Teach English in Fengjia Zhen - Weihai Shi

Across the global, problems with English pronunciation for non-native English speakers stems primarily from imperfectly learning the sound system of English. Marguerite MacDonald’s research focused on Hispanic Americans but her findings have proven to be consistent and applicable to most new learners. This challenge has two common sources but this summative task paper will focus on the transfer of phonological rules from the learner’s mother tongue. Introduction A quick background on myself: I am a JD/MBA and Master of Economics. I have a passion for Entrepreneurship and learning as much as I can about the world around me. Anytime I have a break from school or work I try to challenge myself to develop a new skill or talent. I will start my new career in July at a Fortune 10 company but first, I’m traveling to Nepal! I came to know of an international volunteer program to teach English to Buddhist monks and I am thrilled to begin in just a few weeks; hence this TEFL certificate. I chose the above topic because I am genuinely interested to understand how I can best mitigate known issues to add the most value during my time at their rural monastery in Pokhara. Analysis According to Manuka Adhikari, Nepali “hinders the acquisition of English.” In fact, after applying negative phonological transfer theory, Adhikari determined that pre-occupied native knowledge of Nepali often distorts English phonemes to such an extent that they differ from the Standard English pronunciation. For example, fricatives of English are typically pronounced as plosive by Nepali speakers, including ‘family’ and ‘thing’ resembling more of a “fffamily” and “thhhing” kind of sound due to drawing out the initial syllables unnecessarily just because it is more familiar with their native language, Nepali. Interestingly, because Nepali only has a single length ‘a’ the long vowel /a:/ as intended in ‘formula’ is often instead pronounced as /a/ incorrectly. I’ll need to bear this in mind and pre-teach these considerations to limit confusion. Similar to Spanish learners of English, Nepali learners tend to add a short vowel /I/ immediately prior to words that begin with ‘sp,’ ‘st,’ and ‘sch,’ respectively. Furthermore, long vowel /i:/ as intended in ‘speech’ is often pronounced as /I/ incorrectly as /IspIc/ which at least 3 errors away from being correct. And Finally, Adhikari found that generally only the glide-up (rising) intonation was consistently applied in a coherent manner for Nepali learners because this matches their native language. The takeaway here is to remember that other intonations will require extra attention when reviewing those lesson plans. Rajan Kumar Kandel compiled an excellent paper on the science that begins to explain these differences. There are several means of pronunciation that are present in English but are simply not found in Nepalese. Certainly, for learners of advanced age it can be tempting to get creative by borrowing means of pronunciation from your native language rather than develop new sound modulations in addition to new grammar structure and new vocabulary. Exhibit A (Available on Request) Exhibit B (Available on Request) Of particular note, English demands use of the labio-dental as a place of articulation for the fricative ‘f’ and ‘v’ while not only are those particular sounds not found in Nepalese, there are no sounds that originate in the labio-dental. Similarly, English demands use of the palato-alveolar as the place of articulation for even more fricatives that are also not found in Nepalese, nor any sounds that originate in the palate-alveolar. Meanwhile, the trill manner of articulation in Nepalese goes unutilized in English. Conclusion English language education in Nepal is complicated by its history. According to Dr. Tikaram Poudel, English was only introduced in 1854 and the vast majority of instructors were hired from India. Nepalese students in a formal classroom learn an amalgamation of British Received Pronunciation through a filter of Generalized Indian English but with heavy influence from Standard American English. Moreover, the majority of English instructors in Nepal today have very low proficiency in English and have never experienced the differences in these pronunciation styles for themselves. Nepalese students are at quite a disadvantage and their speech may be difficult to understand. So what are the most common pronunciation problems in Nepal? Fricatives. I’ve developed an original tongue twister to help my future students in Pokhara: “There’s a thousand hot treasures in my size five shoe.”