Our Unit 871 Instructor, Caleb, describes curriculum he developed for English students’ greatest need: a Pronunciation Program.
It’s always a challenge to learn how to clearly pronounce all of the sounds of a new language. At our training program in Hanoi, the entire student body is Vietnamese. So, they all have challenges with exactly the same vowels and consonant sounds. In fact, even fluent speakers with a large vocabulary, usually make the same mistakes as much lower-level speakers. For example, final “s” sounds are a struggle across all levels. Over the past year, I’ve made a record of particular pronunciation errors that consistently cause comprehension problems. Our trip to the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio allowed us to discuss student needs as a team. Our entire team noted that the biggest challenge for Vietnamese officers in the DLI program was pronunciation.
After the closing of the most recent cohort, our Lana Learn team at Base 871 in Hanoi had time before the next cohort to develop curriculum. I decided to put together a simple pronunciation program that could be used in every class. This would specifically address the pronunciation challenges that Vietnamese students struggle with. The pronunciation program is as follows:
Pronunciation Program Structure
First, the student is introduced to diagrams of the human face, the vocal system, and given the basic terms like: lips, teeth, throat, etc. Following that, all the phonemes are introduced and shown where each one is articulated in the human mouth. The student then learns the basic rules of word stress and word linking in order to speak sentences in a natural cadence. All of these sections have practice exercises to help build one skill on another.
Following the introductory lessons, the student is introduced to a discrete set of sounds that cause confusion. Some examples are: Sue vs shoe, Rick vs rich, to name a few. Again, each sound is introduced with a diagram of the human vocal system along with very simple instructions on how to make it. Then, the student both hears examples and has a practice session using sentences of increasing difficulty. Each week, a new set of sounds is covered, and can be incorporated into as little as 15 minutes or as much as an hour of class time. The students also get access to additional training videos online as well as websites with optional exercises.
1It’s our hope that by using this program, more students will have the chance to address common pronunciation challenges and have the time to overcome these problems a little at a time during the entire 6-month cohort.