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Analysis:
Language pedagogical analysis:
The first phase in this unit is description and analysis. In this unit I find it important to spend a considerable amount of time on this phase since English rhythm is a very important topic, and is rather difficult to grasp because it underlies everything else and because speakers are not normally conscious of its functioning. Chela-Flores (1997: 119f) in fact describes how the nature of rhythm being everywhere and nowhere, so to speak, is the greatest difficulty in its acquisition and that consciousness raising is, therefore, an enormous priority in teaching rhythm. This is more difficult here than in other elements of the language since rhythm cannot easily be presented in contrast to equivalents (minimal pairs, higher or lower pitch). Therefore, the teaching of rhythm needs a certain amount of didactic creativity.
As a first exploratory consciousness-raising technique the teacher can speak the sentences to the right, tapping with the finger on each beat, i.e. stressed word. The students can be instructed to listen if they “notice something”. This will easily elicit the answer “the same amount of time passes”. It creates a nice effect to just do the first three, then to have students repeat and tap chorally and, unexpectedly, add the last two rather extreme (in students’ perceptions) versions. This inductively establishes the notion of stress timing in students’ heads. Next, a drama milling technique will be employed in which students are instructed to walk around the classroom and to ask or offer each other things, but using rhythmic beats like DA.da.DA instead of real words (in this case e.g. “COME with ME”) and clear gestures in order to get their message across. They would, then, be asked to discuss how this worked to see if everything was understood by discussing what they intended to say (Need a pen? How are you? Just sit down). This would be in accordance with some of Goodwin’s ideas discussed before.
For analysis, the next task, resource 1, addresses the fact that “word and sentence stress combine to create the rhythm of an English utterance – that is, the regular, patterned beat of stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses” (Celce-Murcia et al. 2011: 209). This task will be introduced by the teacher with the example, supported by a few test runs with additional examples in plenum. Since students already have a certain image of the concept of word stress, this task will serve to link the known to the unknown, which is a basic precondition to make learning possible. Together with the newly established concept of timing, students will then have a certain notion of what rhythm is all about. This task also realizes the aspect of including variation by addressing 3 levels of stress, as opposed to only distinguishing between ‘stress’ or ‘no stress’ as Chela-Flores suggests. A rationale for that would be that students may well notice there is more to it and feel confused or insecure when they can’t decide between simplified categories, intuitively noticing that the reality is more complex. Also, once students overgeneralize a simplified concept, it may be difficult to revoke this conviction later on. Further, it realizes the principle “structured input before output”.
For listening discrimination it has been argued since Adams (1979) that literature like poems or Jazz Chants can help raise students’ awareness of English rhythm and stress (see also Teschner & Whitley 2004, Ch. 1). Resource 2 uses two poems by Silverstein (1996: 7, 11) to serve this purpose. “Falling Up” additionally practices the stress pattern of phrasal verbs. However, teachers need to be cautious using literary materials since the natural rhythm of English (stressing content words) is often distorted in order to serve poetic design. These two poems are rather meaningful, have natural rhythm and word order, and are, in fact, very eurythmic. The second exercise is adapted from Chela-Flores (1997: appendix 1) to further emphasize the connection between known and new contents through listening discrimination. The next phase is controlled practice. To further emphasize the reduction of function words and the stress-timed nature of English in a very controlled manner, the “Da da language” exercise (resource 3) devised by Mark Hancock (1995: 83) can be used. Students are asked to go together in pairs and agree on one box with one student prompting a combination like “dar, dooby, dipety”, which will be “translated” by the other students. Both can do a number of boxes and switch roles. Also, this task additionally allows students to practice the flapped t in “dipety”. Further, students can read a short dialogue together (task 2), mark it for its stress pattern and practice reading it with each other, monitoring each other’s production. This also realizes Porter’s principle of combining grammar with lexis in II.4.
Into a more communicative realm goes guided practice, for which resource 4 provides a typical kind of activity. Students are instructed to answer in only one short sentence, using “I admire X” and providing one short “because” sentence. This is somewhat free and meaningful but has a limited scope. The second phase increases the memory load and makes production more challenging. Such a task provides personalization, interaction and trains monitoring strategies to allow students to take responsibility. The final stage is communicative practice: The role-play task in resource 5 follows a typical free speech activity mode allowing students to produce speech spontaneously as described before.
Phonological analysis:
This first part of the lesson, especially the “kids pat dogs” exercise, was used by the teacher to introduce the connection between rhythm and connected speech. This activity illustrates how content words are stressed, while function words are not (in an unmarked utterance). It, then, shows how in “stress valleys” (a pedagogical metaphor) function words are linked, how their peak vowels are reduced to schwa, and how processes like flapping and deletion may occur. While might have in citation form would be /mait hæv/, in fluent, connected speech it is much more likely to end up as a phonological/prosodic word (Cruttenden 1997: 23) like [maɪDəv[1]]. Since each of the three rhythmic units/rhythmical intervals/rhythm groups/feet should ideally take the same amount of time to say, it can easily be shown to make sense that English would employ processes like linking, reduction and deletion to achieve this goal and, by analogy, why English sometimes is so hard to comprehend owing to these processes. Starting the entire course like this clearly shows students the relationship between prosody and connected speech from the very beginning and hence establishes a framework of thinking for the rest of the course.
A few things should be said about the metrical phonology of rhythm and the concepts of enclisis and eurhythmy in English in relation to the present approach. English is a stress-timed language, which means that the intervals between stressed syllables are, ideally, isochronous. In relation to this it should be highlighted that “the psychology of time perception is such that rhythmicity can only be perceived within certain limits; and speech rhythm is a perceptual phenomenon at least as much as it is a feature of speech production” (Giegerich 1992:258). The limits in which rhythm is perceived are referred to as "rhythmical intervals" or as "feet" in metrical phonology, defined as “the interval stretching from the onset of one stressed syllable to the onset of the next stressed syllable” (ibid: 259), which is left-headed (beginning with a stressed syllable) in English (Cruttenden 1997: 23). In English feet are ideally isochronous, regardless of how many syllables each foot contains[2].
The concept of enclisis (more commonly used in classical philology) is important in that it explains some of the connected speech processes resulting from the rhythmic timing of English. Giegerich (ibid: 268) defines enclisis as “the phonological attachment of an unstressed syllable – an unstressed function word, for example – to the preceding stressed syllable where in syntactic terms it may well be more closely associated with the next word”. The enclitic and host are then often contracted into a bisyllabic or monosyllabic units which looks just like a single word. As quoted, such phonological grouping overrides syntactic grouping and often results in a new foot. A good example of this is the noun phrase cup of tea, in which tea is a noun and of tea a propositional phrase. However, phonologically in connected speech we get “cuppa tea”, in which metrically cup of would not be different to cuppa or copper in that all three have an initial strong and a final week element. Similar cases could be made for Fred will do vs. Fred’ll do or fish and chips vs. fish ‘n’ chips (see ibid: 269ff).
Finally, the concept of eurhythmy needs to be discussed briefly. Eurhythmy can be understood as a succession of strong and weak elements that produces perfect timing, in which English seems to prefer a certain alteration between strong and weak units on and above the foot level (Giegerich 1992: 273). However, some sentences lend themselves better to this than others. The poems in R2 of unit 1 were chosen because of their relatively strong eurhythmic quality. In the kids pat dogs example above, the first renditions are clearly more eurhythmic than the last one, in which only with heavy connected speech reduction relative isochrony can be maintained. The English preference for alteration can also explain why the phases sweet and sour or hot and spicy, in which there is a clear alteration between strong and weak units (/'swiːtən'saʊər/), are preferred over their conceivable alternatives sour and sweet or spicy and hot, where two weak units would occur in succession (/'saʊərən'swiːt/).
[1] I usually use the small capital D symbol to represent the alveolar tap in American English. This is a symbol often used for the coronal oral stop archiphoneme (Giegerich 1992: 243) and is sometimes used in American publications to replace the IPA symbol [ɾ], which is in this case thought to represent the coronal tap, as opposed to the American coronal flap. The rationale in a teaching context, however, is merely a pedagogical one in that [D] illustrates the sound quality better than [ɾ].
[2] Note that a distinction has been made between stress and syllable timed languages. This distinction, however, is misleading since the relationship is a scalar and not a dichotomous one (Szczepek Reed 2011: 140). Spanish, for example, is often referred to as syllable timed, but actually has characteristics of both systems (Giegerich 1992: 259). And even among one language group there are significant differences, as Chun has shown instrumentally by comparing English and German rhythm (Chun 2002: 177ff).
Language pedagogical analysis:
The first phase in this unit is description and analysis. In this unit I find it important to spend a considerable amount of time on this phase since English rhythm is a very important topic, and is rather difficult to grasp because it underlies everything else and because speakers are not normally conscious of its functioning. Chela-Flores (1997: 119f) in fact describes how the nature of rhythm being everywhere and nowhere, so to speak, is the greatest difficulty in its acquisition and that consciousness raising is, therefore, an enormous priority in teaching rhythm. This is more difficult here than in other elements of the language since rhythm cannot easily be presented in contrast to equivalents (minimal pairs, higher or lower pitch). Therefore, the teaching of rhythm needs a certain amount of didactic creativity.
As a first exploratory consciousness-raising technique the teacher can speak the sentences to the right, tapping with the finger on each beat, i.e. stressed word. The students can be instructed to listen if they “notice something”. This will easily elicit the answer “the same amount of time passes”. It creates a nice effect to just do the first three, then to have students repeat and tap chorally and, unexpectedly, add the last two rather extreme (in students’ perceptions) versions. This inductively establishes the notion of stress timing in students’ heads. Next, a drama milling technique will be employed in which students are instructed to walk around the classroom and to ask or offer each other things, but using rhythmic beats like DA.da.DA instead of real words (in this case e.g. “COME with ME”) and clear gestures in order to get their message across. They would, then, be asked to discuss how this worked to see if everything was understood by discussing what they intended to say (Need a pen? How are you? Just sit down). This would be in accordance with some of Goodwin’s ideas discussed before.
For analysis, the next task, resource 1, addresses the fact that “word and sentence stress combine to create the rhythm of an English utterance – that is, the regular, patterned beat of stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses” (Celce-Murcia et al. 2011: 209). This task will be introduced by the teacher with the example, supported by a few test runs with additional examples in plenum. Since students already have a certain image of the concept of word stress, this task will serve to link the known to the unknown, which is a basic precondition to make learning possible. Together with the newly established concept of timing, students will then have a certain notion of what rhythm is all about. This task also realizes the aspect of including variation by addressing 3 levels of stress, as opposed to only distinguishing between ‘stress’ or ‘no stress’ as Chela-Flores suggests. A rationale for that would be that students may well notice there is more to it and feel confused or insecure when they can’t decide between simplified categories, intuitively noticing that the reality is more complex. Also, once students overgeneralize a simplified concept, it may be difficult to revoke this conviction later on. Further, it realizes the principle “structured input before output”.
For listening discrimination it has been argued since Adams (1979) that literature like poems or Jazz Chants can help raise students’ awareness of English rhythm and stress (see also Teschner & Whitley 2004, Ch. 1). Resource 2 uses two poems by Silverstein (1996: 7, 11) to serve this purpose. “Falling Up” additionally practices the stress pattern of phrasal verbs. However, teachers need to be cautious using literary materials since the natural rhythm of English (stressing content words) is often distorted in order to serve poetic design. These two poems are rather meaningful, have natural rhythm and word order, and are, in fact, very eurythmic. The second exercise is adapted from Chela-Flores (1997: appendix 1) to further emphasize the connection between known and new contents through listening discrimination. The next phase is controlled practice. To further emphasize the reduction of function words and the stress-timed nature of English in a very controlled manner, the “Da da language” exercise (resource 3) devised by Mark Hancock (1995: 83) can be used. Students are asked to go together in pairs and agree on one box with one student prompting a combination like “dar, dooby, dipety”, which will be “translated” by the other students. Both can do a number of boxes and switch roles. Also, this task additionally allows students to practice the flapped t in “dipety”. Further, students can read a short dialogue together (task 2), mark it for its stress pattern and practice reading it with each other, monitoring each other’s production. This also realizes Porter’s principle of combining grammar with lexis in II.4.
Into a more communicative realm goes guided practice, for which resource 4 provides a typical kind of activity. Students are instructed to answer in only one short sentence, using “I admire X” and providing one short “because” sentence. This is somewhat free and meaningful but has a limited scope. The second phase increases the memory load and makes production more challenging. Such a task provides personalization, interaction and trains monitoring strategies to allow students to take responsibility. The final stage is communicative practice: The role-play task in resource 5 follows a typical free speech activity mode allowing students to produce speech spontaneously as described before.
Phonological analysis:
This first part of the lesson, especially the “kids pat dogs” exercise, was used by the teacher to introduce the connection between rhythm and connected speech. This activity illustrates how content words are stressed, while function words are not (in an unmarked utterance). It, then, shows how in “stress valleys” (a pedagogical metaphor) function words are linked, how their peak vowels are reduced to schwa, and how processes like flapping and deletion may occur. While might have in citation form would be /mait hæv/, in fluent, connected speech it is much more likely to end up as a phonological/prosodic word (Cruttenden 1997: 23) like [maɪDəv[1]]. Since each of the three rhythmic units/rhythmical intervals/rhythm groups/feet should ideally take the same amount of time to say, it can easily be shown to make sense that English would employ processes like linking, reduction and deletion to achieve this goal and, by analogy, why English sometimes is so hard to comprehend owing to these processes. Starting the entire course like this clearly shows students the relationship between prosody and connected speech from the very beginning and hence establishes a framework of thinking for the rest of the course.
A few things should be said about the metrical phonology of rhythm and the concepts of enclisis and eurhythmy in English in relation to the present approach. English is a stress-timed language, which means that the intervals between stressed syllables are, ideally, isochronous. In relation to this it should be highlighted that “the psychology of time perception is such that rhythmicity can only be perceived within certain limits; and speech rhythm is a perceptual phenomenon at least as much as it is a feature of speech production” (Giegerich 1992:258). The limits in which rhythm is perceived are referred to as "rhythmical intervals" or as "feet" in metrical phonology, defined as “the interval stretching from the onset of one stressed syllable to the onset of the next stressed syllable” (ibid: 259), which is left-headed (beginning with a stressed syllable) in English (Cruttenden 1997: 23). In English feet are ideally isochronous, regardless of how many syllables each foot contains[2].
The concept of enclisis (more commonly used in classical philology) is important in that it explains some of the connected speech processes resulting from the rhythmic timing of English. Giegerich (ibid: 268) defines enclisis as “the phonological attachment of an unstressed syllable – an unstressed function word, for example – to the preceding stressed syllable where in syntactic terms it may well be more closely associated with the next word”. The enclitic and host are then often contracted into a bisyllabic or monosyllabic units which looks just like a single word. As quoted, such phonological grouping overrides syntactic grouping and often results in a new foot. A good example of this is the noun phrase cup of tea, in which tea is a noun and of tea a propositional phrase. However, phonologically in connected speech we get “cuppa tea”, in which metrically cup of would not be different to cuppa or copper in that all three have an initial strong and a final week element. Similar cases could be made for Fred will do vs. Fred’ll do or fish and chips vs. fish ‘n’ chips (see ibid: 269ff).
Finally, the concept of eurhythmy needs to be discussed briefly. Eurhythmy can be understood as a succession of strong and weak elements that produces perfect timing, in which English seems to prefer a certain alteration between strong and weak units on and above the foot level (Giegerich 1992: 273). However, some sentences lend themselves better to this than others. The poems in R2 of unit 1 were chosen because of their relatively strong eurhythmic quality. In the kids pat dogs example above, the first renditions are clearly more eurhythmic than the last one, in which only with heavy connected speech reduction relative isochrony can be maintained. The English preference for alteration can also explain why the phases sweet and sour or hot and spicy, in which there is a clear alteration between strong and weak units (/'swiːtən'saʊər/), are preferred over their conceivable alternatives sour and sweet or spicy and hot, where two weak units would occur in succession (/'saʊərən'swiːt/).
[1] I usually use the small capital D symbol to represent the alveolar tap in American English. This is a symbol often used for the coronal oral stop archiphoneme (Giegerich 1992: 243) and is sometimes used in American publications to replace the IPA symbol [ɾ], which is in this case thought to represent the coronal tap, as opposed to the American coronal flap. The rationale in a teaching context, however, is merely a pedagogical one in that [D] illustrates the sound quality better than [ɾ].
[2] Note that a distinction has been made between stress and syllable timed languages. This distinction, however, is misleading since the relationship is a scalar and not a dichotomous one (Szczepek Reed 2011: 140). Spanish, for example, is often referred to as syllable timed, but actually has characteristics of both systems (Giegerich 1992: 259). And even among one language group there are significant differences, as Chun has shown instrumentally by comparing English and German rhythm (Chun 2002: 177ff).
