When I met with June Won, I was starting to feel the stomach flu I had caught, so I wasn’t as alert as I usually am. However, June Won was still all smiles, as usual. His energy even helped gear me up for our session. I asked if he had practiced since our last session, and he frankly answered, “Ohhh no, I told you I hate speaking English around my wife!” I couldn’t fight with that, so I made a deal with him. As a private exercise, I asked him to think of the mouth placements we’ve been reviewing before he pronounces a word that starts with a “r,” “v, “w,” or “l.”
I prepared a list of minimal pairs that revolved around his problem areas. First, he listened to me pronounce them, the he tried, getting most of them right. He was caught up with “mouth/mouse,” “”teller/terror,” and “holler/horror.” As I guessed, his problems with ‘l’s and ‘r’s followed into our tongue twister exercises with words such as “world,” “rival relatives.” I tried to have him repeat the words, trying to reach the correct way to say each one. For example, when practicing “world,” we started out saying “were-old” slowly, until we reached the natural articulation. I soon realized he could pronounce it correctly as we did mouth exercises to fully articulate his “r”s and “l”s, but as we moved onto repeating the exercises, he would eventually retreat to the same mispronunciation. It appeared that his mouth (or brain) was getting tired, so I asked him to spend the rest of the week doing his private exercises, thinking about mouth placement before words with “r”s an “l”s in them.
I know June! I met him in a class I observed, and saw him again today at "Tea Time"--and found out you were his tutor! His English is extremely good, and he's at the level where many times it's just a matter of pronunciation--and that, as we learned, is muscle memory and perhaps the toughest thing to un-learn.
ReplyDeleteI actually observed his speaking class, taught by Ryan, and one of the methods Ryan uses is that of association--for example, he gives them words that have the same sound, to help them use that connection. For example, "world" and "girl" have the same "rl" sound. He also pointed out their incorrect pronunciation (which is often hard for them to detect) by finding a word similar to what they sounded like. For example, one student kept mispronouncing "girl"--Ryan pointed out that it sounded like he was saying "gull" instead of "girl"--thus emphasizing the affect that pronunciation could have on meaning.
Ryan's techniques seemed to register with his students, and, it's worth noting, that by the end of class, that one student could say "girl" correctly (still had to keep practicing though)!
Wow! That's great, I never even thought of the word girl and it's "rl" roll. And that's a perfect example, showing how gull definitely isn't a girl.
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