1. Research-Based Intelligibility Challenges & Techniques
Teaching Pronunciation to Chinese Learners by
Dave Breedlove & Jun Li

2. A Research-Based Approach to Pronunciation Instruction
What affects intelligibility?
Contrastive Analysis: Where are Chinese learners coming from?
Techniques& Activities for the Classroom.

3. A Research-Based Approach to Pronunciation Instruction
“Ultimately, the teacher's goal should be to analyze students' speech and help them select areas for practice based on empirical findings.” - Derwing & Munro 2005
A Research-Based Approach to
Pronunciation Instruction

4. Measuring Pronunciation
Intelligibility
Comprehensibility
Accentedness

5. Intelligibility
“The extent to which the speaker’s intended utterance is actually understood by the listener” – Derwing & Munro 2005

6. Comprehensibility
“The listener’s perception of the degree of difficulty encountered when trying to understand an utterance” – Derwing & Munro 2005

7. Accentedness
“A listener’s perception of how different a speaker’s accent is from that of the L1 community.” – Derwing & Munro 2005

8. Using empirical research to help prioritize pronunciation elements
Setting goals & expectations

9. What affects intelligibility?
Looking at the research to decide which pronunciation features should be focused on in the classroom.
What affects intelligibility?

10. Selecting Segmentals using Functional Load
Word Stress
Intonation Patterns
Sentence Stress

11. English Consonants vs. Chinese Consonants
Special difficulties for Chinese Students
We used a study of the Contrastive Analysis Project from the department of linguistics at University of Michigan. The develop team consisted of J.C. Catford, project Director, English and Chinses scholars.

12. 4. Consonant clusters: add a vowel
1. Voicing:
bill, do, get
2. Aspiration:
stop, spell
3. Final consonant:
- leave off
- add a vowel
4. Consonant clusters: add a vowel
5. Dark /l/
What you see on the screen is the consonants of English. The circled phonemes are not shared with Chinese.
1. Notice that all Chinese stops, affricatives, and fricatives (except /r/)are voiceless.
2. /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are similar to Chinese, but not quite the same.
3. /X/: Chinese /x/ is similar to /h/, but with velar friction, which is completely lacking in English.
4. /r/: English is rounded, Chinse is unrounded.
With this in mind, let’s have a look of the Special difficulties for the Chinese student:
Voicing: Chinese distinguish between the two sets by aspiration, not voicing because both are voiceless. E.g. bill, do, get
Aspiration: Chinese aspirated sounds are nearly always strongly aspirated， for example 吃饭， 刺猬，瀑布； English aspiration is strong in the word-initial position, week in middle and final position; voiceless stops are also unaspirated following /s/: stop
Final consonants: Chinese has no consonants except /n/ and /ŋ/ at the end of the syllables. Two types of mistakes are common. - leave off the final consonant: lab, stop, add a vowel after the final consonant: booke, eate,
Consonant clusters: add a vowel: perofessor, geround
Dark /l/: table, help

14. English Vowels vs. Chinese Vowels
Special difficulties for Chinese Students

15. This chart shows tongue positions.
English vowel phonemes: high-low, front back, tense and lax features.
Chinese chart has a basically triangular shape, with no phonemic contrast between front and back vowels on either the mid or the low levels. No lax and tense. .

16. The Chinse vowels form a triangular system with a pointed bottom; the English sounds form a quadrilateral system with a flat bottom.
Chinse sounds that do not occur as phonemes in English are circled;
English vowels that do not occur as phonemes in Chinse lie outside the V shape.
Special difficulties:
Tongue movement: The Chinse vowel system distinguishes only three degree of height and has no phonemic distinction between front and back on the mid and low levels.
Tense-lax distinction: Chinse has no lax vowels. The distinction between tense and lax vowels is therefore difficult for Chinese speakers. /i/ and /ɪ/ , /e/ and /ɛ/, /u/ /ʊ/

18. ACTIVITIES Description & Analysis Listening Discrimination
Controlled Practice
Guided Practice
Communicative Practice

19. Segmentals
Description & Analysis
Describing how the sound is made – Using drawings, tools, hands, etc. to show students how the sound is made with the mouth.
Color-coding system – Colors align with target sounds; can be helpful when dealing with spelling issues (different spelling for vowels or the same spelling for consonants).
Voicing, Aspiration, releasing – Raising awareness of these for consonants using papers to see air movement or hands on throats to feel vibration.
Awareness Raising – Drawing students’ attention to certain affects by using spelling and contrasting with similar sounds.
Listening Discrimination
Minimal Pairs – Using both regular and contextualized minimal pairs (CM, B, & G) to help train students’ ears for different sounds.
Controlled Practice
Minimal Pairs – Students use L/D pairs to practice their own production
Dialogues – Including targeted sounds in dialogues and having students read them aloud allows students the chance to produce the segmentals in actual speech. Before reading, students can be asked to highlight the targeted sounds.
Guided Practice (demo)
Information Gap (CM, B, & G) – Including targeted sounds in information gap activities can provide good chances for practice. (google: minimal pairs, the first one: calendar & schedule: demo)
Communicative Practice
Including vocabulary with targeted sounds.

20. Word Stress
Description & Analysis
Awareness Raising – Teaching syllables and the basic rules governing word stress in English (origin, grammatical function, and affixation)
Using Movement – Exaggerate and describe stress and unstressed syllables using movements to highlight the difference for students.
Using Visual Aids – Showing words with syllables in different size fonts or somehow a visual representation of stress.
Listening Discrimination
CM, B, & G suggest using nonsense syllables to help train students’ ears (la LA, LA la, la LA la)
Stress Dictation – Once students get used to the idea, teacher produces words with correct stress and asks students to write them, somehow showing the stressed syllable. The teacher can use overemphasized stress at first to help students get the hang of it.
Advanced Dictation – Give students a reading where they can predict where stress will fall once they know the rules (CM, B, & G).
Controlled Practice
Fill-in-the-Blank (CM, B, & G): In word banks for fill-in-the-blank activities, vocabulary can be presented in a way which shows its stressed syllables. Students can then practice saying them after they finish the exercise.
Word Banks – Students can keep their own word banks or vocabulary cards that include some representation of stress placement and can be used for self-practice later.
Dialogues – Teachers can provide students with dialogues and ask them to mark word stress and then have them practice saying it.
Guided Practice (audience)
Place Names (CM, B, & G) – Having students ask each other where they are from is a good source of word stress practice because the placement varies a lot by country and city names.
Make your own job – Having students create fantasy jobs is a good chance to practice word stress shift – having students make titles for their jobs, etc.
Communicative Practice
Password (CM, B, & G) – Playing the game password can provide good word stress practice.

21. Sentence Stress
Description & Analysis
Awareness Raising – Introducing Thought Groups is an important step in learning about sentence stress. This can be done by using punctuation and relating it to thought groups.
A Highlighter (CM, B, & G) – Introduce prominent elements or sentence stress by pointing out that emphasizing a word in a sentence can act as a highlighter.
Listening Discrimination
Basic Discrimination – Teacher reads the same sentence but moves stress around the sentence (I love you vs I love you, etc.). Students place the stress either by writing or some physical movement.
Dialogues – Students listen to dialogues and mark the stressed word in each sentence or thought group.
Controlled Practice
Dialogues – Students practice reading provided dialogues, possibly after marking the stressed word in each thought group. At earlier stages of practicing this idea, students can exaggerate to get the hang of it. (matching)
Set Responses (Adapted from CM, B, & G) – Students are asked questions that allow for the same response but with different stress (What are you doing? I’m LIStening. Who’s Listening? I’m listening…).
Guided Practice
Prepared Dialogues – Any time students are given a change to prepare a dialogue or even a speech, ask them to read through their work and somehow note where the stress will fall in each thought group. Then practice speaking with the correctly stressed elements.
Communicative Practice
Swap & Discuss – If students write a short response or make a short dialogue with a partner, ask them to underline the sentence stress. Then ask them to swap with another group who then changes the stress placement and gives it back. Students then discuss the change in meaning caused by stress shifts.

22. Intonation
Description and Analysis
Visual Aids – Visually describe targeted intonation patterns, especially at lower levels when explicit rule instruction may not be helpful. This can include drawing a line to mimic the contours of the pattern.
Explicit Rule Instruction (CM, B, & G) – More advanced students can be explicitly made aware of rules for targeted intonation patterns.
Listening Discrimination
Mmm (CM, B, & G) – Using the different version of “Mm” used in English to show different meaning. Students listen for which is being used.
Questions & Statements (adapted from CM, B, & G) – Teacher can read sentences either as statements or questions (“He’s tired.” vs “He’s tired?”) and students decide which it is.
Dialogues – Students listen to dialogues and try to follow and somehow mark the intonation contours.
Controlled Practice
Dialogues – Students can then use these dialogues to practice reading them together to follow the intonation contours.
Guided Practice
Building Conversations – Teacher provides students with a set of questions (aimed at targeted intonation contours) and asks students to make conversations that include the questions.

23. References
Beckman, M.E., & Peer, S. (2010). The intelligibility of Chinese-accented English to International and American Students at a U.S. University. The Ohio State University.
Defense Language Institute (1974). A contrastive study of English and Mandarin Chinese. Retrieved from
Field, J. (2005). Intelligibility and the listener: The role of lexical stress. TESOL quarterly, 39(3),
Jin, S. , & Liu, C. (2014). Intelligibility of American English vowels and consonants spoken by international students in the united states. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(2),
Hahn, L. D. (2004). Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL quarterly, 38(2),
Isaacs, T., & Trofimovich, P. (2012). Deconstructing comprehensibility. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34(03),
Kang, O., & Moran, M. (2014). Functional Loads of Pronunciation Features in Nonnative Speakers' Oral Assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 48(1),
Kang, O., Rubin, D. O. N., & Pickering, L. (2010). Suprasegmental measures of accentedness and judgments of language learner proficiency in oral English. The Modern Language Journal, 94(4),
Kang, O. (2010). Relative salience of suprasegmental features on judgments of L2 comprehensibility and accentendess. System, 38(2),
Munro, Murray J., and Tracey M. Derwing. "The functional load principle in ESL pronunciation instruction: An exploratory study." System 34, no. 4 (2006):
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (2008). Segmental acquisition in adult ESL learners: A longitudinal study of vowel production. Language learning, 58(3),
Rogers, C. , & Dalby, J. (2005). Forced-choice analysis of segmental production by Chinese-accented English speakers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 48(2), 306.

24. Contact Information
Dave Breedlove:
Jun Li: