Читать книгу Second Language Pronunciation - Группа авторов - Страница 10

For many years, expert practitioner Janet Goodwin used clips from sitcoms to aid her students’ awareness of English pronunciation (for details, see Goodwin, 2005). She would take a scene from a popular TV show, such as Seinfeld or Friends, and would ask her students to break into small groups and transcribe the segment. This required multiple listenings. She then had the students mark word stress and major intonation patterns, getting them to focus on prosody. Again, this took multiple listenings. After each of these rounds, she went through the clip with the students, correcting any errors and asking them to listen again to confirm that they could perceive the productions accurately. The next step was to have the students perform the scene, incorporating the body language used by the characters, and using their marked transcriptions as the script. This arc of activities serves several purposes. First, students tend to accept sitcom language as “real” speech, despite the fact that it is scripted, and therefore tends to be more grammatical and coherent than actual “real” speech. The multiple listenings, first for general understanding (transcription) and next for prosody, offer the learners the repetition they need, but with an achievable goal. The teacher can flag areas of difficulty and do some extra work on those areas before moving on. The performance aspect of the activity is carried out only after the learners have heard the clip many, many times, in the company of their classmates. Thus, it is nowhere near as threatening as a speaking activity that is imposed out of the blue. Goodwin video-recorded the learners’ performance, and the whole class would then comment on the strengths and areas for improvement. This intensive focus on a short (2- to 3-minute) clip can lead to significant awareness raising and improvement in production. Goodwin’s activity entails a great deal of recycling of the same material. Repeated passes at the same activity for different purposes can be highly beneficial.