Developing Accurate English Speech Skills: Introducing International Phonetic Alphabet to ESL Learners
Many have sought mastery of the lingua franca, English. However, the language’s irregular phonology-orthography has posed a considerable impediment to learners’ competence, which is largely determined by their productive and perceptive speech skills. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), whose primary utility lies chiefly in linguistic research rather than pedagogical purposes, may potentially be a viable tool for overcoming this barrier. The purpose of the article is to certify the significance of IPA in pronunciation training in the context of teaching English as a second language (TESL) with close scrutiny of four core literature pieces, including historical background investigations, practical instructions, and qualitative and quantitative research. In addition, themes, such as causes of English pronunciation difficulty, pedagogical and learning technicalities, modes of English pronunciation teaching, and discriminatory linguistic judgements, will also be explored.
Allegra’s book chapter presents readers with a historical context of L2 pedagogical methodologies and their subsequent integration with the IPA, which she favours for Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). She commences discussing the history of English pronunciation instruction, first introducing the direct method, whose aim is for learners to acquire accurate articulation of the L2 through intuitive imitations, in the 1800s, which lasted almost two centuries (1 – 2). Despite the downside, i.e., the hindrance of students’ L2 segmental and suprasegmental development, which is due to the method’s exclusive reliance on pupils’ shadowing ability, such an approach remained prevalent until the late nineteenth century, when IPA was devised and later gained popularity as a result of the Reform Movement, which established the course of future pronunciation teaching, e.g., provide phonetic training for pupils, and reduced the direct method’s dominance (2). The IPA quickly flourished, especially during the Second World War (WWII), in which higher proficiency of speech skills of other languages is required for espionage. This gave rise to the army method (2). Following WWII is the golden age of pronunciation teaching in which numerous teaching methods such as the audiolingual method, which underlines the significance of productive speech skill accuracy, were plentifully available (2). Pedagogies encouraged IPA use and emphasised phonemes, allophonic variations, and suprasegmentals (2), thereby further boosting IPA use. Nevertheless, the development of the cognitive approach, whose advocates deemed acquiring native-like pronunciation impossible and accentuated imitations and fluency, in the 1960s, caused the decline of the IPA (3). Not until the introduction of the communicative language teaching approach in the 1980s, during which English learners needed means to ameliorate their pronunciation since fluency per se did not suffice for communication (Celce-Murcia et al. and Morley, qtd. in Allegra 3 – 4), the IPA revives.
Allegra then elucidates the pedagogical implications of the IPA. She corroborates the importance of IPA with an enumeration of the benefits of IPA use in TESL, including better diagnosis of pronunciation, teaching segmental and suprasegmental elements, etc. (5 – 6). Additionally, she recommends the target language’s phonetic features be introduced to increase students’ awareness of aspects that influence language competence, and phonemic transcriptions be used as a pronunciation resource to furnish learners with practice opportunities converting from orthography into IPA and vice versa (4).
Notwithstanding the thorough introduction, Allegra’s insensitive locution, however, implicitly propose a hierarchy of accents, with some considered of higher quality, and refutes the legitimacy of regional and dialectal pronunciation variations as she pens that IPA provides learners with standard and accurate pronunciations, despite speakers’ regional variants; the IPA enables pupils to recognise the right pronunciation regardless of instructors’ potentially ‘confusing dialect’ or ‘incorrect’ pronunciation (5). Allegra’s expertise and the chapter’s objectivity may be in question as a result of the ideologically spurious bias. This school of thought appears to weaponise the IPA to eliminate other accents that are less highly regarded. Accent, on the other hand, are culturally and individually representative (Cheng 2). It is believed that the IPA should be used for descriptive purposes, i.e., to display common pronunciations, in lieu of prescriptive, i.e., to compartmentalise pronunciations into non- and standard. It could be concluded that linguists might have personal, subjective opinions regarding pronunciations.
It is true that the paper of Atkielski, unlike Allegra’s, is a comprehensive guide to IPA use in TESL, but it is equally true that it contains conceptually dubious analyses and viewpoints. He begins with a catalogue of advantages of employing phonetic transcriptions, such as preventing ambiguity and redundancy, signifying variations between pronunciations of words in isolated form and connected speech, and fulfilling diagnostic purposes (1), justifying the use of IPA in TESL. Meanwhile, he highlights drawbacks, e.g., requiring teachers and learners’ familiarity with IPA, which could be daunting; he, however, contends that the psychological aversion can be overcome by expounding the benefits of IPA (2). In addition, he describes that IPA acquisition can often be achieved within two hours (2). Such claims are, nevertheless, unpersuasive and unsubstantiated, as they contradict most authoritative scholarly discourses such as Allegra’s, in which she writes that extensive exposure for internalisation of knowledge, i.e., IPA, is required (6), and common sense.
Atkielski proceeds with the fundamentals of transcription, in which he distinguishes between ‘broad’ and the ‘narrow’ transcription by asserting that the former omits phonetic features that identify regional accents (2). However, this is again flawed as ‘broad’ transcriptions found in dictionaries, indicating non- or rhoticity, contrast pronunciation variances between the British and the American accent. He also stresses the importance of phonemes and the necessity of fully mastering them with definitions of phonemes, alleging that vowel lengths and nasality are not phonemic, in contrast to vowel quality (5 – 6). Nonetheless, such definitions are not altogether accurate because words, such as ‘ferry’ and ‘fairy’, in Australian English are differentiated by vowel length rather than quality (Miller 17). Such a misconception could be detrimental to Australian English (and possibly other Englishes) learners’ perceptive speech skills development. English varieties should be accommodated.
Conforming to conventional research approaches, Youcef’s discourse argues that IPA application in English oral and listening education contributes to the overcoming of English spelling and pronunciation’s incoherence (63), students’ full knowledge of their mistakes, and objective assessments of their performance (75).
Youcef states that the majority of English sounds are overrepresented, whilst certain non-contrastive sounds, such as schwas in weak-form functional words and morphophonemic rules, are under- or even non-represented (65 – 66). Examples include schwas in weak-form functional words and unstressed syllables and morphophonemic rules, such as past and past particle morphemes (-ed), simple present third-person singular verb morphemes (-s/-es), and the plural noun suffixes (-s/-es). Their phonemic realisations vary depending on the preceding sound, e.g., voiced, voiceless, or sibilant. Furthermore, the irregular stress patterns of words derived from a shared root create complications (66). She further delineates that often the incoherence eventuates uneconomical, overloaded, and arrhythmic pronunciations, as well as poor connected speech performance, using the example of Algerian francophones (67), illustrating that the English spelling-pronunciation inconsistency makes oral production and reception particularly difficult for L2 learners, who are subject to first language (L1) interference.
Following the coherent contextual exposition, Youcef likewise offers pedagogical advice, one of which affirms that transcriptions, i.e., visual representations of pronunciation, should not be limited to selected words but should encompass the entire text, and spacing between transcription words should be avoided (74). Youcef, on the other hand, does not appear to have considered practical problems. While transcriptions assist learners in comprehending natural connected speech and intonation, the application is impractical since the workload would be intolerable for both teachers, who produce and proofread the transcriptions, and students, who read and process the lengthy, convoluted, interconnected, almost incomprehensible transcriptions. Youcef, moreover, asserts that IPA should also be utilised as an objective tool for assessments since like dictations assess students’ listening comprehension, transcribing texts assesses their oral performance. However, having an acurate recognition of how the pronunciation of words should be does not always imply the capability of producing accurate sounds orally. The false analogy lacks cogency and the statement fails to accommodate the learner’s expectations in practice.
Arleo’s study, on the other hand, is angled differently to advocate for the introduction of the IPA to students with supporting survey findings, despite arguments, such as the impracticality of attaining near- or native pronunciation and ennui of IPA learning (40). He references data from an informal survey of IUT (Instituts universitaires de technologie) students’ prior experience of IPA practice and usage, which reveals amongst respondents who studied the IPA, the majority (71.6%) concurred that the was “somewhat” or “very useful” in foreign language learning; however, Arleo cautions readers that students and teachers might erroneously attribute the benefits to some training as the effectiveness is contingent upon factors, such as cognitive style and educational background (42 – 43). The survey also indicates a majority (62.8%) of informants found the IPA is “quite hard” or “very hard to learn” (43). Nevertheless, the term “learn” introduces ambiguities; Arleo points out that whilst narrow transcription is complex and requires lengthy drills, recognising the IPA as an aid to pronunciation is more manageable (43). Arleo’s conclusion reassures IPA advocates as it testifies students’ acceptance of IPA teaching in practice and dispels certain apprehension at IPA difficulty.
Arleo, moreover, concurs that over-demanding expectations should be abolished since “model speakers” do not exist; however, regard should be shown when inferior pronunciation handicaps communication (43). He refers to the insufficiency of awareness of the English phonology, including stress placements, rhythm, and pronunciation-orthography incoherence, and unravels the IPA’s role, i.e., as a backup of educational activities that offers a reasoned framework for pronunciation (44). To address possible encounters of de facto non- or native pronunciations, contrastive transcriptions should be provided (45). It is noteworthy that Arleo, unlike Allegra, exhibits impartiality, which is of critical importance as it avoids accentism and lends credence to academic research, in linguistic judgement and thus, decentralises the validity of pronunciation of specific accents.
Arleo continues with IPA teaching objectives, in which he states the IPA is a universal metalanguage that enables students to compare phonological systems and thereby facilitates foreign language learning (44). Arleo concludes that ideally, the IPA should be instructed initially for learners’ L1 and then for foreign languages in elementary school (50). It is believed that earlier introduction gives pupils more time to anchor phonetic knowledge and IPA use in their cognitive system (Allegra 6). It is, nonetheless, notable that in the case of TESL, teaching IPA symbols used for describing English phonology would already suffice; exposing learners to the complete IPA chart could be deemed time-consuming, irrelevant, and intimidating. Admittedly, it would be economical to study other languages’ phonological systems after the mastery of the English IPA symbols since memorisation of only a few additional symbols is required (Arleo 50).
The literature reviewed outlines the historical development and significance of the IPA, as well as practical approaches to IPA introduction, laying a solid theoretical and pedagogical foundation for further studies of the IPA’s effectiveness and potential approaches to TESL. Extending Arleo’s qualitative research, a larger scale of empirical investigation (possibly national or even global in scope) might be conducted for more representative findings that provide insights into learners and pedagogues’ attitudes, the optimal age of introduction, and future applications of the IPA. Besides, it is equally crucial to probe into linguists’ ideologies of accents and pronunciation expressed in discourses since analyses, especially early ones, of regional pronunciation differences can be potentially obstructed; previous impacted studies should be revised. Eventually, a descriptive step-by-step guide of IPA instruction for TESL educators should also be pioneered at some point.
Works Cited
Core literature:
Allegra, Mary. “Role of Phonetic Alphabets for Teaching Pronunciation.” The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, 2018, pp. 1–7.
Arleo, Andy. “Should IUT Students Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet?.” Cahiers de l’APLIUT, vol. 12, no.4, 1993, pp. 39–52.
Atkielski, Anthony. “Phonetic Transcription Can Be a Useful Tool for Teaching or Correcting Pronunciation in the ESL/EFL Classroom.” Using Phonetic Transcription in Class, 2005, pp. 1–12.
Beghoul, Youcef. “Using the International Phonetic Alphabet in Teaching English Oral Production and Reception to Algerian Learners as a Potentially Efficient Solution to the Sound Spelling Incoherence.” Sciences Humaines, vol. B, no. 48, 2017, pp.63–78.
Other references:
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Cheng, Li-Rong Lilly. “Moving beyond Accent: Social and Cultural Realities of Living with Many Tongues.” Topics in Language Disorders, vol. 19, no. 4, 1999, pp. 1–10.
Miller, N. & Lowit, A. “Motor speech disorders: A cross-language perspective.” Multilingual Matters, 2014.
Morley, J. “The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages.” TESOL Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, 1991, pp. 481 – 519.
