Applied Linguistics & ELT

Issues of Accuracy and Pronunciation Applied to ELT

March 26th’s session

Your name: Lina Maribel Parrales Rodríguez

While you do these activities, I’ll be on-line in the chat…

Session, March 26th, 7-9pmCollaborateHoy 19:00 (Duración del curso)

Current questions (to be sent on March 30th to the virtual room)
1. Do you think that your origin (race, nationality, socioeconomic stratum) index you as a legitimate
interlocutor of English? Why?

Yes,

2. How do you assert your right to teach English as a foreign language?

3. Have you experienced own contradictions as an English language teacher? For example, (1)
demanding a “native-like” pronunciation of English when you are a non-native, (2) demanding
language accuracy in your students when talking in English when you do not have it fully.
 4. What suggestions does the author of the article give in the sections of cross-case analysis and
conclusions? (List at least five different suggestions).

The suggestions are the following:

 which nonnative users of a language are seen

as deficient, has not been eradicated by the more "realistic" goals of communicative
pronunciation?

 Factors like race could override intelligibility, and both mentioned the role that race played in
perpetuating the myth of native speaker superiority

 Expertise is something these PSTs have the ability to change, and with this and the identity of
expert, they may be able to confront the racial bias that exists in English language teaching

 Appropriation of linguistic constructs, constructs developed by authorities in the field gleaned

from their pronunciation pedagogy course, proved to be a powerful resource in allowing them
to imagine these new identities as speakers and teachers of English

 not focus on pronunciation and grammar accuracy but would encourage students to "express
themselves" empha- sizes what students say rather than the technical precision of what they say

Four activities that can help you answer the questions (Mostly questions 1, 2, and 3)

Activity 1. Go to YouTube and search for “Learn English through stories”. Choose a story of your preference
that is no longer than 25 minutes. As you watch the story, fill in the following table:

Tasks Answers
What story did you choose? I choose “The birth”
Add the link Recovered from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCsQggPuWe0

What accent does the narrator The narrator has American accent, but I could find other accents inside
have? the video such as: Poland accent and British accent
Where does the story take place? The history take place in Scotland.
 (Country or city)
What type of culture is shown in It showed the Scotland culture. It is traditional because it celebrates
the story? New years as well as Christmas every year, the family have customs to
celebrate such as: first-foot, a large of family reunited having fun,
laughing, shouting, dancing, giving present in Christmas, besides in the
street were crowd of people with noise, shouting their friends.
Although, it appeared the Jewish culture where the principal character
showed his background about the loose of his family in the camp on the
second war, he does not like to much the custom of Scotland people
thus, he prefers to spend the time helping the bird.

Activity 2. Go to YouTube and search for “Improve your pronunciation in English”. Choose a video of your
preference that is not longer than 20 minutes. As you watch the video, fill in the following table:

Tasks Answers
What video did you choose? I choose “15 ways to improve your English pronunciation”
Add the link Recovered from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmoJ-YpvxqQ

Where do you think the presenter
is from?
What “teacher’s image” does that
presenter have?
What suggestions does the
presenter give you?
I considered that the presenter is native speaker from American
accent.
It seems to me that she is a teacher of ELS because she has a good
communication skill, she has a pertinent management of the board
with body language and fluency when she explains, therefore, it is
understandable for anyone. Besides, it is an order in all the video from
the beginning until the end when she prepared the tips of
pronunciation to explained one by one.
The presenter gave me a lot of suggestions, she explained 15 tips. I
already knew some of their tips that she explained because I learned
through all my academic process. Thus, she explained one by one, the
first one is being aware of what happen in your lips, tongue, and
throat, the second tip is practice in the mirror of what you mouth is
doing as well as look other people when speak English, then is record
yourself in the phone and listen to hear the mistake or phone’s voice
via texting and Siri if you pronounce correctly. Another tip is learning
the international phonetic alphabet to understand how to pronounce
the word or sound, the sixth one is about compare different sounds
and words besides, the stress and the intonation are important to have
a good pronunciation. The presenter said that it is important the
contractions in order to help in the conversations, sing that it helps in
intonation and stress, the tongue twisters, give feedback or receive
from friends, search if the sounds are similar to you mother tongue
and finally, practice until become automatically.

Activity 3. Go to YouTube and search for “Improve your English with Latin teachers”. As you look for a video
that has a truly Latin teacher as the presenter, fill in the following table:
 Tasks
Why do you think there are
almost no videos of Latin teachers
teaching English?
Answers
I would say that there no videos of Latin teachers teaching English
because of their illegitimacy of non-native speakers, what I means is
the people prefer to watch a video where speak a native speaker due
to his fluency, pronunciation, “knowledge” about the language even
their experiences. Another relevant fact for me is the teachers does
not dare to upload videos due to lack of communication skills,
knowledge as well as the illegitimacy. If the Latin teacher upload a
video, it has few visits of their channel and it does not appear in the
begging due to people tend to choose the videos with more views or
popular native speakers teaching English.

What type of videos are
commonly suggested on the list?
Who are the ones presenting
those suggested videos?
The videos commonly suggested are improving the intonation,
pronunciation, sound, listening skills, speaking skills besides the habits
or the things to practice every day.
The presenters of the videos are native speakers, most of them are
teachers of ELS. I know some of them because I used to watch their
videos.

Activity 4. Go to YouTube and search for this video: David Crystal - World Englishes
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_q9b9YqGRY). As you watch the video, fill in the following table:
When you finish, please upload this workshop in the virtual room at the forum:

March 26th's session: Upload your workshop about Accuracy and Pronunciation in
here