60 – My blogs – and a summary rant

I have now reached ‘Listening Cherry’ number sixty, and this seems like a good moment to look back at the previous Cherries, and the thirty-nine non-Cherry blog posts that preceded them. And I’ll end with a summary rant, or a ranted summary of my current idée fixes.

Just below is a set of four lists of the ninety-nine blog posts that I have written since 2011. Each list gives month and year of publication, the title of the blog, and in the fourth column a characterisation of the nature of each blog. These range from ‘funny-ha-ha’ through ‘info’ ‘review’ ‘yippee’ and ‘discussion’ to ‘rant’.

The 2011-2012 index is here
The 2013-2015 index is here
The 2016-2017 index is here
The 2018-2020 index is here

The Blog categories

I have assigned the following category-labels to the blogs:

• funny-ha-ha means that (at the time I wrote the blog) I thought the blog was very funny
• info means that the blog contains information about what I was doing at the time
• review means that the blog is reviewing/mentioning the existence of someone else’s publication
• yippee means that I was congratulating either myself (usually) or someone else on a professional achievement
• discussion means that the blogs were part of a discussion after an online presentation
• rant means that the blog attacks some of the idiotic foolishnesses in beliefs or practice of the ELT profession
• poetry means that the blog concerns recordings of poems (Shakespeare and Larkin)

If you want a quick introduction to my way of thinking, read this post about my key metaphor (Greenhouse, Garden, Jungle) which has been found very useful by both teachers and learners. To follow through, go to the blog menu and search for rant. Final rant follows, containing some key ideas.

Celce-Murcia et al – a foundational statement

I always quote Celce-Murcia et al. in their Teaching Pronunciation 2nd Edition

… our goal as teachers of listening is to help our learners understand fast messy authentic speech … The spoken language our learners need to comprehend is much more varied and unpredictable than what they need to produce in order to be intelligible … The goals for mastery are different

Celce-Murcia, M. Brinton, D.M. and Goodwin, J.M. (with Barry Griner) Teaching Pronunciation 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press

Celce-Murcia’s book is about Teaching Pronunciation (it’s no secret, it’s the title). As such, despite the quotation above, it stays firmly in Greenhouse and Garden. And quite reasonably so. But we need more books, activities, and courses to help teachers and students embrace the messiness of the Jungle. Because ‘the goals for mastery are different’, we need a different syllabus, and different activities for listening. Entirely different from what we currently teach about Greenhouse and Garden styles of speech. This is what my books, Phonology for Listening and A Syllabus for Listening – Decoding are about.

Ban ‘pronunciation’

I would ban the use of the word pronunciation in teaching listening, and use the word soundshape instead. All listening classes should include instruction on the numerous soundshapes words can have. All words have multiple soundshapes, not just the function words and the so-called ‘weak forms’. ALL WORDS HAVE WEAK FORMS. The questions to address in listening activities is NOT ‘how is this word pronounced here?’ or ‘How should this word be pronounced?’ but ‘How many soundshapes can this word have?’ and ‘How can I prepare myself to hear and understand in the future?’

Expert speakers are deaf to the true nature of the sound substance of speech

Everyone should heed Gimson’s warning

… it is wiser to listen to the way in which a native speaker speaks rather than to ask his opinion.

Cruttenden, A. (ed.) Gimson’s Pronunciation of English 8th edition 2014, Routledge p. 333

Native and expert speakers of English ARE DEAF to what is going on in the sound substance of speech. They suffer from ‘the blur gap’ about which you can read more here and here. In addition, everyone should pay attention to Helen Fraser’s work in forensic phonetics and its implications for teaching listening. You are deaf because you are primed by your expertise in language to believe that speech is much clearer (more Greenhouse and Garden-like) than it actually is. Additionally, you can be primed to hear virtually anything if you are told in advance what to hear. If someone tells you that a song lyric contains the words ‘staple the vicar’ then that is what you will hear, and it will make it very difficult for you to hear the original words. Demonstration here (contains some rude words, but you will laugh your socks off).

Beware the smiling class imperative

In A Syllabus for Listening – Decoding (p. 48) I mention ‘the smiling class imperative’ which is an obstacle to the effective teaching and learning of listening. This imperative is the urge to have your class smiling, and/or interacting happily giving you a ‘I’m a good teacher’ buzz. Its existence means that you are disinclined to take them into the Jungle and help them with the (non-smile-inducing) puzzling mess and the (frown-creating) disorienting unruliness. You’ve got to spend time with, and help students with the non-smiley frowny stuff, you’ve got to be comfortable in a bad-mood class.

Gap-fill

You may believe that doing loads of gap-fill exercises is the way forward. They help, but there are dangers to gap-fill exercises as you can read here, here and here.

English as a Lingua Franca

One of the big developments in ELT during my career is the English as A Lingua Franca (ELF) movement. I think the movement is wonderfully liberating as far as pronunciation models are concerned, but – for me – issues around coping with the Jungle remain the same. I have written blog-posts on ELF here, and here.

Don’t believe a word

Lastly. Don’t accept what people or textbooks tell you about speech, however revered, famous or best-selling they might be. Evaluate what they assert against your experience of language. Record natural language and cut it up with an audio editor such as Audacity or (my favourite) Amadeus Pro. Educate yourself, test out other people’s assertions.

Goodbye for now

I’ve enjoyed doing these blogs over the years. But this is my last, as I go on to the next phase of my life.