This thesis explores how intelligible Czech accented English is to foreign speakers and what pronunciation issues Czech learners of English have. With English language becoming the world’s lingua...Show moreThis thesis explores how intelligible Czech accented English is to foreign speakers and what pronunciation issues Czech learners of English have. With English language becoming the world’s lingua franca, there has been a significant change in the attitude towards English pronunciation teaching over the years. This paper introduces the change from the Nativeness Principle, that focused on sounding native-like, to the Intelligibility Principle, the goal of which is to have a clear pronunciation enough to converse comfortably with other speakers of English. This paper’s focus is particularly on the Czech accented English and its understandability in conversation. Mutual intelligibility is what Jenkins (2000; 2002) aimed at when putting together a list of core pronunciation features one should focus on when learning English. This Lingua Franca Core (LFC), as she named it, serves as a base for this paper. In this study, recordings of less advanced Czech learners of English were collected and analysed, in order to pinpoint the main pronunciation mistakes. These were compared to Jenkins’ LFC to establish how intelligible the Czech accent is. Selected bits of the recordings were also sent to responders through a survey, to find out what their opinion on the Czech accent is. The main findings of the analysis showed that less advanced Czech learners substitute English vowels with Czech ones, they put stress on the first syllable in every word and pronounce English weak vowel forms as full ones. They also struggle with the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless dental fricatives, and they insert a glottal stop in between words, creating clear boundaries. The survey results showed that these aspects of Czech English mainly constitute a problem in isolated words. When context is provided, the Czech accent proved to be quite intelligible and some of the pronunciation features even helped with intelligibility. The study concluded with pronunciation tips for English learners.Show less
Pitch accent is an important but undertaught part of the Japanese language. Differing much from the stress accent found in most Indo-European languages, even learners well into the advanced stage...Show morePitch accent is an important but undertaught part of the Japanese language. Differing much from the stress accent found in most Indo-European languages, even learners well into the advanced stage struggle to utter sentences in a fully native-like manner. Therefore, in this thesis, I tackle the issue of What teaching methods are best suited for pitch accent acquisition (PAA) in the long-term for adult foreign learners of Japanese? I discuss several methods for acquiring pitch accent, and directly compare two of them: Practising with audio-visual stimuli and explaining the rules governing pitch accent. I examined 3 groups of foreign Japanese language learners (n=9) and gave each of them a different set of instructions (or no instruction, in case of thecontrolgroup).Inapretest, posttest, anddelayedposttest, theyweremadeto judge the pitch accent pattern of, and reproduce semi-randomly chosen, common Japanese words. The results suggest that explaining the rules is just as viable an option as compared to traditional training, and that textbook producers and teachers should not be afraid to expose students to the details pitch accent, even in the early stages of their learning. Further study is needed to support these conclusions, and explain what causes some students to respond better to one method over the other.Show less
This thesis researches the pronunciation of the hard sign in the Russian language from the 1960's up until now on account of Russian grammars like Avanesov, Borunova, Kasatkin and Kasatkina, and...Show moreThis thesis researches the pronunciation of the hard sign in the Russian language from the 1960's up until now on account of Russian grammars like Avanesov, Borunova, Kasatkin and Kasatkina, and Kalenčuk. In Russian there is a tendency that consonants which are followed by a hard sign and a soft vowel are being pronounced hard again, despite the beforementioned grammars stating otherwise. By taking interviews with Russian people and analysing their pronunciation this research tests and challenges the existing grammars.Show less
Dutch speakers have differing ways of pronouncing the English loanword . This thesis attempts to research these different pronunciations, through auditory analysis using phonetics, and through...Show moreDutch speakers have differing ways of pronouncing the English loanword . This thesis attempts to research these different pronunciations, through auditory analysis using phonetics, and through formant measurements. Additionally, Dutch speakers’ evaluations of the different phonetic realisations of were researched. 15 Dutch speakers were interviewed, and their ways of pronouncing noted. The results show, among other things, which form of pronunciation of was most used by the participants; the degree of consistency in pronunciation per participant (using a newly-developed technique called the IVS-technique); the formant measurements of the vowels participants used for in ; and the participants’ attitudes towards specific pronunciations of .Show less
