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Pronunciation for International Intelligibility

First published in English Teaching Professional, 21, October 2001

The background.
Until very recently few teachers or learners really questioned the idea that in
order to be understood when speaking English, students would need to get as
close as possible in their pronunciation to one of the dominant native-speaker
accents, such as Received Pronunciation (RP), the standard British accent, or GA
(General American), the USA equivalent. Nor did anybody really bring under
scrutiny the idea that the measure for successful pronunciation should be the
speaker’s degree of intelligibility as determined by a native-speaker. The last
decade, however, has brought about such a significant change in the role of
English throughout the world that it is essential to re-examine this situation.
English is currently regarded as the world’s principal international language, as a
result of which there are now more exchanges between non-native speakers of
English (NNS-NNS), than between non-native speakers and native speakers
(NNS-NS). In the immediate future at least, this situation is not going to change
in favour of the minority of native speakers, and so suddenly the hegemony of
their particular (and sometimes peculiar) accents is under fire.

The demise of native-speaker accents.

One of the first people to question the idea of a native-speaker accent as a
model or norm was R. Macaulay. In 1988, in an article provocatively entitled ‘RP
R.I.P.?’, he pointed out a simple but surprising truth about this supposedly
prestige accent: less than 3% of the UK population actually used it at that time,
and the percentage was falling. Macaulay also drew our attention to another
forgotten reality of RP, namely that it was an accent which enclosed
‘unnecessary’ difficulties for learners of English, such as the ‘r’ sound or certain
of its diphthongs.

These arguments were reiterated in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English

(1995), where Professor David Crystal suggests that a standard Scots accent
would actually be a better model for most learners of English. Moreover, he
adds, RP is constantly changing, a fact that was confirmed only recently by John
Wells, Professor of Phonetics at University College, London. A study he carried
out in 1998 has shown how with words like chance and one, younger native
speakers of British English have a clear preference for the non-RP vowels,
making these rhyme with the vowels in can and gone, as opposed to those in car
and sun.
Realistic goals.
If a native-speaker accent is an undesirable goal for our students for the
arguments outlined above, it is at the same time a wholly unrealistic goal for the
vast majority of learners, many of whom bear the scars of fruitless attempts to
satisfactorily differentiate between ship and sheep, or between hat, hut, and hot.
The dilemma, of course, is what we put in their place once we knock RP, GA and
other native-speaker accents off their pedestals?

Joanne Kenworthy, in Teaching English Pronunciation, puts forward the concept

of comfortable intelligibility as a suitable goal for the majority of learners.
The term is self-explanatory, but does not actually pin down which features of
English pronunciation need to be learned in order to attain this intelligibility. With
this problem in mind, perhaps, Bryan Jenner attempted to determine “what all
native speakers of all varieties have in common which enables them to
communicate effectively with native speakers of varieties other than their own”.
The results of his analysis were brought together in the Common Core, which is
a list of the features of English pronunciation Jenner considered essential for
intelligibility anywhere in the world.

The Lingua Franca Core.

Whilst constituting a great improvement over the frustration and futility of
attempting to gain native or near-native command of all of the features of
English pronunciation, the Common Core still did not fully address the reality of
English as an International Language (EIL): the listener for Jenner’s core
continued to be the native speaker. Because of this, and on the basis of
extensive data collected in multilingual EFL classes, Jennifer Jenkins modified the
Common Core so as to take the reality of fully EIL into account. The resulting
Lingua Franca Core identifies 7 areas in which it is essential to eliminate error
in our students’ pronunciation:

• Vowel quantity: vowel quality varies widely from one NS accent to

another. However, the length differences between the vowels of English
feature in all accents, and the long English vowels are very long in
comparison with average vowel lengths in other languages. Because of
this, the distinction between long and short vowels is more important than
exact vowel quality, and should be clear in speech. With diphthongs, just
as with pure vowels, length should be our main concern rather than exact
quality.
• Consonant conflations: when a consonant of English does not occur in a
learner’s mother tongue, the ‘missing’ sound is substituted with something
similar from the speaker’s first language. The substitution of one
consonant for another can cause serious confusion for both NS and NNS
listeners. Substituting /p/ for /f/, a Korean speaker of English, for
example, would produce paint for faint, or copy, for coffee. An exception is
made regarding /θ/ and /ð/, since these two phonemes do not occur in the
majority of the world’s languages, including some native-speaker varieties.
A speaker with an Irish accent, for example, pronounces dare and there in
the same way as are tin and thin.
• Phonetic realisations: another strategy used when struggling to
pronounce English is to use a sound from your mother tongue that is close
to the required English sound. However, some such approximations may
 lead to unintelligibility, as with /β/, the fricative sound the Spanish use for
the ‘b’ in cabin, or /ɣ/, the sound they use for the ‘g’ in again or ‘a girl’.
• Consonant cluster simplification: learners employ two radically
different strategies to deal with consonant clusters. Of the two, deleting
one of the consonants to simplify a cluster can affect intelligibility
considerably, whilst the addition of a vowel seems to cause fewer
problems. Turkish speakers of English, for example, will often insert a
vowel before or after an ‘s’, so stone will sound like istone or sitone.
However foreign this may sound to a native speaker, it is much less
damaging to intelligibility than eliminating one of the two consonants,
leaving tone or sone, for example.
• Prominence and weak forms: on the continuum between stress-timed
and syllable-timed languages, English, with its multiple weak-form words
and its heavily-reduced unstressed vowels, lies well towards stress-timing.
As a result of this, learners frequently deem native speakers as harder to
understand than non-natives. Ability to deal receptively with weak-forms
and other connected speech modifications is a goal for all who will come
into contact with native speakers. However, in terms of NNS production,
teaching should focus on achieving adequate prominence on the stressed
syllables, rather than on attaining perfect weak forms or schwas for the
reduced vowels. With correct prominence, even if totally lacking in weak
forms or schwa, a learner’s English will be intelligible.
• Tone groups: failing to use tone groups to divide the stream of speech
into manageable, meaningful chunks has a serious effect on intelligibility.
On the one hand, it may lead to breaks in speech in unexpected places,
reducing intelligibility, whilst on the other, it reduces planning time for the
speaker, which will inevitably lead to new errors of all types.
• Nuclear/contrastive stress but not tone: one almost unique
characteristic of English is the way in which it varies the most prominent
stress in a tone group to create meaning. Thus, the utterance They rented
a FLAT does not carry the same meaning as They RENTED a flat. Many
other languages use syntactic changes to change meaning, and so learners
often fail to pick up the significance of the tonic stress, and naturally fail to
use it appropriately. Clearly, to put the main stress on the wrong word in
an utterance, will direct the listener’s attention to the wrong place, leading
to confusion, whether the listener is a native speaker or not.

Incorrect word stress, which is widely regarded as a source of unintelligibility in

spoken English, is probably the most surprising omission from the Core.
However, breakdowns in communication attributable to word stress were not
encountered in Jennifer Jenkins’ research data, which suggests that it is far more
of a problem for NS listeners than for NNS-listeners.

Comparative lists and the Lingua Franca Core.

Traditionally as teachers we have referred to the widely available lists of
indications as to where to concentrate our efforts when teaching pronunciation.
These lists relate in detail the individual sounds or the connected speech features
that will cause difficulties for a learner of a specific L1. Essentially they constitute
a summary of what our learners cannot do, and in a great many cases, the
 resulting list is quite formidable. Table 1, for example, is for learners whose
mother tongue is Spanish.

Table 1: Priorities for Spanish Speakers of English based on O’Connor (Better English Pronunciation), Kenworthy (Teaching English
Pronunciation) and Taylor (Pronunciation in Action) (HP = High Priority after Kenworthy).

9. /d/ and /t/ confused - /t/ used for both, or the sound in the Spanish ‘yo’
Vowels
is used instead
1. /i:/ and // confused and a vowel more like /i:/ used for both (HP)
10./h/ does not occur and is either deleted or substituted by /x/ (HP)
2. /æ/ and // confused and // used for both (HP)
11.// does not occur and is substituted by /n/ (HP in some cases)
3. /æ, , :/ confused, a sound like //being used, except where ‘r’ occurs in
12./l/ is always clear in Spanish
the spelling, when /:/ is replaced by vowel + /r/ (HP)
13./r/ in Spanish is a tongue-tip flap or roll
4. //, // and /:/ confused (if there is no ‘r’ in the spelling), a vowel
intermediate between // and /:/ being used. Where ‘r’ occurs in the spelling 14./w/ does not occur and is substituted by /b/or //, or by /g/ if /w/
/:/ is replaced by vowel + /r/ comes before //

5. /u:/ and // confused with a vowel similar to /u:/used for both 15./p, t, k/ are not aspirated in Spanish (HP for /p/ and /t/)

6. /:/ is replaced by the vowel + /r/ Clusters

7. // is usually replaced by the vowel suggested by the spelling (HP) 1. /e/ is inserted before /s+C/ or /s+C1+C2/ clusters

8. /e/ and // confused (HP) 2. Learners tend to add /s/ for plurals: ‘pens’ sounds like ‘pence’
3. /s + C + s/ clusters difficult, with one of the /s/ being deleted
9. //, // and // are replaced by the vowel + /r/
4. /s/ sometimes deleted when final in a word-final cluster
10.No length variation - all vowels generally have the same length as the
English short vowels, so long vowels seem too short (HP) 5. Final clusters with /t/ or /d/ are problematic, with deletion of /t, d/
or the insertion of a vowel
Consonants
Stress, rhythm and intonation
1. Confusion between /b/ and /v/ - // tends to be used for both, sometimes
/b/ is used for /v/ (HP) 1. Incorrect stress of compound words and ‘adj + noun’ combinations

2. /t/ is very dental in Spanish 2. Speakers have an over-even rhythm. Stressed syllables occur, but each
syllable has approximately the same length
3. /d/ and //are confused and often used interchangeably (HP)
3. There are no weak forms in Spanish
4. /g/ is often replaced by a similar friction sound (/ /)
4. There is no equivalent system in Spanish to the system of nuclear stress of
5. /s/ and /z/ confused - /s/ used for both (HP) English

6. // does not occur in Spanish - /s/ used instead (HP) 5. Pitch range is too narrow and lacks high falls and rises

7. // does not occur in Spanish - /s/ used instead 6. Final falling pitch may not sound low enough

7. The rise-fall seems difficult

8. /j/ does not occur - the sound in ‘yo’ is used instead (HP)

The shaded areas are those features that lie outside the lingua franca core, and
what is immediately obvious once we ignore these areas, is just how much
lighter the learner’s load has suddenly become. Gone are the bugbears (for
learner and many non-native teachers alike) of those dreaded vowel sounds. And
let’s be honest, just how often in genuine conversation will two people confuse a
‘ship’ from a ‘sheep’, or a ‘hat’ from a ‘hut’. Whilst not discouraging attempts to
achieve good vowel quality, the core draws teachers’ and learners’ attention
decisively towards the far more important issue of vowel length.

There is a similar, significant reduction in the workload in terms of stress,

rhythm and intonation. Once again, gone are those odious exercises on
discriminating between fall and rise tones, which it turns out do not even reflect
what is happening. In practice, it is both possible and correct to ask a ‘Yes/No’-
question with a fall tone, or a ‘Wh’-question with a rise, as is so elegantly
explained in David Brazil’s Pronunciation for Advanced Learner’s of English.
Similarly, clusters come down to dealing with deletion of consonants (elision),
except perhaps, where this would be natural among native speakers, as is the
case for /t/ or /d/ when they come between consonants, as in can’t come or Hold
the line. Here deletion could be openly encouraged since it facilitates speech.

Good vowel length, good pronunciation of most of the consonants, good handling
of clusters, the avoidance of incorrect deletions, prominence and good tonic
stress - these are the focus of our work on pronunciation, together with one area
which did not come up in any traditional list, but is a priority in the LFC, namely
the appropriate use of tone groups.

Monolingual groups.
By rejecting native-speaker accents such as RP or GA as norms, and by applying
the concept of the lingua franca core to the ‘difficulties’ our learners are claimed
to have, we arrive at a much reduced, and much more achievable set of
pronunciation goals. (If you work with a monolingual group other than
Spanish, try the LFC ‘filtering’ exercise carried out above for the problems your
learners are said to have. The result will almost definitely make you feel better
about teaching pronunciation to your classes.)
However, this already bright picture is made even more so if we take a close look
at how it is that precisely with monolingual groups, who make up the majority
teaching situation around the world, the learners’ first language, instead of being
ignored or, worse still, seen as an obstacle, actually provides access to an
important number of our new pronunciation goals.
The consonant phonemes /z, ʃ, ʒ/, for example, are described traditionally as not
occurring in Castilian Spanish. However, a basic knowledge of Spanish phonetics
reminds us that /z/ is an allophone for /s/ and is found in words like mismo or
asno. The /ʃ/, though not an allophone of Castilian, is common in a number of
the other languages spoken in the Iberian peninsular, whilst the /ʒ/ sound
features in the pronunciation of Argentinean Spanish. In the same way, a
Portuguese speaker of English having difficulty with the /tʃ, dʒ/ sounds can be
referred to the Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation of the words tia or dia, or to
the accents from Sao Paulo city, Carioca or Mieiro. Another very English
phoneme, /ŋ/, does not ‘officially’ occur in French, yet once again a good
working knowledge of French phonetics comes to our aid: the ‘n’ in en guarde or
in dingue offers a very close approximation to the English velar /ŋ/.

The technique we are employing in all of the above examples is sometimes

known as association. We link the pronunciation feature we are aiming at with
an equivalent or near equivalent feature in the student’s own language, or in
related languages, dialects or accents. As a technique, it works especially well
with consonants, although it also works with certain aspects of stress, rhythm
and intonation. Elision, the deletion of certain sounds in rapid speech, may
actually be a feature of your students’ mother tongue. In Spanish, for example,
the /s/ is deleted in combinations with /r/ such as más rojo or más rápido.

By approaching these sounds through the mother-tongue of monolingual groups,

we are not only contemplating a reduced, achievable set of goals, but also
switching the emphasis to what learners CAN do as opposed to what they
supposedly canNOT do. This apparently minor shift in viewpoint could well prove
critical to the success of our pronunciation work: we reduce the negative
psychological effects of always stressing what is wrong, whilst at the same time
stressing the value of the student’s own language as a tool for speaking English.
This should prove especially positive for those students who explicitly or
otherwise do not wish to lose their own national or regional identity on imitating
pure ‘English’ sounds.
Non-native teachers with monolingual groups.
Monolingual groups may not be the ideal context in which to improve
pronunciation skills, but they are a reality for most of us, and one, which will not
change, in the immediate future. However, as Donna Brinton indicates, “... the
task of the EFL pronunciation teacher is simplified by the homogenous first
language background of the learners since knowledge of this language can
generally be brought to bear in constructing the pronunciation syllabus.”

Given such groups, who is best situated to deploy the detailed knowledge of the
phonetics of both English and the students’ L1 that is needed to produce
solutions of the sort seen in the last section? The answer quite simply would be
fluent, bilingual speakers with a good knowledge of the two phonetic systems.
But between two fluent, bilingual speakers, one from the UK/USA/etc. and one
sharing the same nationality as the learners, who would be best? The answer to
our question may lie in considering the following:

• The native-speaker of English can provide native-speaker modelling in

class. But since a native-speaker accent is not our goal, this advantage is
of limited value, and competent non-native speakers can also produce
perfectly adequate modelling.

• A good working knowledge of both languages’ phonetic systems is

necessary, but many UK-trained EFL teachers qualify without even a good
knowledge of the phonetics of English, and only a very few study the
phonetics of their learners’ mother tongue. In contrast, in many countries
a degree in English means the study of the phonetics of both the L1 and
English systems.

• Who knows best, through personal experience, the physical and

psychological difficulties in learning a second language pronunciation?
Again, on average it is the non-native speaker of English who has greatest
empathy with their students’ difficulties and differences.

• Who knows through personal experience which approximations to our

pronunciation goals are sufficiently good to be intelligible to listeners, and
which are not? Here non-native speakers have a clear advantage, since
their native-speakers counterparts have seldom if ever experimented with
adjustments in their pronunciation of English in order to be understood.

The best teacher for monolingual groups, we conclude, is the fluent, bilingual
speaker of either nationality, although the non-native teacher probably has the
edge over the native-speaker colleague. The teacher worst situated, and by quite
a significant distance, is the native speaker who is neither fluent in the learners’
mother tongue, nor fully understands the corresponding phonologies.

Conclusion.
By viewing English as a tool for international intelligibility, we establish a new
perspective on pronunciation goals, with priorities that are both fewer in number
and more realistic than those previously set. For monolingual groups the
learner’s first language is a vital tool in achieving these new goals, and the
bilingual non-native speaker teacher is an ideal instructor.
Acknowledgements: My thanks to Dr Kevin Keyes of the Universidade Federal
de Minas Gerais, Brazil, for his help with Brazilian Portuguese.

References
Brazil, D. (1994). Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English, Cambridge
Univ. Press.
Brinton, D. (1995). Integrating pronunciation in the language syllabus, Speak
Out! 16, IATEFL.
Crystal, D. (1995). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Jenner, B. (1989). Teaching pronunciation: the common core, Speak Out! 4,
IATEFL.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language.
Oxford Univ. Press.
Kenworthy, J. (1987). Teaching English Pronunciation, Longman.
Macaulay, R. (1988). RP RIP, Applied Linguistics Vol. 9 No. 2.
O’Connor, J. D. (1967). Better English Pronunciation, Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, L. (1983). Pronunciation in Action, Prentice Hall.
Wells, J. (1999). Which pronunciation do you prefer? IAFTEFL Issues 149,
IATEFL.