Is pronunciation or vocabulary building more important?

[legolasesarrow]

I had a discussion with a Korean teacher recently, and she said that I corrected the students pronunciation too much - that my focus should be on building their vocabulary.  This seems very foreign to me.  They need to go hand-in-hand.  How can I help her understand this?

[Jozigirl]

Your co-teacher has a valid point.  What she's basically saying is that you should focus more on simply getting students to speak (fluency essentially) than pronunciation (accuracy).  Yes, they do go hand in hand BUT incorrect pronunciation can, most of the time, still be understood whereas someone who stumbles, stutters, ums and ahs their way through a sentence is far more difficult to follow because of the constant repetition and long pauses.  Therefore, vocabulary, for most of our students, is more important than pronunciation at this stage. 

You can, however, use certain examples as and when they arise to illustrate how pronunciation is important in clear communication.  For example, focus on the the English sounds that don't appear in Korean (f, v, th,r) and the ones between which Koreans struggle to distinguish (l/r).  I give the example of "half" and "harp".  If both of these words were to be written using Hangul, they would look exactly the same; when pronounced in English, however, they are very different.  There are dozens of similar examples.

By focusing too much on their pronunciation, you are more likely to unintentionally discourage your students from speaking English.  Instead of encouraging them simply to speak, they will start to stress about whether or not their pronunciation is understandable.  Pronunciation is easy to correct after vocabulary is acquired so pick your battles. 

Think of it this way: Most of us complain bitterly when Koreans constantly correct our pronunciation in Korean.  The argument that most of us present when this happens is usually something along the lines of "you could understand what I was trying to say and this is not my first language!"  The same argument applies to our students - except that they're younger so, especially if you teach teenagers, they can be even more self-conscious about their speaking skills. 

[eggplant_tyrant]

Vocabulary building is absolutely more important. I don't know how often you correct students' pronunciation, but doing it too often or at inappropriate times really can hinder the language learning process.

Basically, you probably shouldn't be correcting pronunciation unless you're doing an activity that specifically focuses on accuracy rather than fluency, the student is making a consistent error, or that error actually hinders the listener's ability to comprehend. Constantly correcting pronunciation errors during more "free speaking" exercises does a few negative things. For one, it means that more self-conscious students are less willing to take a chance, because they will fear being corrected in front of everyone. For another, it disrupts the student's train of thought, moving focus from the idea they are trying to communicate (generally of greater importance and personal value to the student) to how they are saying it (technical details that are less interesting and meaningful). It subtly tells students that they should not attempt to communicate unless they are able to do so perfectly, and that's pretty much the exact opposite of what you want to do in a language learning classroom.

That doesn't mean you should never correct pronunciation. In fact, a good time to do so is during vocabulary practice. When you're focusing on the word itself, then you can focus on the pronunciation, because that's part of the word. When you're focusing on using words to make comprehensible sentences, then word choice is usually much more important that word pronunciation, and that's where exposing students to a wide range of words can help them.

Frankly, I think that a sane and effective approach to vocabulary is sorely lacking in the Korean classroom, and if your co-teacher wants to focus more on building up the students' vocab, then you should probably be looking for engaging ways to do so that require the students to actually understand and apply the target language, rather than just memorize translated lists. While you're doing that, you can sneak in pronunciation tips/phonics links.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

How old are the students? Above MS age, I rarely do much work on pronunciation, though I will point out certain things in dialogues, especially common joining sounds. With my first- and second-year MS students I usually spend 5-15 minutes a lesson on phonics, but apart from that don't do too much correcting. As long as I can understand the students I leave it at that, though I will take a few seconds to practice difficult words that come up in the textbook, such as 'zoo' or 'really'.

[teachermc]

I would agree with others' take on this, though I would add that I think that students (at least the elementary students I have taught) are aware of their pronunciation difficulties already.  Many students here now are familiar with terms like 'konglish' and often make fun of each other when they think that a particular student is pronouncing something in a stereotypically 'Korean' way.  I think the trouble is that the students really do not care whether or not they can be understood by native speakers.  Rather, they only need to be concerned about how their English proficiency is viewed by their peers and important adults in their lives. 

I have had a few students along the way with excellent pronunciation, but this ability never seemed to make them very popular.  Besides some of those students differing in other ways (having spent a significant amount of time abroad, being from a multinational family), I think many students are afraid of standing out in any particular way in their school that deviates too much from the norm here.  It would be much better for them to keep quiet and do well on their English tests to get praise.

Pronunciation tips are important, but I would also caution against taking too much class time for pronunciation.  It does go hand in hand with learning new vocabulary.  You could even introduce vocabulary related by pronunciation rather than by theme.  Often the textbook chapters introduce words for a particular context (restaurant, airport, etc.)  In these cases, the meaning of the words may be related while the spelling/pronunciation of the words may vary widely.  When we do spelling tests at my school (elementary) we usually base them on a particular similarity in spelling (bright, light, night).

[rmzidon]

I think pronunciation is crucial from the beginning of learning a language, to the extent that students are able to pronounce words clearly enough for a native speaker to be able to understand them.  But it's also true that students are never going to sound exactly like a native speaker, and as long as their speech is comprehensible, that's fine and you should try to communicate that idea to them. 

While it's good for you to give pronunciation exercises to the whole class, I wouldn't correct a single student or single them out for their pronunciation errors.  Doing so will embarrass them in front of their peers and raise their level of anxiety, which will stop them from trying to learn English.  By giving the whole group pronunciation exercises, the students will know it is something they can all work to improve,and they can have fun together learning new tongue twisters.

[Mish]

This is something that I've always worried about. In my opinion is that at first it's best to focus on building vocabulary and then focusing on pronunciation. Start from correcting students when what they're saying is incomprehensible. As they become more confident and start speaking more English, then correct them more and more. I'm not saying build bad habits like what-uh and dis-uh (what and this), but use your discretion. Sometimes constant corrections can make a student lose confidence, and that can make them not want to even try.
Hope this is of some help  :D

[Yu_Bumsuk]

So much depends on age and a learner's likely future progression. If they're going to be studying English for a long time, it's good to start with lots of phonics when they're very young. Generally, the younger the learner, the easier it is to pick up accurate pronunciation of new sounds. With learners around 16-plus years it's usually too late to effect a great deal of improvement, though certain sounds can be learned explicitly. One thing I would try very much to avoid is breaking up a flow of dialogue for the sake of correcting pronunciation.

[Aleksuh]

I'm with Yu's post just above on this one. The longer you leave dealing with pronunciation the harder it is. Most learners tend to see the sound structure of other languages as the same as their own, and may not even realize that it's different. For example, they may well not just be adding the -uh at the end of words when they speak, but that's also how they hear it. The sooner this can be brought to their attention, the better. Younger kids generally adapt much faster, and if pronunciation ticks are left unchecked they run the risk of fossilization - becoming so ingrained in the learners language that it is near impossible to change.

It's also worth considering that we are rarely good judges of what is and isn't intelligible pronunciation. Within a few weeks of knowing your learners, you'll get used to the way that they pronounce things. This is all well and good, until they run into a native speaker who isn't used to it. I had the opportunity to get a couple of friends who were visiting to come in and speak to my kids. My friends really struggled to understand what the students were saying, despite it being perfectly intelligible to me, and thus I ended up as a kind of English/Konglish interpreter. It's also worth considering that this is native speakers struggling, despite the huge innate linguistic knowledge we have. With English's status as a lingua franca, it's arguably more likely that our students will end up using English with NNS's, where intelligible pronunciation becomes even more crucial.

I do however agree with the OPs co-teacher that you shouldn't stop students to correct pronunciation, especially if the activity isn't focused on it. Instead, try noting down mispronunciations that you hear, and dealing with them as a class in 5 minutes at the beginning or end of a lesson.

[qkds]

Vocab first, then pronunciation. If you start with pronunciation straight away, or correct too much too soon, you'll put them off trying. Sometimes I get the whole class to parrot my pronunciation, just as an overview, but I don't correct students individually.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

Vocab first, then pronunciation. If you start with pronunciation straight away, or correct too much too soon, you'll put them off trying. Sometimes I get the whole class to parrot my pronunciation, just as an overview, but I don't correct students individually.

With very young (~under eight-year-old) learners there's a case to be made for practising phonics exclusively at times, to acquaint them with foreign sounds. Very young learners isn't my cup of tea, however, so I can't offer much practical help.

[ESLinsider]

No, I would ignore it or tell her she's wrong, ha. There's no point in knowing a bunch of words if you can't pronounce them correctly. Of course she may be thinking about the test, but that's what's all messed up with their system.

[flasyb]

No, I would ignore it or tell her she's wrong, ha. There's no point in knowing a bunch of words if you can't pronounce them correctly. Of course she may be thinking about the test, but that's what's all messed up with their system.

She's not wrong. Excessive correction of pronunciation can knock kids' confidence and if they're less confident, they're likely to be worse speakers.

OP, as always, a compromise is in order. Do 5 minutes on pronunciation (drills or whatever) every class and the rest of the time work what your co-teacher thinks is appropriate. You can listen to what they're pronouncing wrong in class make a quick note of it and then do 5 minutes on that the next class.

[Daejeon]

"... studies have shown that adolescents and adults are in many ways better at learning a new language than children, except in the area of pronunciation. This is probably because they are already literate in their first language and can use some of their knowledge about language and language learning when learning the second language."

Young learners, in my experience tend to parrot the teacher's pronunciation and learn phonemes more efficiently.  This in part is due to the learner still not having a firm grasp over their first language.  It is easier to manipulate the pronunciation of a 2nd or 3rd grade elementary schooler than it is of a 4th.  Pronunciation drills/practice with adolescent students (from 11~13) should be left to a designated time for phonics learning.  Constantly correcting mistakes during the class hinders the language (vocabulary) acquisition. 

[Wretchard]

"... studies have shown that adolescents and adults are in many ways better at learning a new language than children, except in the area of pronunciation. This is probably because they are already literate in their first language and can use some of their knowledge about language and language learning when learning the second language."

Young learners, in my experience tend to parrot the teacher's pronunciation and learn phonemes more efficiently.  This in part is due to the learner still not having a firm grasp over their first language.  It is easier to manipulate the pronunciation of a 2nd or 3rd grade elementary schooler than it is of a 4th.  Pronunciation drills/practice with adolescent students (from 11~13) should be left to a designated time for phonics learning.  Constantly correcting mistakes during the class hinders the language (vocabulary) acquisition.

Yup exactly right. I'm taking a master's course about second language teaching/learning and I'm surprised at how many of my assumptions were misguided. I had a lot of stuff right, but pronunciation is really not important when it comes to learning a language. Depends on when they start learning... the later they start learning the worse their pronunciation is gonna be and that's that for most people.

[Jozigirl]

No, I would ignore it or tell her she's wrong, ha. There's no point in knowing a bunch of words if you can't pronounce them correctly. Of course she may be thinking about the test, but that's what's all messed up with their system.

Ah...no.  This type of response just shows ignorance of how language is acquired.  The co-teacher is not wrong. 

Fluency and skill of communication is more important than accuracy of pronunciation because, in most situations, the mispronounced word can still be understood provided the rest of the context is understandable. 

The reason language is more difficult to learn the older we are when we start learning is because our brains physically change as we age.  The Critical Age Hypothesis postulates that language learners who only start learning a language after the onset of puberty will never acquire native-like fluency for various reasons.  This means that they can achieve a certain level of fluency but will never achieve the same level of proficiency in the target language as a first language speaker.  One of the reasons for this is that the brain has physically changed so biological changes affect our level of profiency. 

However, successful SLA is also very dependent on the level of proficiency in the first language (L1).  If a person does not achieve fluency in his/her L1 before the onset of puberty, (s)he will not be able to acquire additional languages.  The reason for this is that we all naturally apply L1 transfer when learning additional languages.  i.e. We will try to relate the target language to our first language with regard to structure, grammar, vocabulary, etc.  It is natural to look for similarities between the L1 and the TL and, to some extent, this is how most of us will learn the basics of second languages. 

If a person has not achieved fluency in the L1, there is insufficient basis for comparison.  This is seen in families where parents try to help their children to speak the TL even if they themselves are not proficient in it.  For example, some Canadian friends of mine had their daughter in Korean schools until the age of 9.  They returned to Canada eventually because they felt that she needed an English school in order to improve her English language skills.  The truth was that they were speaking a mixture of English and broken Korean to her at home in an attempt to help her with her Korean.  The result was that by the age of 9, she had not yet acquired a solid base in either language.  If her parents had spoken only English to her at home and left the Korean parts to her school and outside of the family structure, she would be completely bilingual.  In a geniune attempt to help their child, they ended up making the situation worse because she could not distinguish between the languages and with whom to speak them.  Unfortunately, this happens regularly.

Another reason adults will find SLA more difficult is because we have stronger self-monitoring skills than children.  After puberty, we become more self-conscious in many ways and this affects our language skills.  Adults will understand concepts more quickly than children but are usually more reluctant to speak in the TL because they tend to worry about the accuracy of their linguistic utterances.  Children, however, don't really self-monitor and are thus willing to make mistakes without being too negatively affected by their errors.  It is a mistake to say that adults (anyone who has reached puberty or older) cannot imitate pronunciation as easily as children; they can.  It simply takes longer for many adults to make that pronunciation more natural for them.  However, it is more important that 'adults' (see above definition) feel that they are progressing in a language and that they can see their progress as they become discouraged more easily than children.

Therefore, if you are teaching elementary school students (or absolute beginners if the students are older), you should have set exercises for teaching phonics because you are introducing new sounds in the TL.  Outside of these exercises, however, you should not really be focusing on direct correction of pronunciation but rather indirect corrections such as repeating a word/answer provided by a student but subtley correcting the pronunciation.  You can also do indirect corrects of pronunciation with older students but the older the students, the more important vocabulary becomes to them.  Older students are capable of learning a lot and, despite the theories that say that adults will never acquire fluency in TLs if they start learning after puberty, I've personally worked with dozens of students who have disproven ESL theories in many ways. 

OP, your co-teacher is not wrong.  She is merely indicating to you, indirectly, that your focus on pronunciation is ultimately going to hinder the students' SLA.  She probably knows the students better than you and she definitely has a better understanding of the context in which the SLA is occurring in this instance.  Listen to her!

[xiaofei]

While I agree with the point that repeatedly correcting pronunciation can lower a students confidence, causing the student to be embarrassed to speak and thereby doing more harm than good, I think pronunciation can't be looked at as black and white. If pronunciation is so bad that it is hindering communication it absolutely needs to be corrected, but you can still do it with a degree of subtlety, such as having the entire class repeat the phrase after the teacher so that the individual student doesn't feel singled out yet still gets a chance to practice. More advanced phonetic work (practicing specific sounds rather than words) I save for lessons dedicated entirely to pronunciation.

Overall I think pronunciation is a neglected part of the Korean EFL education system, and even Koreans who speak English quite well tend to have poor accents. I think certain things like Koreans writing out English words in Hangul tends to exacerbate this issue.

[lynnj33]

Hello everyone. I agree with most of the replies pertaining to dealing with not too much correction. When I started at my school I was so determined to get the kids to speak and improve, but by forcing them and doing too much correction this only scared them. I have now backed off and rather offer loads of words of encouragement once they have read the words or from authentic text. Before this is done, I  highlight words that might be difficult to pronounce and I make them repeat after me. This approach seems to be working. Children are extremely sensitive and some of them don't enjoy English because it is something they feel they are being forced to learn. Good luck!