I work with many professionals, advanced ESL speakers.  One of the things I've heard over and over is "I can't say [phoneme]" or "people don't understand me when I say words with [letter]."   I've had a great deal of success helping my clients learn to hear and pronounce the difference clearly.  I often have to get very clinical about the phonology to show how the sound is different...for example many Spanish speakers have a hard time with the "dark L" sound.  They'll write "table" as "teibo" in their notes.  Usually, once I explain the different way the back L is produced, they have an "AHA" moment and do fine.  Same issue with [r] and [l] for my Korean clients.  
 
HOWEVER, I think the earlier you teach these distinctions, the better. I tell my beginning students that they have had their sound system since around 9 months, but the sound system of English is different and there are sounds they will have to learn to hear and produce.  I'm not a stickler on pronunciation for my beginners, though, unless we are specifically working on pronunciation because I want them to get over their fear of speaking and focus on communicating their message.  With beginners, during normal communicative class activities, I correct pronunciation only if in my estimation someone "out there" would not be able to understand them.   (Of course, after 20 years of working with adult immigrants, my estimation may not be very accurate...you tend to get accustomed to certain pronunciation tendencies over time.  :-))
 
All this to say, I don't think it is IMPOSSIBLE for adults to acquire native-like pronunciation (which is what exactly?  American media English?), just that is not the true goal for most adults.  They need to communicate.  Same thing for me in Spanish, by the way, good-enough is good-enough.  I have other things to focus on  in my life than whether or not I'm saying "jueves" incorrectly as [weives].  Can I pronounce it correctly?  Sure.  If I think about it, but most of the time I'm not.  The message is what matters to me, and I think many adult students are in the same boat. 



Grace and Peace!
Glenda Lynn Rose, PhD

Instructor, 
Austin Learning Academy
841-4777
 

--- On Fri, 1/30/09, Joan <owlhouse at wwt.net> wrote:

From: Joan <owlhouse at wwt.net>
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3757] Re: Post critical period oral L2learning ofadults w/low L1 litearcy
To: "The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List" <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Date: Friday, January 30, 2009, 7:34 AM



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It sounds like you're working with beginners, Nicole, and that's why you're able to make a difference when you intervene to work on their pronunciation issues. 
 
That's my point about grammar instruction too.  If you intervene early and point out the rules before your students have gone ahead and created their own internal, completely inaccurate grammatical system, you can help them learn English better. It just seems like a disservice to me, not to do this for our students. This doesn't mean I advocate a "form-heavy approach" because I don't.  I believe in using a wide variety of methods and teaching tools to help my learners.  But I just believe that ignoring grammar instruction all together, even at the preliterate level, means we are setting our students up to become "fossilized learners."
 
----- Original Message ----- 

From: Nicole Graves 
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List 
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 7:54 PM
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3754] Re: Post critical period oral L2learning ofadults w/low L1 litearcy


Well, as we all know there is no magic bullet!  
 
As a teacher of beginners, I am very accepting and lenient at first.  I want the students to take risks.  Does that hinder development?  I think some students tend to overgeneralize "rules" as children do in their L1 for a time.  Why do they stay stuck in this stage of interlanguage?  They do not hear native speakers use these mispronunciations or inappropriate structures.  As they develop their L 2, they use structures from their language(s), sounds that are close to English sounds, drop sounds they are not used to hear in some positions, etc.  Someone in one of these posts mentioned the need to notice and I add to become aware of differences and reasons for them if we can explain some of it.
It is slow going but always successful!  I have had success  with many mispronunciations by focusing, noticing, becoming aware of the problem.  Here are some examples:
I have had students learn to correct mispronunciations such as tirid for tired, retirid for retired.  Students can generally say the word tire as in "I had a flat tire".  I use the print too.  How does that word sound?  It sounds like [tier].  We never write [tier].  We write tire.  I do the same with the other 2  words.  From that time on, I no longer accept the incorrect form.  I say excuse me? to signal the mistake to the student.  It takes about 3 weeks to become internalized.
Sometimes a mini-lesson works.  A higher level student was always saying he didn't like his apartment because he had no privaty.  I said I understand what you mean but other people might not.  Listen to this: Sometimes I want to hang a sign on my door that says Private.  I could use a little privacy around here.  You can add other sentences  that contrast the two words.
In reading (even at the basic level), students often drop final sounds.  They may not hear them.  They may not have those in final positions in their L1.  I use highlighters in different colors to make the letter(s)/sound(s) stand out.  You have to direct teach the different sounds for the letter S or for ed.  But as they read or even during assisted reading those endings jump out from the page and signal the student.  It works.
 
Give it a try!
 
Nicole B. Graves
Amherst, MA

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Lynne Weintraub 
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov 
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 3:02 PM
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3697] Re: Post critical period oral L2 learning ofadults w/low L1 litearcy

This reminds me of a question I've had on my mind for a while. Has anyone had any success at improving the accuracy (in terms of structure and/or pronunciation) of students who seem to be at that “fossilized” stage? (And if so, how?)

Lynne Weintraub 
Amherst MA





From: owlhouse at wwt.net
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:23:21 -0600
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3681] Re: Post critical period oral L2 learning ofadults w/low L1 litearcy






I don’t know about this, Steve.  It just hasn’t been my experience with my students that the brain eventually sorts it all out and they start speaking grammatically.  For many years, I taught college prep to immigrant and refugee high schoolers, many of whom had been in this country and gone through the public school system for many years, some of them their entire lives, and still had absolutely no control over English verbs.  They not only couldn’t form them correctly (“I am go,”  “He reading,” “He is reads,” “He is went”); they also used them incorrectly in context – they didn’t know which tense to use or how to form any of the tenses correctly.  Sometimes they’d throw in an “is” or a “was” or a “did,” or all three at once.  They didn’t like to stray from the present tenses much, just trying to make their meaning clear by choosing a correct time word, but that strategy often resulted in
 miscommunication.  While they can get away with many of their errors in spoken communication, those same errors haunt them on the written pages that they have to write for their college courses.  
 
They make these errors – consistently – even though they have had “massive input,” as you say, for years – at least eight hours a day in school listening to teachers and other students.  However, I don’t think they ever got any direct instruction in grammar because many of them were mainstreamed right away and never attended an ESL class. 
 
I think what happens is that they surmise a rule, incorrectly, and don’t pay attention to the input anymore after that.  We would speak of their English as being “fossilized” at that point and almost impossible to correct and change.  

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Steve Kaufmann 
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List 
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 8:46 PM
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3659] Re: Post critical period oral L2 learning ofadults w/low L1 litearcy

I  believe that our brain will, with enough exposure to content that is relevant and interesting, start to sort out some rules relating to word order, and other aspects of the structure of the new language, with or without explicit grammar explanations and drills. Some degree of grammar review, corrections etc, are helpful but not necessary, and not as important as the massive input. Most learners attending ESL language class do not get enough input of English.

Some aspects of a new language may never stick. In English, articles are difficult for people form languages without articles. The spoken difference between "he" and "she"  is difficult for well educated Chinese people, even after ten or more years of grammar study, and even though the concept is not difficult and universally understood. It  just does not exist in Chinese, so it is hard to develop the natural ability to say "she" and "he" when required.


>From my reading and observation, the brain sorts these things out on its own schedule, and slowly. Explanations and drills are relatively ineffective, but can help a little. Only lots of input will enable the brain to gradually get better, as long as there is a will, and the input continues. That has been my experience in learning Russian over the last 2 years, and that has been the experience of many others who are prepared to put in the time, listening and reading, according to what they have told me.


Obviously the non-reader is at a disadvantage. However, intensive listening on an iPod to content of interest could go a long way. However, I admit I have no experience with non-literate learners.

Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Elaine Tarone <etarone at umn.edu> wrote:


It is possible that formal teaching imposes accuracy standards that are very difficult to attain unless the learner is alphabetically literate.  I think this is particularly true of grammatical features that do not dramatically change the semantics, like word order in questions and final morphemes that are really redundant in context.   Maybe teachers can find other ways to communicate those standards (like use of cuisinaire rods to show word order shifts) to make the learner aware of the difference between their production and the accurate target. 





On Jan 27, 2009, at 5:10 PM, Steve Kaufmann wrote:

Is it possible that formal teaching imposes accuracy standards on learners that are either not relevant to their own language goals, or applied too soon in their language development? We all know fluent speakers of English and other languages who make many mistakes.

Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Martha Bigelow <mbigelow at umn.edu> wrote:

Anne,

This is fascinating.  Would you happen to have a publication or citation you could share with the list yet?  I'm sure many would be very interested to read more, even if it is a handout.  I'm often overwhelmed by the English language fluency and pragmatic skills of the teens I've worked with.  But sometimes the transcriptions show surprises!  They are not as accurate as they seem.

Martha


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