|
|
Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs
OFFICE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMS
Home > English
Language Programs > English
Teaching Forum > Volume
31 > Number 3
Testing Pronunciation
Augustin Simo Bobda
This article is motivated by the author’s observation that the evaluation
of students’ pronunciation is not given the place it deserves in many
EFL and ESL classes in Cameroon and probably elsewhere. It is supported
by the fact that the purpose of testing pronunciation is not only to
evaluate knowledge and award grades, but also, and probably more importantly,
to motivate students to be sensitive to this aspect of English. Given
that the motivation of many students for learning English is instrumental
rather than integrative, pronunciation tends to be neglected by many
learners as long as they know they will not be tested on it.
Obviously, pronunciation is tested globally in different types of conversational
exchange, interview, reading aloud, etc., that go on in the classroom.
What seems to be insufficient is the testing of accuracy-that is, testing
to assess the learner’s management of specific features, segmental or
suprasegmental. This insufficiency is due to two main causes. First,
many teachers do not consider it useful to test specific features. This
attitude is based on the belief that the mastery of specific features,
taken individually, does not matter much in real-life situations where
the context always (?) provides the cue for the learner to interpret
what he hears (Heaton 1988:64) or to make himself understood even if
the ideal quality of phonemes is not reached.
It is possible for people to produce practically all the correct
sounds but still be unable to communicate their ideas appropriately
and effectively. On the other hand, people can make numerous errors
in both phonology and syntax and yet succeed in expressing themselves
fairly clearly. (Heaton 1988:88)
The second, and surely more important, cause is the particular difficulties
involved in testing oral skills. One of the greatest problems in oral
testing is administration. It is often impossible to manage the large
number of students to be tested. Testing equipment, like laboratories
or tape recorders, is scarce in many Third World countries where English
is taught. Even when such material is available, testing may be rendered
impossible by the lack of even more basic facilities like electricity.
A further difficulty in oral testing arises when English is part of
a school-leaving or promotion examination for an entire country. In
most countries offering such examinations (e.g., Cameroon), candidates
over a large area have to respond, often in writing, to the same paper.
This exacerbates the problem of logistics.
Taking segmental phonemes and word stress as illustrations, this article
explores some ways of testing specific features of English pronunciation,
both as a teaching activity and as part of an examination. The ideal
way of testing pronunciation is to actually listen to the learner. But
since this is not always possible or suitable, the alternatives discussed
below can be used for testing segments and word stress. Throughout the
discussion, the illustrations are based on pronunciation problems of
Cameroonians.
Dictation
Given that speaking and listening skills are interrelated, dictation,
an old exercise, remains one of the ways of testing the learner’s pronunciation.
This testing method is based on the assumption that, most often, if
the learner has a deviant pronunciation of a word, he will not understand
it when it is read with a different pronunciation. For example, if a
student’s pronunciation of sword is [swOd], he/she will not understand
and therefore not spell it correctly if it is read (RP) [sOd].
A dictation exercise may appear in different forms. First, it may consist
of a whole passage incorporating target words to be tested. It may also
consist of a set of individual words incorporating the segmental or
stress features being tested. A third interesting type of dictation
consists in a cloze test: the testee is given a text from which target
words have been removed and replaced by blanks; the examiner reads the
full passage and the testee fills in the blanks with the words he has
heard. One precaution to take here is that the context should be as
neutral as possible; a context that is too supportive will elicit the
correct word even if the student’s pronunciation of it is faulty.
This type of cloze test has recently been used by Talom (1990) with
Upper Six Anglophone students of the Government Bilingual High School,
Yaounde. Using a British reader and a Cameroonian, for comparison, the
author obtained fascinating results. For example, the British reader’s
pronunciation of climbing as [klaImI˜] was often understood and spelt
as *climate, [fjU@l] (fuel) was understood as *few, [|pEz@nt] (peasant)
as *persons, *patients, *prisons, [|lEp@ds] (leopards) as *lepers, *labourers,
*letters, *left but, *locust, [mE@] (mayor) as *man, [pEsl] (pestle)
as *pencil, *parcel, *person, [|b{rI@] (barrier) as *barrack, *garage,
[|kvItId] (coveted) as *cavity, *carvity, *quality, and so on. The fact
that students’ spelling problems were caused by their deviant pronunciation
was confirmed by the fact that parallel groups of students submitted
to a Cameroonian reader encountered virtually no problems.
Test Segments
In addition to the various forms of dictation analysed above, there
are many listening activities (and others that could involve the interpretation
of gestures and pictures) designed to test the learner’s ability to
discriminate phonemes or groups of phonemes. Following are a few examples:
1. Same or Different? The testees listen to a pair of
words or pairs of sentences and indicate whether they are the same or
different; e.g.,
a. suck - sock
b. but - bought
c. seat - seat
d. hut - hurt
e. Is that my pen? Is that my pan?
f. He was severely beaten by his wife. He was severely bitten by his
wife.
The exercise can also be done by showing the testees a set of pictures
corresponding to words that elicit contrasting sounds; one of the words
is spoken by the examiner or played on tape.
2. a or b (or c)? A multitude of sound-discrimination
tests can be grouped under what can be broadly termed an a or b (or
c) test. For example, the testees are shown pictures eliciting the following
words:
1. a. sock b. sack
c. suck
2. a. cat b. cut c.
cart
3. a. court b. caught
c. cart
The examiner says, for example:
1. sack
2. cat
3. court
The testee writes the letter corresponding to the most appropriate
word; i.e., 1. b; 2. a; 3. a.
The exercise, in which the list can be reduced to minimal pairs, can
be done without pictures. But pictures are useful because they make
the class more lively. This type of exercise is probably one of the
simplest sound-discrimination tests.
3. Which Definition? A word is read twice, and several
different definitions, including one that is correct for the word, are
given; the testees are asked to select the correct definition for the
word heard; e.g.,
1. bought - bought
a. a vehicle that moves in the sea
b. past participle of buy
c. coordinating conjunction
2. hid - hid
a. not to like [hate?]
b. placed where it cannot be seen
c. knock
This type of exercise has the extra advantage that it tests vocabulary
at the same time.
4. Which Ones Are the Same? The testees listen to a list of words and
mark the ones that are the same.
1. a. pot b. pot c.
port
2. a. bid b. bit c.
bid
5. Fill the Gap. The testees listen to a sentence and select from a
set of words the one they hear; e.g.,
1. Did you see the --- you were looking for?
a. people b. pupi1
c. purple
2. He died at the age of --- .
a. forty b. fourteen
c. thirty
Using colour cards
Colour cards are particularly useful in testing the many phonological
alternations that exist in English; e.g., [s, z, Iz]; [t, d, Id]; [˜g,
˜], [aIn, aIt; In, It], [S, Z], [ks, gz], etc. After giving each testee
a set of cards of different colours corresponding to the various alternates,
the tester pronounces or writes forms and asks the students to show
the corresponding card. He may start by pronouncing some forms, a fairly
simple exercise if the lesson has been properly taught; e.g.,
[s], [z] or [Iz]?
books, schools, cats, churches, students’, plays, James’s
[t], [d] or [Id]?
wanted, added, jumped, robbed, increased, showed, carved
[ng] or [n]?
finger, singer, hanging, prolongation, prolonging
[aIn, aIt], or [In, It]?
Catherine, Muscovite, acolyte, finite,
masculine, infinite, valentine
[S] or [Z]?
version, invasion, conclusion, Persian, division, coercion, tension,
casual, measure, mansion
[ks] or [gz]?
maximum, taxi, exist, Texas, exhaust, taxonomy
Tests other than listening comprehension
Turning now from listening exercises to those specifically testing
the learner’s ability to perceive and identify segments, several writing
tests not combining listening are available. They include the controversial
phonetic transcription exercises, finding odd members out of a set,
regrouping, matching, and many other miscellaneous types.
1. Phonetic Transcription. It may be useful to observe
that many EFL and ESL textbooks on the syllabus in Cameroon use phonetic
transcriptions; e.g., Grant et al.’s (1977) Secondary English Project,
Atanga et al.’s (1987) Intensive English, and even more systematically,
Cripwell and Linsel’s (1990) Go for English.
Opinion is divided among teachers as to the relevance and/or possibility
of teaching or testing phonetic transcription in secondary school. The
reluctance of many teachers is due to the fact that they themselves
cannot cope with the exercise.
I have personally noticed that when secondary-school pupils have a
good introduction to phonetic transcriptions, many of them acquire the
skill quickly and even enjoy the exercise in the long run. My suggestion
is that, for want of a wholesale introduction to phonetic transcription,
students at least be taught to attempt partial transcription.
For example, students can be gradually introduced to the sounds of
English and eventually be made to transcribe specific sounds in a word.
They can, then, attempt such tasks as “Transcribe the sounds represented
by the underlined letters”: journey, peasant, favourite, penal, southern.
2. Finding an Odd Member. The testees are given sets
of words in which one word has a sound that differs from the others.
The question can be put thus: In each of the following sets of words,
three words have the same sound and one does not. Write down the number
and the letter of the one that does not.
1. a. dull b. bull
c. wool d. pull
2. a. warn b. dawn
c. scorn d. barn
3. a. pour b. poor
c. sure d. tour
3. Regrouping. The testees are given a list of words
and asked to regroup the words that have the same sound (it can be specified
whether the common sound is a vowel or a consonant):
let, say, gene, quay, meat, rate, maid, says, said
4. Matching. The testees are asked to find words that
have the same sound as a given word. This exercise is similar to the
one above. But here, the words illustrating the key sounds are suggested
and the testee is asked to find from the list words that have the same
sound; e.g., Find from the list below words that have the same sound
as the following:
cut, pot, push
tin, than, thatch
List of words:
swamp, buffalo, cook, one, swallow,
bosom, country, squander, bush
thing, Thames, either, although, three,
Mathilda, clothes, Theresa, cloth
Matching can also be done by finding the words that rhyme with a given
word; e.g., Pick out from the following list words that rhyme with
cat, lone, tore, poor, here, pair, respectively:
Joan, plait, bat, mere, tour, clear, rare, pour, chair, share, roar,
known, sure
5. Miscellaneous Ways of Testing Pronunciation. These
include asking testees to circle silent letters (silent letters abound
in English words, and the importance of such an exercise cannot be overemphasised);
e.g., Circle letters that are not pronounced in the following words:
aren’t, weren’t, sword, debt, bombing Greenwich, Parliament, evening
Note that it is better to have students circle rather than underline
the letters; this avoids hesitant students cheating by drawing a line
under two letters.
It should be noted that the foregoing exercises require a thorough
knowledge of English pronunciation, yet they do not necessitate the
use of phonetic symbols.
Testing Word Stress
It does not seem relevant here to dwell on listening comprehension
as a method of testing word stress; the method can be used in about
the same way as for testing segments. There are other methods of evaluation
that are particularly useful for testing knowledge of stress.
One possible method derives from the very nature of English stress.
In native English speech, stress is so strong that it is generally accompanied
by a movement of some part of the body (head, eye, hand, etc.). To exploit
this characteristic of English stress, one first teaching exercise may
consist in asking the testees to identify the stress of a word by a
bodily movement, like tapping, shaking one’s fist, moving one’s head,
etc.
|teacher |
A|merican |
Senega|lese |
|pardon |
lieu|tenant |
kanga|roo |
|challenge |
a|rena |
appoin|tee |
In writing, the testees may be asked to use one of the conventional
ways of marking stress; e.g., Put the stress symbol before the stressed
syllable or on the stressed vowel.
|salad or sálad
suc|cess or succéss
pre|paratory or prepáratory
The testees can also be asked to use less conventional methods, like
underlining, making a circle below the stressed syllable (see Hubbard
et al. 1983:215), circling the stressed syllable, capitalising, etc.
The disadvantage of capitalisation is, first of all, that it is likely
to cause bad spelling habits in the learner. It is also inadequate when
the syllable receiving stress consists of a capital vowel, as in |Agatha.
The shortcoming of underlining is that, as seen above, in a serious
test situation, a learner who does not want to commit himself will put
the line between two syllables if he is not quite sure of the answers;
e.g., develop, Agatha, etc. To forestall cheating, therefore,
circling remains the most appropriate unconventional method of testing
word stress.
Conclusion
The above discussion hopefully convinces the EFL/ESL teacher that pronunciation
can be tested in various ways. It can even be tested in various end-of-term,
promotion, and public examinations organised in Cameroon and elsewhere,
like the BEPC (Brevet d’Etudes du Premier Cycle), Baccalauréat, and
GCE Ordinary Level, where the required uniformity among all the testees
can be reached without special logistic support. I suggest that to the
usual sections on Grammar and Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, Essay,
etc., be added a section called Pronunciation, using the hints suggested
above. Some of the hints are quite simple; e.g., for segments-matching,
finding an odd member, regrouping, circling silent letters, etc.; for
stress-circling, underlining the stressed syllable, etc.
REFERENCES
Atanga, A. S., B. O. Oluikpe, T. Y. Obah and M. K. Okole. 1987. Intensive
English for secondary schools, Books 1, 2 and 3. Bamenda: Africana.
Cripwell, K. and J. Linsel. 1990. Go for English. London: Macmillan.
Grant, N., D. O. Olagoke and K. R. Southern. 1977. Secondary English
project. Essex: Longman.
Heaton, J. B. 1988. Writing English language tests. London: Longman.
Hubbard, P., H. Jones, B. Thornton and R. Wheeler. 1983. A training
course for TEFL. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Talom, P. 1990. The intelligibility of some RP forms in Cameroon. Unpublished
post graduate dissertation, Ecole Normale Supérieure, University of
Yaounde.
Back to the top
|