English as a lingua franca Lingua Inglese 2 LM modulo B

/hi: cæn du:/ I’mI am /hi: c ə n du:/ /ti:t∫ ə //ti:t∫ ə r/

 What mispronunciations lead to a breakdown in communication? What mispronunciations make no difference to understanding? (Jenkins, 2002)

The following items were found to be essential for good understanding (a selection):  / I / versus /i:/ (‘i’ versus ‘ee’)  /p/, /t/, /k/ versus /b/, /d/, /g/  initial consonant clusters eg. strong  use of tonic stress e.g. He came by TRAIN v. HE came by train.

 /ð/ and /θ/  the schwa sound / ə /

 place more stress on teaching the items that lead to misunderstanding than on the ones that don’t.

I have / Do you have? I have got / Have you got? We have been waiting for an hour We are waiting for an hour If I had…If I would have … your name is Jenny, isn’t it? your name is Jenny, no? your name is Jenny, right?

 ‘dropping’ third person –s  interchangeable use of who and which  flexible use of articles (omission or insertion)  invariant tag questions, e.g. ‘isn’t it?’ or ‘no?’ instead of ‘shouldn’t they?’  additional prepositions, as ‘we have to study about..’  frequent use of simple verbs (do, make, have)  heightened explicitness, e.g. ‘black colour’, ‘how long time...?’  infinitives replaced by ‘that’ clauses – I want that (Seidlhofer 2004)