Educational Blog, Phonetic & Phonology

 "Identifying and Correcting English Pronunciation Errors in Spanish Speakers"

Belkis Carolina Hernández - 20070004428
Dany Josue Hernández - 20171002577
Nora Beatriz Mendoza - 20181032049

Pronunciation errors occur when a sound in the target language, such as English, does not exist in the native language of the speaker which is Spanish. It can also be a certain sequence of sounds or a specific position of a sound in a word that never occurs in the speaker’s native language. And when this happens, speakers tend to pronounce a different sound, but to some extent, something similar exists in their language. However, not all Spanish speakers will make all these mistakes, this depends on the origin, dialect, and many other things, and these are not all the possible pronunciation mistakes that Spanish speakers face, but rather we talk about the most common.

Studies of errors produced by second-language speakers developed during the 1960s and emerged as an alternative to contrastive analysis and behaviorism. Error analysis promotes that not all deviant forms are due to the influence of the mother tongue, as contrastive analysis maintained. Apprentices go through different stages in the acquisition process and this is transmitted in the mistakes they make. This current provides a concrete methodology for the study of errors since they provide data on the acquisition process such as information on the student’s learning; as well as tests for the researcher on language learning; and tools that help the student to enter the rules of the second language.

The research on error analysis includes the steps to make a more effective analysis in which we have the collection of data on the language of the learner, as well as the identification of errors, followed by the description thereof, the explanation, and to the conclusion of the assessment. As with contrastive analysis, error analysis was criticized, as it only observes isolated elements of language and not language as a whole; on the other hand, it shows methodological problems in the different steps of its analysis system and does not take into account the process of language development by the learner, as well as evasion strategies. In addition, in language learning, we find two types of errors, which are interlingual errors and developmental errors. The former reflects the student’s mother tongue and is due to "negative transfer" or "interference" from the first language to the second. An example of interlingual error would be maintaining the order of "subject + verb" in an interrogative sentence. By interference from Spanish, the structure is maintained in English rather than making the inversion of auxiliary verbs and subjects. On the contrary, it is the mistakes of development that are due to the development of one’s learning. In this case, applying the English suffix "-er" to the verb "cook" to form the noun referring to "activity and/or work" would be a development error.

There are different theories about the treatment of error in the history of teaching second languages that go from the behavioral idea, which is something that was worked on and is already overcome. In addition, error is something that is not allowed because it generates bad habits and even more pedagogical postures that consider that error is simply another phase of inevitable development and necessary to progress. From the point of view of teachers, it seems quite more profitable, pedagogically speaking, the second position. Now, this does not imply that you let the students talk "anyway" thinking that they will miraculously come to correction for themselves. To begin with, we can make a small distinction between the different types of errors that can be found in classes.

 

The first thing we have to take into account is that it is impossible and unprofitable to correct absolutely everything; if we act like this, the only thing we will achieve is to inhibit the student and that he is afraid to express himself.  First, a distinction must be made between error and fault. When they refer to the latter they want to talk about those contents or structures to which the student "has not yet arrived", neither internalized and, therefore, would not be correctable. These errors, it is called transitory, are characteristic of the interlingua states and will disappear when their hypotheses about the functioning of the language are confirmed. As a second point, we can speak of fossilized errors, which are those that, in principle, are not overcome. Like a foreigner who has lived in our country for years and years, but continues to make basic mistakes. And why does this happen? For most of the time because the apprentice has reached a level of communication that he believes is sufficient and is no longer so attentive and motivated, because he thinks he can communicate and develop in practically all situations that arise. Fossilized errors are mostly fossilizable errors that have not been given sufficient attention.

We can correct them for example, by presenting a text on how life will be in the future in which appears the form of the simple future we want to work in and then ask the students questions about their predictions about the future in order to be able to make hypotheses and extract the operation of the form; We will have to correct it if the answer does not meet expectations, since this type of exercise aims that, later, the general rule can be extracted from the operation.

Error pronuciation with letter /e/

Error 1: As students we think that learning a second language like English is something easy, but we do not know the variations it has. For example with the letter /E/ some people think that its pronunciation is the same as in Spanish but they don't know the difference in pronunciation of these phonemes. In both languages this is because Spanish has a direct relationship between what is written and what is pronounced and English can be written with the e and pronounced in different ways.

 

Explanation why this error occurs: The pronunciation of the /e/ in English has a phonetic that can vary, therefore it is a difficulty for native speakers of Spanish, however there is a way to achieve its correct pronunciation because we have a similar sound in our language, such as (elephant),(elefante) in Spanish.

 

 The /e/ in Spanish has the same sound but in English it is not pronounced the same when there is a double /e/ as for example (teen), in this case its pronunciation is different and it would be heard as (tin) as if it were the letter /I/ in Spanish

 

Exercise 1: To improve pronunciation in words with the letter /e/ here is a list of words that can be used to improve pronunciation

 

Educator

Educador

ˈɛdju(ː)keɪtə

Meet

Encontrarse

miːt

Plead

Declararse

pliːdü

  Exercise 2 : Generally at the end of a word the letter /e/ is not heard and the sounding vowel is also elongated by normal generla the letter /e/ the letter e should be silent and that the previous vowel is lengthened and heard as an i.

 

Recipe

Receta

ˈrɛsɪpi

Please

Por favor

pliːz

See

Ver

siː

Speak

Hablar

spiːk

Bi

Ser o estar

baɪ

She

Ella

ʃiː

He

El

hiː

 

 

Error 2: Pronunciation of I/i/ in words

 

Spanish speakers believe that saying the vowels in English are the same as in Spanish but it is totally the opposite, we must not relate English with Spanish because both writing and pronunciation are different and this is the case of the letter /I/ in English the letter /i/ when pronounced is heard as /e/ not asExpla

 Explanation why this error occurs: This happens when we relate the writing with the pronunciation but although they are heard the same their pronunciation will always be different, as for example (It), which means "it" but is pronounced (et) as if we change the letter "i" for the letterExerci

Exercise 1

(iceberg), /ˈaɪs.bɜːɡ/;

ignite (encender), /ɪɡˈnaɪt/; y

 finger (dedo), /ˈfɪŋ.ɡər/ü  

Exercise 2

To further improve your pronunciation, record yourself saying the words you want to learn and then listen to the recording to see where you need to correct.

 pink (rosa)

, link (unlink

 bin (contenedor).

Pronunciation of ch/sh

One of the most common problems that we can find among Spanish speakers is the confusion in the pronunciation of words with Ch and sh. we tend to confuse the pronunciation of sh and replace it with Ch, for example we mention the word show as chow and this is because in Spanish there is no such sound of the sh. There are also words in English such as chef or Chicago that must be pronounced with the sh.

Exercises to work

 Objective: The main objective for this activity is, first, to practice vocabulary and to learn the main differences between the /sh/ and /ch/ consonant sounds. 

 

Exercise 1

You can explain to them to use one specific color (their favorite color, for example) for each sound, and then you can practice by saying the words and then they repeat after you.

 

 

Exercise to improve the pronunciation of “ch”.

The objective of this exercise is for students to explore their imaginations and to practice the pronunciation of the Ch.

 

One of the exercises that can help us improve the pronunciation of “ch” in English is the creation of short stories, the teacher will begin to give a word that begins with “ch” for example “chat”, and then the teacher will ask each for a word student and write them on the board. When they have all the words, they will begin to order the words and create their own stories using adjectives and pronouns.

When the students finish writing their stories, they will take turns reading their stories.

Words to practice

Chat

Chip    

Ship

Chop   

Shop

Chin

Shin

Cheap/Cheep

Sheep

Chuck

Shuck

 

 

 
Pronunciation of gh
Another problem is the pronunciation of the gh, there are many possibilities in terms of its pronunciation and this tends to confuse us at the time of pronunciation. For example, in compound words we can pronounce the gh in separate sounds as in the word doghouse. In other words, we find the gh the h loses its sound like the word ghost. And we also find the cases where the gh becomes silent, for example flight, night etc.

Exercises 1
The teacher will show some words with gh, he will ask the students to start pronouncing them.
Then the teacher will explain the correct pronunciation of the words and they will begin to pronounce them together.

Exercise 2
With the guide and after the explanation of the correct pronunciation of the gh sound, the students will fill out a worksheet.

 

 

Reflections

Nora Beatriz Mendoza

  When carrying out this work, I discovered that many of the difficulties or common mistakes that we make in learning a second language are due to the influence of our mother tongue.

English is complicated for us Spanish-speaking students, because some phonemes that we find in English do not exist in our mother tongue, that is why we tend to get confused in the pronunciation of words. This is why it is very important to spend more time on it and implement the correct practice in the pronunciation of the words.

As future teachers of the English area, we must learn to create and implement techniques, methods, exercises and all kinds of materials to improve the teaching of the language in the classroom, since we have realized that the use of our creativity especially helps students with pronunciation problems.

The most common mistakes are the pronunciation of ch, sh, r, l, gh, the vowels and their correct sounds. I had some confusion when trying to find exercises to improve the pronunciation of these phonemes and I think that every day we should update ourselves with new ones. strategies.

Belkis Carolina Hernández

I considered that making mistakes when speaking or writing in a new language is not only necessary, it is a good sign. Because if we don’t make mistakes, we’re not trying to learn the language correctly. When you start learning a foreign language, there are always things that will not be remembered easily and this will happen until our brain is not ready, which if we can do is continue to use the new language as much as possible, reading, listening, talking, and writing. In the end, that difficult word or phrase will begin to become easier and more natural. In addition, making a mistake or being aware that the language was not spoken as desired, is an opportunity to improve, to grow in knowledge and that means we’re noticing aspects of the language we didn’t know before and we’re starting to focus on how language works.

Dany Josue Hernández

The strengths that I liked about this topic were that for every pronunciation error there is always a way to better understand how to pronounce each word that looks the same or similar in Spanish as in English but is pronounced differently. I was also glad to know that there are not only grammatical exercises, but there are also exercises to listen to and repeat what is heard.

References

ABA English: aprende inglés y llévalo al siguiente nivel . (s/f). ABA English (ES). 

 https://www.abaenglish.com/es/

Cómo pronunciar la E en inglés . (s/f). Inglés ABA (ES). (19745)

 https://www.abaenglish.com/es/fonetica-inglesa/e/

Lesson Plan Coaches. (2021, May 23). Errors Analysis. Lesson Plan Coaches. https://lessonplancoaches.com/errors-analysis-identify-and-diagnose-errors-for-a-typical-pakistani-students/

Pronunciation errors in English. (2019, July 24). ABA English.

Source of Errors in language learning research English language essay. (2022, July 29). Ukessays.com; UK Essays. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-language/source-of-errors-in-language-learning-research-english-language-essay.php

Walter, L. (2018, September 19). Ghosts, coughs and daughters: how to pronounce ‘gh’ in English. About Words - Cambridge Dictionary Blog. https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2018/09/19/ghosts-coughs-and-daughters-how-to-pronounce-gh-in-english/