Reflective Online Teaching: Phonotactics and English Language Learning (ELL)

Phonotactics and English Language Learning (ELL)

Part 1: Dealing with Native Chinese Students

Phonotactics is a linguistic (phonetic and phonological) discipline that has to do with the study of phoneme/sound arrangements of any given language and how these sounds are grouped in words. These sets of arrangements or sequences of phomenic and allophonic sounds deal with the restrictions a language applies to the combinations of phonemes. That is why not every sequence of sounds is permitted in a given language.

Phonotactic rules are important in English language learning (ELL), and understanding what they are can help the EFL/ESL instructor assist students in their English pronunciation acquisition. Not all languages share the very same rules of grouping sounds in words; consequently, language learners –in their attempt to yield language accurately- are bound to make mistakes, and that is due to the use of their mother tongue’s phonotactic rules in the foreign or second language, a very common behavior when trying to pronounce the target lingo.

Although I mostly work with Spanish speakers who are learning English at the university where I hold a teaching position and work on designing English language courses at our local bi-national center in Costa Rica, we often deal with foreign students who are either coming to study or whose families are immigrants. Based on this, I want to explore five groups of foreign language speakers commonly found in our ELL classrooms and share a bit of insight to help them acquire a better English pronunciation in a series of five articles: Chinese, French, German, Korean, and Portuguese native speakers.

The case of Native Chinese Speakers

a) Consonant Sounds

The /n/ sound is one of those problems commonly found among Chinese students, mostly native Cantonese speakers living in Costa Rica. They tend to completely vanish the /n/ sound at the end of words. As suggested by Mojsin (2009), if these students link the sound to the next word, the problem is easily fixed.

Common Mistake	Solution
ca eat	ca ͜neat

Another common mistake by native Chinese Speakers is the dropping of the /v/ sound in final position. It’s imperative that the student learn how to articulate labio-dental consonants properly to avoid making this mistake.

Common Mistake	Solution
fai thousand	Learning how to pronounce labio-dental sounds
sol it	Learning how to pronounce labio-dental sounds

b) Vowel Sounds

For most native Chinese speakers the /ey/ vowel sound is a problem phoneme. This vowel is usually pronounced as /ɛ/ in words such as sail, trail, mail, tail, rain, pain, etc. This, as pointed out by Mojsin (2009), happens when the /ey/ sound is “followed by n, m, or l.”

Students must learn how to make a difference when pronouncing:

	/ɛ/	/ey/
1	sell	sale
2	well	whale
3	tell	tale
4	men	main
5	pen	pain
6	plan	plain
Taken from Mojsin, L (2009) Mastering the American Accent. LA: Barrons Page 131

Help them check their vowel understanding by learning to differentiate the /ey/ and /ɛ/ sounds graphically and then acoustically.

Chart 1: How are the following words pronounced? Check the right column.
#	Words	/ey/	/ɛ/
1	age
2	edge
3	met
4	main
5	pen
6	let
7	wait
8	day
9	then
10	steak
Taken and adapted from Orion, G (1988). Pronouncing American English. NY: Newbury Page 67

Chart 2: Practice the following contrasting words. Make sure you are making a clear difference.
#	/ɛ/	/ey/	#	/ɛ/	/ey/
1	Bess	base	11	let	late
2	chess	chase	12	letter	later
3	met	mate	13	bell	bail
4	wet	wait	14	tell	tail
5	west	waste	15	fell	fail
6	Get	gate	16	yell	Yale
7	Fed	fade	17	den	Dane
8	Red	raid	18	men	main
9	bled	blade	19	sent	saint
10	Led	laid	20	rest	raced
Taken and adapted from Orion, G (1988). Pronouncing American English. NY: Newbury Page 67

To sum up, this is not an extensive study of the problems native Chinese speakers have when learning English. These are just the most common mistakes I have spotted when dealing with them in class. It is advisable that you –the reader- research a bit more about these speakers if you are dealing with this target group in class.