Teach English in Fenghuang Zhen - Heze Shi

People who teach English to non-native speakers will face many specific problems that teachers who teach native speakers will never experience. One of the problems these types of teachers will experience has to do with pronunciation. Problems in pronunciation occur because different native languages have different sounds and rules that people will naturally try to apply to English. Issues related to pronunciation vary based on the nationality of the students. This essay will focus on South Korea’s pronunciation problems. In South Korea, pronunciation problems can be found through intonation, words with double consonants, confusion in words containing the letters “l” and “r”, and from the absence of equivalent sounds in their native language. The first pronunciation problem is caused by intonation. In English, we use intonation to convey different meanings, to show emotion, to show different types of sentences, and to emphasize certain things in a sentence. A lack of intonation can show annoyance, disinterest, and can confuse the person you are talking to. However, in standard Korean intonation is only used when you are asking a question. Students often apply their knowledge of increasing their tone at the end of a sentence to show they are asking a question to their knowledge of English. Because of this, students will fail to understand the importance of intonation for other situations in the English language. It is very important to teach students when and how to use intonation. The second pronunciation problem is about words containing double consonants. In Korean, consonants usually need to be followed by a vowel. The only times this is not the case would be for words in which there needs to be a stronger consonant sound or when both consonants are not pronounced in the same syllable. This is not the case in English. There are many words in the English language that have consonants followed by consonants. Native English speakers see certain patterns of double consonants and know how to combine the individual sounds to make a unique sound. Native Korean speakers do not know how to do this, so subconsciously the brain tries to fill things in to make sense of it. For example, the word “Christmas” would not be a hard word to pronounce for a native English speaker. On the other hand, Koreans would insert vowel sounds to separate the consonants from each other. As a result, they would pronounce “Christmas” more like “keu-ris-seu-ma-seu”. The third pronunciation problem is confusion in words containing the letters “l” and “r”. The letters “l” and “r” have completely different sounds in the English language. However, in Korean, there is only one sound for both letters. There is one sound for both letters, but the sound will slightly change depending on how the syllable sounds before it. For example, the Korean word for song (Romanized as norae) and I love you (Romanized as saranghaeyo) both contain this “l/r” character, however, they are pronounced differently. This character in the Korean word for song (norae) is pronounced more as an “r” sound, whereas that same character in I love you (saranghaeyo) is pronounced more like the “l” sound. The technical reason for this is because it involves the initial tongue placement of the English “l” sound and the tongue and jaw movement of an “r” sound. The fourth and final pronunciation problem happens because of an absence of equivalent sounds in their native language. Due to a lack of an equivalent sound, students try to create the sound the best they can by combining sounds that they do know how to make. There are many letters in the English language that do not exist in Korean. For example, “v” and “f” are non-existent in Korean. In order to the “v” sound, Koreans must combine a “b”, double “o”, and double “e” sounds to make a sound like “v”. This causes words to contain a completely different initial consonant sound. The word “victory” would end up sounding like “bictory”. A similar thing happens when Koreans try to make a sound like “f” by combining “p” and double “e” sounds. The word “fish” would end up sounding more like “pish”. Situations like this could cause confusion and misunderstanding if the Korean student was talking to a native English speaker. These are just a few of the problems in English pronunciation for South Koreans. These problems happen subconsciously because the brain tries to apply what it knows about its native language to English. This does not mean that there is not a way to prevent this from being an issue. In order to minimize, or even prevent, this problem, the teacher needs to make sure the students are aware of English specific rules, know how to form the correct sounds, and get plenty of practice putting these rules and sounds into action.