What the first English lesson should be like

Michal Ryszard Wojcik   Saturday, December 15, 2001, 23:09 GMT
In an old email someone asked me:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I wonder what is your opinion on what the first lessons should look like.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The first lesson should deal with pronunciation.
When you don't do pronunciation first,
you have to do something else than pronunciation.
And then whatever you do, and if it involves speaking,
then bad pronunciation habits are formed.

If you don't know how to pronounce and yet you pronounce your own way
at the beginning of your learning, then you are building your habits in the wrong way.
Learning words without pronunciation on the first lesson is damaging.

WARNING: harsh and controversial words follow:

Teachers who don't teach pronunciation from the beginning are criminals.
They damage the language centers in the brains of their students.
Robert Mercer   Monday, December 17, 2001, 21:18 GMT
At first I was distracted by the word criminal; it's a very strong word, especially when applied to good people trying to do good work, who are perhaps making a mistake (by not focusing on pronunciation, as you suggest.) I'd reserve the word criminal for a deliberately wrong act, as opposed to an inadvertent or un-educated mistake.

But once I put my pride aside and listened to the point of your message, I have to admit you might be very right; perhaps I should be insisting on far better pronunciation from my students from the first minute, rather than have them use an approximate pronunciation, and then fine-tune later.

I'm learning Spanish right now, and I think that I see your point; should I learn a bad pronunciation of "español" now, then later be corrected (or correct myself)... or should I just start from right now, first day, to say español correctly.... so I never have to 're-learn' or improve it in the future?! I think you might be right...

I wanted to argue against your point by saying that getting the pronunciation right would slow things down (and it would) but then, the learning process is pretty slow anyway, and slowing it down a bit more by asking for correct pronunciation wouldn't change things much.

And right now my own language learning is so hampered by my poor pronunciation: I've learned ten phrases to use in a restaurant, but it is so frustrating that waiters don't understand me, since I'm mispronouncing the phrases all wrong! Perhaps you are 100% correct: it would have been better to learn to speak five phrases ~correctly~ instead of ten or a hundred badly... the mis-pronounced phrases are practically useless anyway, since they're not understood...

The more I think about your point the more I like it!
Robert Mercer
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
Michal Ryszard Wojcik   Tuesday, December 18, 2001, 15:24 GMT
My point is that there are two possibilities that I recommend:
(1) learn pronunciation from the beginning and speak from the beginning,
(2) learn without pronunciation, but do not speak (you will start speaking at a later stage - after learning pronunciation)

I have been learning Norwegian for half a year, from the zero level. And to this day I haven't started pronouncing words. Instead, I listen to Norwegian almost every day and I learned as much phonetic transcription as I could extract from a Norwegian phonetics book.

I don't know when I will start to pronounce Norwegian words but one thing is certain: I will be correct from the beginning. What I mean by "correct" is not "perfect" - it's not how Norwegian natives would pronounce. But it's "correct" in the following sense:

(1) I will use the right sounds (perhaps my own versions of the Norwegian sounds, but there will be a clear correspondence between my own sounds and the Norwegian sounds)

(2) I will stress the right syllable

additionally:
(3) I'm going to be able to phonetically transcribe my own Norwegian output. This means that I will have conscious control over my output. I will have a "digital perception" of my pronunciation - as opposed to an "analog perception", which is usually developed by learners.

You can read more about how I learn Norwegian pronunciation. One of the things I did was to use a phonetics book and learn the phonetic alphabet:

http://www.antimoon.com/norsk/reports/started_working_on_norsk_pronunciation.htm
Michal Ryszard Wojcik   Sunday, December 30, 2001, 16:05 GMT
I once taught English pronunciation to one of my classmates in high school. She was eager to learn and I succeeded in bringing her pronunciation to a very high level. I consider her case one of my achievements in English teaching.

I mention that girl (Kasia) because she had recommended me as an English teacher to a friend of hers (Maja) who wanted to learn English from the beginning. Maja had had no contact with English and she wanted to learn with my methods of which she had heard from Kasia.

I gladly agreed to teach Maja English from the beginning. It's an opportunity for me to test my ideas about language teaching/learning. I was glad that the girl knew no English.

Below follows my report from my first lesson with the girl, which I wrote on Friday, October 26, 2001:
{
I started with pronunciation and transcription.
The first word was "they".
I taught her to pronounce [TH] and then [th].
The words were: this, think, thin.

Then I did the difference between [i:] and [i].
I also mentioned that voiced consonants are used at the end of words.
She practiced "leave", "leaves", and "bed".

The girl was eager to learn more in this way.
I am coming to her next week on Wednesday.
}
Ye hua   Monday, February 25, 2002, 11:47 GMT
Dear Mr.Michal Ryszard Wojcik,

As a English teacher, I also think most students don't like English classes for boring textbook. I am amazed about how to teach students in an interesting and effective way in English classes.