Minimal is maximal

Hi there, dear visitors. This post is about minimal pair drills. Yes, those "boring" and "silly" exercises! That's what people say (at least most of them). However, I have dealt with them (applying this technique in class) for quite a while and noticed they are not like that at all.

We know how difficult it is to have our students pronounce the English sounds correctly. They mispronounce them repeatedly because they just can't realize, most of the times, the difference they have comparing to their mother tong as well as if compared to other similar sounds in English. And that's exactly when it comes to be pretty useful for us to adopt minimal pair drills.

As soon as one gets to practice, hearing and pronouncing, two words that only differ by just one sound (minimal pairs), the distance between these sounds gets highlighted by their peculiarities (points of articulation, manner of articulation, intensity). In addition, the words which compound the minimal pairs provide the phonemes being analyzed with a context, by their meanings themselves or through the sentences they may come in.

In this concern, exercises like

berry x very (a great confusion to Spanish speakers)

rice x lice (which may be challenging to Japanese people)

pen x pan (a "karma" to Brazilians)

can be of great help, as the problematic sounds are precisely contrasted and adequately contextualized by words, which would be funny in exemples like

He's a berry nice fellow

I'm starving. I want to eat some lice.

I'll use the new pen to cook.

As to students' first language interference, minimal pair drills help achieve the necessary accuracy of the sounds in focus so that these can be efficiently distinguished from the learner's native ones.

Phonemic chart

Hey, everybody, I have just found this awesome chart of the English phonology phonemes and I would like to share that with you. Super interactive, it highlights the sound we choose by pronouncing it and giving a word which has this sound. Check it out:

One Stop English Phonemic Chart

My Fair King

I have just watched the so famous Academy Award best picture winner: The King's Speech, and I was amazed by the astonishing work Tom Hooper directed as far as it made me remember My Fair Lady so much. As a matter of fact, it is as brilliant as this last one.

The movie is about King George VI (played by Colin Firth), who has to overcome his stammering in order to pronounce his speechs, specially by the time England gets involved in the Second World War.

The movie starts when King George VI, then Duke of York, has to read a message from his father, King George V, at the closing ceremony of the British Empire Exibition. In this occasion he does not succeed in his task and begin to stammer dreadfully. Because of such a problem he tried some doctors to help him overcome his problem (one of them even makes him put some marbles into his mouth and try to read a book passage – reminds you of anything?) but with no success at all. At least until his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonhan Carter), persuades him to see Lionel Logue (amazingly interpreted by Geoffrey Rush).

Lionel (Higgins?!) then starts to work on muscle relaxation and breath control, while simultaneously probing the psychological roots of his stammer (which had its roots on the treatment he had been trough when he was a kid).

But what I really liked in this movie, besides the funny (but effective) techniques used by Lionel, was the psichological matter about the King's problem. I mean, it was not just a matter of "mechanic problems", as he and his wife thought.

This can be quite a good reminder to us (teachers) that our students, when not getting to pronounce properly, may have anatomical or, even worse, psichological troubles relating to that. Therefore, we must be very cautious about the way we teach phonology to our students and about what we ask from them.

Finally (and beautifully), the movie is also about friendship. In addition to the extreme sensibility Lionel has as to the King, he is also a very good friend.

Harry Potter and the American accent

Talking about L1 interference, let us take a look at four of the characters of the Harry Potter movie series (BBC  English speakers) trying to pronounce some sentences in the American way:

L1 interference – a challenge

The interference generated by the learner's native language phonological system is such a challenge for teachers of English "phono" to overcome. As far as we use our mother tongue most of the time, it is predictable that we will surely face problems of dealing with the target language phonological system. And this is quite comprehensive because one needs to rely on something (in this case, some phonogical reference) when constructing what is called interlanguage. It is something we (teachers) face very frequently: we struggle to make our students' pronunciations sound better and better and even though some of them still cannot achieve what we hope for. Jus like in this case:

Nevertheless, the problem might consist precisely on trying to get rid of this influence. How come?! Well.. it should be clear that one (as a majority) cannot, and should not, lose his accent. It is his identity, his heritage, with/through which he is going to express himself. According to studies enlightened by interlanguage, there is this in-between language stage which consists of the linguistic system that has been constructed by the input of the L2 while preserving some features of the L1. Thus, taking in consideration that interlanguage IS built up by both L2 AND L1 interferences, instead of denying our L1 phonological system, we should use it to help us. For instance, we can use the lisp condition as a technique for those who cannot realize the correct place of articulation of the 'th' sound (see How to pronounce the 'th' sound). In this way, by using "old things" in a new way, I believe it is possible to create a new-learning enviroment.