I am a big fan of Randy Newman. I have been since my late teens when I first saw him on BBC television (black and white I seem to remember). For those of you who don’t know him, he is the composer of ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ and the music for Toy Story, […]
At The British Council’s annual awards ceremony the ELTons, Professor Ron Carter was given the lifetime achievement award. Unfortunately, because of illness, he was not able to attend in person, but his friend and longtime colleague Chris Kennedy read his acceptance speech (beautifully). Below is an extract from the acceptance speech, which I find particularly […]
Last summer (2016) I was invited to IH London to give a two-hour seminar to teachers of English from the Basque country. They were amazingly enthusiastic and very receptive. I had given (as I usually do) a talk/workshop on how to prepare students for their listening encounters with normal everyday speech, focussing on examples of fast speech. […]
One of the teacher-trainers that I most admire is Adrian Underhill. I like the way he encourages learners and teacher trainees to explore. He encourages people to mouth (maʊð) a full range of sounds, not simply the ‘correct’ ones – and he encourages people to dance around, using their whole body to get the feel […]
We still behave, as a profession, as if the secrets of learning to listen are hidden inside a black box whose mechanisms are unknowable and unteachable. Two things inside the black box seem particularly unknowable and un-teachable: (a) the messy, unruly sound substance of normal everyday speech and (b) knowledge of what our students make […]
There is one major prerequisite for becoming an effective user of a language. (Being a prerequisite means that it is an essential requirement before you can start doing anything meaningful.) This prerequisite is ‘substance mastery’. By this I mean mastery of the substances of both writing and speech, the ability to form (in writing and speaking), […]
Imagine that you have a recording ten minutes long. Easy. Now imagine that this recording is a bar of chocolate ten minutes long. Not so easy, but bear with me. The bar looks very uniform in flavour: it is the same colour along its entire length. But under the chocolate coating, someone has told you […]
Image from here. ‘Vocal gymnastics’ is the term used in my current work to refer to activities which serve the goal of improving the students’ listening, but which involve them in using their voices. To an naive observer, the activities will look and sound like pronunciation activities which practise the bad habits of being unclear, unintelligible, […]
In my previous posting I explained that phonologists/phoneticians (in their publications aimed at the ELT profession) mention the facts of everyday speech in ways that (a) downplay its true nature and (b) ignore the goal of listening. Their emphasis is on the genteel route to acceptable pronunciation. Unfortunately this genteel route is followed with an earnest […]
Listening Cherries is a blog where I talk about listening issues – from classroom activities to academic research. Listening Cherry no. 10 argues that ‘pronunciation’ should be reserved. Image from here. It is common to use the word ‘pronunciation(s)’ to refer to the versions of words that present themselves to the listeners ears: Swan (2012) writes […]
On Tuesday 10th June I gave a British Council seminar ‘Accent and Identity: Prejudice and Insecurity’ which you can see here – I start speaking at 13:25 into the video. The presentation was and is an exploration of issues that are covered in more detail in Part 3 of my book ‘Phonology for Listening’. I assert that […]
It is easy to demonstrate the fact that there is no causal link between intonational choice and attitude. However, it requires a couple of pre-requisites. The first pre-requisite is that one should be prepared to question what textbooks and teacher-training manuals tell us about speech. What they tell us is usually useful advice for speaking […]
I have just today received the following good news of another shortlisting for Phonology for Listening. The winner will be announced here soon. I am writing on behalf of the Ben Warren-International House Trust Prize to inform you that your book ‘Phonology for Listening’ has been placed on the shortlist for the prize. The full shortlist […]
May 2018 – Speech in Action
This is the first post in a series of four on the topic of gap-fill exercises, and how consideration of what they require can lead to a new approach to decoding – ‘learning the sound substance of English’. Decoding (when it does occur) most often happens at the end of a listening comprehension exercise. And […]