lengthening specific
sounds) you can communicate your feelings.

Intonation- The raising and falling of te voice (pitch) over a stretch of

sentence.

- if pitch varies over an entire phrase or sentence, we call the different

pitch curves by the term intonation.
- intonation conveys the speaker’s attitude or feelings.In other words,
intonation convey anger,sarcasm or various emotions.
 Stress (tense or lax syllables) and juncture ( pauses within
sentences) toseparate words and meanings).
In English, the stress you place on a syllable can change the meaning
of a word.
When combined with pausing after certain words,the meaning of a
whole sentence can completely change.

Light housekeeping means

chores such as sweeping, A tight –rope Walker is an
mopping, and cleaning acrobat
windows.
Lighthouse keeping is running A tight ropewalker is a drunken
lighthouse operations. ropewalker

Tone-The rising and falling of pitch in a syllable

-if the pitch of a single syllable or word has the effect of influencing the meaning of the word,
we call the different pitch distributions by the term tone.
-Every language uses pitch as intonation, but only some languages use it as tone.

there are two basic types of tones in tone languages

Register tones are measured by contrast in the absolute pitch of different syllables. Register
tones may be high,mid, or low. Many West African languages use contrasts of high mid and
low tones to distinguish word meaning.

Contour tones are tones involving a pitch shift upward or downward on a single syllable.Many
languages of east and Southeast Asia use contour tones, the best known being mandarin
chinese.

Personal opinion:
In my opinion I can say learning suprasegmental features is a good way to
learn speech techniques to apply to multiple segments as intonation stress
and rhythm which can also be referred as to prosody.In this way we can
understand the speech.we comprehend the message when words are
stressed and with intonation can be decribed as its melody.Besides we
understand feeling, emotions,etc.
Research on Error Correction

errors are part of our inter language that is the version of the language
which a learner has at any one stage of development and which is
continually reshaped as he or she aims to improvement. Some type of
errors are:

Type of errors Example

Lexical errors I remember a lot of thinks

Grammar errors she speaked too much

Discourse errors At last when I went to bed it

was four 0’ clock
Pronunciation errors

Cause of errors
Cause Example

L1 interference I bought my books at the

library
Overgeneralization He can sings very well

Ignorance of rule restriction I made him to do his

homework
Incomplete application of rules Can you tell me what are we
going to do?
Feedback during accuracy work
Example: Student: she has blonded hair.

feedback during fluency work

Gentle correction: If communication breaks down completely during a

fluency activity, we may well have to intervene. if our students cannot
think of what to say, we may want to prompt them forwards…gentle
correction can be offered in a number of ways. We might simply
reformulate what the student has just said in the expectation that they
will pick up our reformulation.

Student: I’m not agree with you..

Teacher: I don’t agree…
student: I don’t agree with you because I think…
Recording mistakes…..
One of the problem of giving feeback after the event is that is easy to
forget what students have said. Most teachers, therefore, write down
points they want to refer later and some like to use charts of other forms
of categorization to help them to do this,as in the following example:

Grammar Words and Pronunciation Appropriacy

phrases

then after the activity I can write on the board the sentences the students
said and ask students first recognize the problem in the sentence and then
they correct it.

Personal opinion:
I don’t agree too much with error correction made in class. I think there
are some reasons for example:
It doesn’t work because if some student speaks wrong the teacher says it
is not correct. The student corrects it but later forget about it. In that
moment students can understand consciously what is correct, but not
unconsciously because in conversation speaking and listening everything
happens fast.
Another reason when correct students every time it can be hurt for them
and feel ashamed it is better to let it flow and they speak naturally and
don’t cut speaking from students.
We can improve our language by doing a lot of input, listening, reading,
listening to native speakers and you will automatically change and speak
more correctly. For example babies and children when they speak they
make a lot of mistakes but people don’t correct them the grammar every
time. They learn by listening to others ,real language.

----------------------------------*---------------------------------