Running head: CHINESE NEEDS ASSESSMENT 1

Chinese English-Learner’s Pronunciation Needs Assessment

Michelle Candy

TESL 525 Teaching English Pronunciation

Azusa Pacific University

NEEDS ASSESSMENT 2

Learner Analysis

The learner I interviewed is a 16-year-old Chinese student in his junior year of high

school. This is his first year studying in the US, though he has studied English in one form or

another for the last 10 years. His first language is Putonghua (Mandarin). Since he is from Xi’an,

he does not have a strong local dialect or accent. He is currently in a boarding school in the US.

The school has eight Chinese students, who all have the opportunity to speak Putonghua with

each other during the day. However, they are also all surrounded by English from their North

American classmates and teachers; this student has an ELL integrated English class and an ELL

religion class in addition to a regular junior load of classes (including algebra 2, American

history, American literature, and three music groups). The school is in Oregon, so the local

English accent is a pretty standard North American English (NAE) pronunciation. The school

does not have an “English only” policy, though students are encouraged to speak English

whenever possible.

This student is probably at the mid-intermediate level according to ACTFL guidelines

(ACTFL, 2012). He has learned a great deal of his spoken English through watching American

movies. He loves movies, estimating that he has seen over 1000. He has a solid grasp of

American idioms and has a good feel for the cadences of spoken NAE in extemporaneous

speaking.

Before our interview, I gave my student the paragraph I wanted him to read (Appendix

A) as well as a choice of prompts to talk about (Appendix B). When we met together, I gave him

a pronunciation diagnostic test (Appendix C). Additionally, I have taught him in three classes for

a semester, two ELL and freshman English, so I am familiar with many of his linguistic strengths

and weaknesses.

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On the diagnostic test, the student missed # 5 and 6 on Part Two—Vowels. Number 5

distinguishes between the /ɛ/ and /æ/. Number 6 distinguishes between /I/ and /iy/. Both of these

minimal pairs are difficult for Putonghua speakers of English (Power, 2014). My student has

apparently not had education in syllables, as he did not get any of Part Three—Syllables correct.

However, on the rest of the sections of the test, he did not miss any questions. Thus, even

without knowing syllables, he was able to hear the stress and reductions in the questions.

Although I had given him the chance to practice reading the paragraph ahead of time, I

think he had not practiced. He stumbled over the word “tennis”, initially pronouncing it /tayniys/

before correcting to /tɛnɪs/. Similarly, he struggled with “aerobics,” finally settling on

/eyrowblɪks/. He added “the” before “sixty minutes,” and changed “an” to “a”.

In this paragraph, my student utilized linking in a few instances. For example, “late on” is

pronounced as /ley tɑn/; “wake up” is pronounced /wey kʌp/; in “orange juice” he deletes the

first /ʒ/, leaving it to become /oræn: ʒuws/; “doesn’t agree” becomes /dʌsən tʌgriy/.

In the sentence including the words “progress” (noun) and “progress” (verb), he

pronounced them both in the British pronunciation, /prowgrɛs/. He also reads “I am” as /æm/; in

other words, he reads it as a contraction, albeit without the vowel /ay/. Additionally, instead of

/ay/ he often says /ɑ/, in “my,” “bike,” “sliced,” “rice.”

When he pronounced the word “usually,” he substituted /r/ for /ʒ/. This is a common

substitution, though not one that is often found on pronunciation comparison charts. The sound

/ʒ/ does not occur in Putonghua (ASHA, 2014), and unless students have specific training in how

to pronounce it, they often substitute /r/, especially if they come from northern China. He did,

however, pronounce “huge” correctly. Perhaps this is because there is no syllable coming after

the /ʒ/ in this word.

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When he is reading, he does not speak clearly. If a teacher were to only listen to his

reading, she would get the impression that this student is not capable of enunciating clearly.

However, when he speaks freely, he speaks much more clearly. This may be related to two

factors. The first is that Chinese speakers are usually not taught phonics when they are taught to

read in English but are taught strictly via memorization, and while they may know what a word

means, they may not know how to pronounce it while reading. The second is that this student has

learned a great deal of his spoken English from watching American movies rather than in formal

education.

When he chose the topic to talk about, he chose to compare and contrast points of culture

between China and America. At first he was rather unfocused, discussing history, religion, and

music. Finally, though, he started talking about movies, which is his passion. A selected portion

of the transcript is given in Appendix D.

At the segmental level, one would expect that a Putonghua speaker would struggle with

the following consonant sounds, which do not occur in the language: /v/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /θ/,

/ð/ (ASHA, 2014). Throughout the free speaking, this student substituted /z/ and /d/ for /ð/ in

initial position, and /s/ for /θ/, both of which are very common substitutions (Swan & Smith,

2001). Sometimes I had to look at the video, because I could not tell from listening whether he

was using /d/ or /ð/ unless I saw his tongue between his teeth. He used the word “movie” several

times through the discussion, and he alternated between pronouncing it /muwiy/ and /muwviy/,

substituting the /w/ for the /v/ on several occasions. The student also dropped the following

postvocalic consonants: /k/ in “like”; /l/ from “only”; /t/ from “about”; /l/ from “old”; /t/ in “get”;

drop /l/ and substitute /ow/ in both “people” and “still”; /l/ in “also.” He almost consistently

dropped /t/ from “it’s.” Since the only final consonant sounds in Putonghua are /n/ and /ŋ/, this

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could explain the dropping of so many final or postvocalic consonants. Additionally, Putonghua

does not have consonant clusters initially or finally, and speakers tend to either utilize epenthesis

or deletion (Swan & Smith, 2001). This could explain the /t/ in “it’s”, the /l/ in “old”, and the /l/

in “only.”

Because English vowels are closer together in production than Chinese vowels (Swan &

Smith, 2001), this is often an area of difficulty for Chinese learners. As in his reading, he

pronounced “I” /ay/ as both /ɔ/ and /ɑ/, “kind” as /kɑnd/, and “fine” as /fɑn/; these are not the

kinds of pronunciation errors one would expect from a Chinese speaker (the most common being

an /ay/ and /æ/ error). Additionally, he pronounced the /ey/ in “game” and “say” as /ɛ/, which is a

common substitution by Chinese speakers.

At the suprasegmental level, I was interested to hear several instances of linking. For

example, two times when he used the term “romantic comedy” as a film genre, he said

/rowmɑntɪk:ɑmədiy/. He also said /yuwstuwɪt/ (“used to it”), wɑtʃɪt (“watch it”), and /bɛstɪnə/

(“best in the”). However, I did not hear any reduction. His intonation is more or less monotone,

which is typical of L2 learners from tonal languages.

Pedagogical Suggestions

A plan to help this student improve his pronunciation should take several parts. In fact, a

large amount of this student’s work will involve the concept of “noticing.” Once his attention has

been drawn to a certain language feature, he is quick to understand and begin using it in his own

English usage. He is a very intrinsically motivated student. He wants to become a movie director,

and he knows that he needs to speak clear, idiomatic English to accomplish this, especially here

in the US.

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The first area in which he could benefit from some practice is some basic phonetic work

in sounding out new words in reading. Chinese students are taught their vocabulary through

memorizing, so they are often unskilled at decoding new words “on the fly.” This phonics work

should also include the pronunciation of “-ed” words, which are problematical for many L2

learners.

An introduction to syllables could be helpful with the phonics practice, as they will be

needed later in working on rhythm. This could be accomplished through some simple dictionary

work, either online, with an on-phone translator, or with a paper dictionary—anything that shows

syllable splits in a graphic representation. As shown in his placement test results, he is aware of

word and sentence stress, even if he is not familiar with counting syllables in individual words.

Learning the syllables will help the student to be able to learn word stress, which will help his

speech rhythm to sound less choppy. Again, because of his massive experience with American

movies and TV, I believe this instruction will be readily understood, and once he understands it,

he should be able to start utilizing the rhythms of NAE.

Segmental work should include working on consonant clusters, especially in the final

position, and postvocalic consonants. This can be done by breaking down the clusters and then

practicing putting the parts back together and saying them more quickly. Along with this should

be some practice with the consonant endings of words in general. Some examples of minimal

pair practice that would be beneficial for this student are given in Appendix E. “Noticing” will

help this student; thus, using either the video I already recorded or another one should show him

some of these places in which he is not pronouncing a sound correctly. He actually tries to be

very careful when he speaks, and if he realized some of these errors he was making, I think he

would make an effort to think about them a little more.

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Focusing on suprasegmentals, I would include more specific work on linking. He has

started this already, probably on his own from much movie watching. Linking will be an easy

concept for him to grasp and learn and will make his language sound more smooth.

Two further areas for this student to focus on are prominence and intonation. Being a

speaker of a tonal language, he will require quite a bit of work to understand the tonal differences

in English speaking. First, I would teach the concept of prominence using dialogues. For

intonation practice, I would start with yes/no and “wh-“ questions to contrast the endings of

sentences (the first generally rising, the second generally falling), first with listening

discrimination and then with production.

His voice quality settings reflect the fact that he not a speaker of NAE. His lips are

usually rather close to each other and his mouth is not open very wide. He does have a lowered

voice, but it does not have the creaky quality that characterizes NAE speech (Esling & Wong,

1983). Because he watches so many American movies and TV shows, looking for voice quality

settings from film will be enjoyable for him. I would encourage him to pretend to be an

American speaker speaking Putonghua (and tell him to focus on more than just intonation, as that

is the major complaint about American learners of Putonghua). I would have him use a mirror

and see if he could make his mouth and face look like that of an American actor, perhaps having

him mimic different actors (Thornbury, 1993).

Some of the substitutions he made, specifically those for /ð/ and /θ/ would be appropriate

if he were in an EIL (English as an International Language) setting, as supported by Jenkins

(2002, p. 99). In fact, most of his words are absolutely understandable, even with the

substitutions he has made, which substantiates many of Jenkins’ claims and propositions.

However, he is in an ESL setting, which views these substitutions as being “wrong,” even if they

NEEDS ASSESSMENT 8

are understandable. Furthermore, if he intends to attend film school and work in the US, he needs

to speak as clearly and distinctly as possible. Working from the phonics (which he will need in

reading scripts) to the segmentals (which will help to eliminate misunderstandings based on

mispronounced words), to the suprasegmentals (which will help his language be more smooth),

and finally to the voice quality settings, this student will readily grasp why each element is

important. In fact, I am fairly sure that a teacher could work in almost any order rather than

strictly following the sequence I have given, and this student would benefit from and flourish

under it.

This student is a confident user of English and displays speech usage that is not what is

generally expected by a first-year high-school student from China. His drive to use it correctly,

coupled with his obsessive knowledge of television and movies, makes the prospect of teaching

him clearer English pronunciation an enjoyable one.

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References

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). (2012). ACTFL proficiency

guidelines, 2012. Alexandria, VA: ACTFL. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1aEgJ2y

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). (2014). Facts on Mandarin

phonology. Retrieved from http://www.asha.org/

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., Goodwin, J. M., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching

pronunciation: A course book and reference guide (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Esling, J. H., & Wong, R. F. (1983). Voice quality settings and the teaching of pronunciation.

TESOL Quarterly, 17(1), 89-95.

Jenkins, J. (2002). A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for

English as an international language. Applied Linguistics 23(1), 83-103.

Miller, S. F. (2010). Targeting pronunciation: Communicating clearly in English. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company.

Nilsen, D. L. F., & Nilsen, A. P. (1973). Pronunciation contrasts in English. Long Grove, IL:

Waveland Press, Inc.

Power, T. (2014). English language, learning and teaching. Retrieved from

http://www.tedpower.co.uk/

Swan, M. & Smith. B. (eds.). (2001). Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and

other problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thornbury, S. (1993). Having a good jaw: Voice-setting phonology. ELT Journal 47(2), 126-

131.

NEEDS ASSESSMENT 10

Appendix A

My Exercise Program

I used to love to sleep late on weekends until I watched my neighbor exercising every day

and looking very physically fit. Now I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, put on my exercise

clothes and tennis shoes, drink some orange juice, and take off. By 7 o’clock I’ve walked over

sixteen blocks to the gym and worked out for sixty minutes in an aerobics class. Yesterday I also

jogged about fifteen minutes on a treadmill and rode my bike five miles to my friend’s house.

When I finished exercising, I was unusually hungry and enjoyed an early lunch. I ate a

cheeseburger, a large green salad, some sliced cucumbers, three bags of potato chips, a milk

shake, rice pudding, and five chocolate chip cookies for dessert. That’s been my routine for

several weeks now, and I have seen signs of improvement. Recently I decided to keep a record of

my workouts and record my progress in a notebook. My friend who is a professional trainer

doesn’t agree with my ABCs for working out. He says I’m better off sleeping late and skipping

the huge lunch. What do you think? Maybe I am better off sleeping late.

(Miller, S. F. (2010). Targeting pronunciation: Communicating clearly in English. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 10)

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Appendix B

Talking about a Topic

Talk for two or three minutes about one of these topics. Think about your topic, but do

not write out or rehearse what you are going to say.

Contrast one aspect of your original culture with American culture, for example,

business practices, community/family life, education, or politics/government. What

seems the same or different? How has this affected your work experiences or your

personal life?

Talk about an important problem facing the world today. Why did you choose this

issue instead of another? How has this affected you or your family? What solutions

do you recommend? What do you predict will happen?

Describe an experience from your past that you will always remember. Talk about the

place where it happened and any people involved. Why was this important? How did

it influence your life and your decisions? Give details.

(Miller, S. F. (2010). Targeting pronunciation: Communicating clearly in English. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 11)

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Appendix C

Pronunciation Diagnostic Test

(Courtesy Stephanie Sanford)

Part One- Consonants

Listen and Circle the sentence you hear.

1. a. Do you want everything?

b. Do you wash everything?

2. a. They saved old bottles.

b. They save old bottles.

3. a. She loves each child.

b. She loved each child.

4. a. We’ll put it away.

b. We’ve put it away.

5. a. He spills everything.

b. He spilled everything.

6. a. Does she bring her card every day?

b. Does she bring her car every day?

7. a. What does “leave” mean?

b. What does “leaf” mean?

8. a. Who’ll ask you?

b. Who’d ask you?

9. a. We wash all of them.

b. We watch all of them.

10. a. He put the tickets away.

b. He put the ticket away.

11. a. Is this the long road?

b. Is this the wrong road?

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Part Two- Vowels

Listen and circle the sentence you hear.

1. a. Did you bring the bat?

b. Did you bring the bait?

2. a. I prefer this test.

b. I prefer this taste.

3. a. It’s a good bet.

b. It’s a good bit.

4. a. It’s on the track.

b. Its on the truck.

5. a. The men worked hard.

b. The man worked hard.

6. a . How do you spell “scene”?

b. How do you spell “sin”?

7. a. How do you spell “luck”?

b. How do you spell “lock”?

8. a. We used a mop.

b. We used a map.

9. a. Is John coming?

b. Is Joan coming?

10. a. Everybody left.

b. Everybody laughed.

11. a. I ran to school every day.

b. I run to school every day.

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Part Three- Syllables

Listen and write the number of syllables in each word.

1. easy ____2____

2. closet _________

3. sport _________

4. clothes _________

5. simplify _________

6. frightened _________

7. opened _________

8. first _________

9. caused _________

10. Wednesday _________

11. arrangement _________

Part Four- Word Stress

Listen to each word and underline the syllable is stressed more than others.

1. arrangement

2. political

3. photograph

4. photography

5. Canadian

6. geography

7. Europe

8. information

9. economy

10. economic

11. participating

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Part Five- Focus Words

Listen to the dialogue. In each sentence one word is emphasized more than the others.

Underline the emphasized word in each sentence.

a. Do you think food in this country is expensive?

b. Not really.

a. Well, I think it’s expensive.

b. That’s because you eat in restaurants.

a. Where do you eat?

b. At home.

a. You must like to cook.

b. Actually, I never cook.

a. So what do you eat?

b. Usually, just cheese.

a. That’s awful.

Part Six- De-emphasizing with contractions and reductions

Listen and write the missing words in the blanks.

1. Do you think _____she’s___ in her room?

2. ____________________ you ask?

3. ____________________ work good?

4. Please ___________________ the information.

5. _____________________ want food?

6. How ______________ you been here?

7. _______________Matt done lately?

8. Why _______________ come so early?

9. _______________ they gone?

10. We’d like some _____________ vegetables.

11. They’ll need _____________ glasses.

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Part Seven- Thought groups

Listen to the sentence, then answer the question that follows:

1. Who is speaking? _________________________

2. Who shouted? _________________________

3. What does she want? _________________________

4. What were you offered? _________________________

5. What was used to start the fire? _________________________

6. How many things did she sell? _________________________

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Appendix D

Note: Yellow highlighted portions show major deviations from “standard.” I have not marked

every deviation, nor have I discussed all of them in the body of the paper.

1. Also the culture influence the movie. The Chinese movie . . . actually I don’t like

Chinese movie.

ɑlsow, ðə kʌltʃɚ yɪnfluwəns zə muwiy. . . . ækʃəliy ay down lay tʃayneys muwiy

2. Because . . . Chinese movie now has three parts. One is scien fiction, one is about

history, and one is about romantic comedy

biykəs tʃayneys muwviy nɑw hɛz sriy pɑrts. wən yɪz sayn fɛkʃən, wən ɪz ʌbɑwt

hɪstriy, ən wən ɪz bawt rowmɑntɪk:ɑmədiy [Note that he used linking in this word]

3. And, uh, Romantic comedy, I can used to it, I can watch it, but they only have some,

some part can make you laugh, and uh, because the romantic comedy movie comes so

many, so many, and uh, that’s why it’s not very good now, because comes so fast,

and it’s hard to pick one is classical.

ænd ə rowmɑntɪk:ɑmədiy ay kæn ay kæn yuwstuwɪt [linking], kɛn wɑtʃɪt [linking],

bʌt ðe owniy hæv sʌm pɑrt kɑn meyk yuw lɑf ɑnd ə biykəs ðə rowmɑntɪk:ɑmədiy

[linking] muwiy kɑm sow [perhaps this can be considered linking, as he doesn’t have

/s/ after /kɑm/] mɛniy sow mɛniy ænd ə ðæts way ɪz nɑt veyr gʊd biykəs kʌm sow

fɑst sow fɑst ɑn ɪs hɑrd tuw pɪk wʌn ɪs klɑsɪkəl

4. And about history, it’s about old history, and war history . . . .I think the history part

is, is fine; I can accept that.

æn ʌbow hɪstriy ɪs ʌbowt owd ɪstriy æn ə wor hɪstriy . . . . ay sɪŋ də hɪstriy pɑrd ɪs

fɑn ay kæn əksɛp dæt

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5. Another one is scien fiction. That’s an, I don’t like at all. I mean, Chinese scien

fiction. It’s so bad. the CG they can’t make, it’s, I just can’t take, it’s so bad

ʌnʌðɚ wɑn ɪs ðə sayn fɪkʃən. dæts ə ɔ down læk ɛd ɑl. ɑ miyn tʃayniys sayn fɛkʃən. . .

. ɪz sow bæd. θ sey dʒə zey kæn mɪk ay dʒəs kɑn, ɪs sow bæd

6. They try to get some help from foreigner people but still so bad. It’s just like this year

has a movie called Amazing. It’s about, it’s China work with America, they got some

NBA people

ðey trayn tuw gɛ səm hɛlp frʌm fowrənɚ piypow bʌt stɪow sow bæd. ɪts dʒʌs

laykə ðɪs yɪr hɑz ə muwyi kɑl əmeyzɪŋ. ɪs ʌbɔt ɪs tʃaynə wɚk wɪz ɑmɛrɪkə ðey gɑt

sʌm ʌn biy ey piypow

7. it’s scien fiction, basically they invented a game, is controlled by player’s mind, they

can control the game, and the game, the people in the game, they have their own

mind, they try to get into the real world.

ɪs sayn fɪkʃən. beysɪkliy . . . ðey yɪnwaytɪd ə gɛm ɪs kʌntrol bay pleyɚs maynd;

ðey kʌn kʌntrol ð geym . . . . ðə piypow in ðə geym ðey hæv ðeyr own mayn ðey

tray gɛt ɪntuw ðə riyl wɚl

8. Yeah, it’s interesting story, but . . . . If you watch the movie they even didn’t tell the

story very well, and also is the worst CGI,

yɛ ɪts ɪntrɛstɪŋ storiy bɑt . . . . ɪf yuw watʃ də muwiy ðey iyvən dɪn tɛl ðə stowriy

wɛriy wɛow. ən ɑsow ɪs ðə wors siy dʒiy ɑy

9. I have to say, it’s the truth, American scien fiction movies best in the world now, I

love American movie so much.

NEEDS ASSESSMENT 19

ɑy hæf tuw sɛ, ɪts ə truwθ, ʌmɛrkən sayn fɪkʃən muwviy ɪs ð bɛstɪnə [linking] wɛrd

naw. ɑ lʌv ʌmɛrkən muwiy sow mʌtʃ

10. All kind of. Yeah, really, even the romantic, the action, the comedy, the scien fiction,

the history

ɑl kɑnd ɑf . . . . yɪ rɪliy iyvɪn ðə rowmæntɪk ðə ækʃən ðə kɑmədiy ðə sən fɪkʃ ðə

hɪstriy

NEEDS ASSESSMENT 20

Appendix E

Taken from Nilsen and Nilsen, 1973.

Sample minimal pair practice

/ay/ with /æ/

Put back my bike.

They sat at the site.

It is fine to bring a fan.

Other minimal pairs:

Am/I’m

Had/hide

Sad/side

Hand/hind

Sample Minimal Pair practice

for /ey/ and /ɛ/

He pled/played with the teacher.

He has a tale to tell.

Did you get a new gate?

Put it in the shade/shed.

Can you taste/test it?

Other minimal pairs:

Wailed/weld

Raced/rest

Trained/trend

Fade/fed

Sample Minimal Pairs for /v/ or /w/

My verse is getting worse.

Violets grow in that grove.

That’s a good wine/vine.

Did you look in the west/vest?

Other minimal pairs:

Wane/vain

Went/vent

Rowed/roved

Moo/move

Grew/groove

Grow/grove

Sample minimal pairs for /θ/, /s/

Being thin is no sin.

I don’t think it will sink.

I never thought/sought it.

The sailors can’t think/sink that.

That child is sort of

mousy/mouthy.

They went over the pass/path.

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Additional minimal pairs:

Thank/sank

Thaw/saw

Thick/sick

Thing/sing

Faith/face

Math/mass

Sample minimal pairs activities

for /ð/ and /d/

I don’t dare go there.

By then he’ll be in the den.

When will they/day come?

That teacher loathes/loads his

students.

Rabbits breathe/breed quickly.

Other minimal pairs:

Than/Dan

Their/dare

Thine/dine

Those/dose

Sample minimal pairs for /ð/ and /z/

It was then that they studied

Zen.

Stop teasing while she’s

teething.

She is beginning to writhe/rise.

Additional minimal pairs:

Breathed/breezed

Clothed/closed

Clothing/closing

Tithe/ties