Addressing Pronunciation Challenges for International Students

Erik Goodale, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA

Introduction

Pronunciation is an important component of English speaking. A student who possesses excellent English vocabulary and grammar but struggles with pronunciation will still have difficulty communicating with others. However, helping students with their English pronunciation comes with challenges, and teachers and students alike can struggle with how to overcome them. During my time as a speaking consultant in an academic context in the Midwestern part of the USA, I encountered a number of challenges that I have found to be less discussed but still frequent and had to implement various ways to address them. These challenges include the amount of exposure a student has with English, the quality of English sounds produced, adjusting to situations in which time is limited, and struggling with multisyllable words. In this article, I will discuss the observed challenges of international graduate students and provide practical, actionable strategies to help your students overcome them.

Need exposure? Tech and time!

A common concern is one that is almost never brought up by the students themselves but by the needs assessment conducted during their first session with me. This concern is the amount of exposure to, production of, and interaction with English. Frequently, what stands out the most after completing the assessment is a student having less than 2 hours of listening per day and less than 30 minutes of speaking per day. The reasons for such low contact with English, despite living in an English-speaking country, are numerous. Many students work in laboratories where everyone is focused on their own research and little oral communication occurs. Some workplaces are dominated by students with the same language, so what communication does occur is not in English. Many students also have spouses or roommates who share the same language thus limiting the amount of English spoken at home. Most students share the same language with the majority of their friends, limiting the amount of socializing in English. When opportunities to socialize in English present themselves, students often decline for reasons such as heavy research or class workloads, shyness or introversion, and/or fear of judgement of their English. Many people think that just by virtue of living in an English-speaking country their English will improve, but living in an English-speaking country while not actually using English is like going to the gym every day but never actually exercising.

To address this limited exposure, I encourage students to look at their schedules and see where they can increase English listening and speaking. Increasing listening is typically easiest and could involve things such as watching television/YouTube videos, listening to radio/podcasts, etc. I encourage students to incorporate such activities into their daily schedule in ways such as listening to a podcast while riding the bus to work/class or replacing the time spent watching Netflix in their first language with watching something in English. Speaking is more complicated as the student typically needs at least one other person to speak with. However, technology is rapidly reducing this need as AI tools such as ChatGPT can serve as a speaking partner. I also inform the students of available resources such as individual speaking consultations and speaking practice groups. I suggest initiating social interaction with classmates and colleagues by initiating small talk, making lunch invitations, etc. I strongly encourage them to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves such as dinner invitations or department social events. Students often view these events as unnecessary distractions, but I reframe them as opportunities to network and invest in their English. I stress that it is important to participate in a large amount of low-stakes interactions now to develop their skills for high-stakes interactions that will occur later.

Sound quality? Move that mouth!

One thing I observed from some of my students is that they do not need to move their mouth extensively in their first language. This lack of mouth movement then carries into their use of English which, by comparison, is a much more animated language in relation to mouth movement (SoHo Language Group, 2018). To illustrate, think of English vowels. Pronunciation of English vowels involve tension (such as /i/ as in feed), lip rounding (such as /u/ as in food), jaw dropping (such as /æ/ as in fad), and in the case of diphthongs multiple components along with movement within the mouth (such as /aʊ/ as in found). Change one of these components, and the sound of the vowel changes even if the location within the mouth does not change.

To address this, I explain and demonstrate how sounds that are problematic for the student are pronounced, directing them to pay close attention to my mouth movement. Technology such as YouTube and Google can assist with this process. I also give them feedback on what I see them doing. I encourage them to continue practicing such sounds at home in front of their bathroom mirror during the mornings and evenings to see and feel what their mouth is doing. Students should be warned that this exaggerated mouth movement will feel unnatural for a while, but it really does have an influence on their sound quality (Alfonso & Baer, 1982).

Time crunch? Synonyms!

People are often busy and graduate students especially so. Between coursework, research, and professional development, such students have a lot of work and not a lot of time. It should come as no surprise then that I often had students schedule appointments with me to give them feedback on their delivery of a presentation that they had to give in a few days’ time. In such situations, there may not be enough time to address certain pronunciation concerns. A student may simply be unable to adequately produce certain words or sounds in the given timeframe, or the student can produce the words or sounds but is overwhelmed by their frequency in the presentation and thus cannot produce them consistently.

In such situations, I encourage the use of synonyms, acronyms, or shortened versions of terminology that eliminates the problematic sounds. For example, I had a student whose presentation frequently had the word “relative” as a part of its terminology. However, the presence of both an /r/ and an /l/ made it a particularly difficult word for him to pronounce. Because it was not a critical piece of the term it was a part of, I had him use the full term near the beginning of his presentation and then establish that he would use a shortened term that did not contain “relative” for the remainder of his presentation.

Multisyllable words? Work backwards.

Situations often arise in which a student struggles with multisyllable words. For these situations, I have found it is often helpful to employ a strategy I learned from Dr. John Levis at Iowa State University. This strategy is to break the word into pieces and then have the student build the word backwards. One thing to be aware of, however, is that this can be counter-intuitive at first for the student, so I have found that it works best if I as the teacher serve as a model and build each piece for the student to follow. For example:

Word: Relational

Parts: Re – la – tion – al

Building backwards:

Teacher: Say “al” Student: “al”

Teacher: Say, “tional” Student: “tional”

Teacher: Say, “lational” Student: “tional”

Teacher: Say, “relational” Student: “relational”

If a student struggles with pronunciation at any point during the chain, I pause and focus on that section. For example, if a student is fine up until “lational” I focus on “lational”. If necessary, it can also be further broken down, so if the student is struggling with “lational” and the “la” combination seems to be what is causing the issue, I could have the student say, “ational” and then move to “lational”. This is also useful for consonant clusters such as “scr”, “bl”, etc.

Conclusion

Teaching English pronunciation is very rewarding but comes with certain challenges. However, examining a student’s schedule and using technology to increase their amount of English exposure, using increased mouth movement to improve the quality of English sounds, using synonyms for situations in which time is limited, and working backwards when a student is struggling with multisyllable words are methods to help address such challenges. While these concerns are not the only ones a teacher will face, they are prevalent enough that ESL instructors should come prepared to deal with them when working with English language learners.

References

Alfonso, P. J., & Baer, T. (1982). Dynamics of Vowel Articulation. Language and Speech, 25(2), 151-173. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383098202500203

SoHo Language Group. (2018, June 20). Read My Lips: Why Foreign Speakers Should Open Their Mouths To Be Understood. Cultural Differences, Language. https://soholanguagegroup.com/read-my-lips-why-foreign-speakers-should-open-their-mouths-to-be-understood/

Dr. Erik Goodale has his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Technology from Iowa State University. He has worked as an English Speaking Consultant and Interpersonal Communication Consultant at the Center for Communication Excellence for over five years, holding individual consultations, facilitating peer speaking practice groups, and developing and presenting workshops on presentations and professional communication. He has also taught English speaking courses for international teaching assistants for two years. His research interests include pronunciation, speaking consultations, and oral communication.