Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

Activity 1 Phonology and listening activities
Objective: to explore the link between phonology and listening
Time: 30 min
Materials: CD, recorded tape from Headway Advanced, handout (transcript) to each participant, flipchart
►Procedure:
-☺(5 min) Ask participants to listen to a recording (1-2 min) and answer the following question:
∼ What language is this? How do you know?
∼ What sort of text is this (e.g. dialogue, political speech, casual talk)? How do you know?
∼ What kind of emotional meaning is conveyed in this text (joke, love, drama, fear)?
Play the recording Track 1 ( A text)
Possible answers:
The text is in Armenian (which is unlikely to be known to participants). As Armenian is very different from Roman, Slavonic, Turkic or Germanic languages, there would be very few hints about the origin of the language. The text is a poem My Fate by O. Tatevosyan. The manner of reading, intonation and underlying rhythm, rhyme and meter should be discernible by participants. Compare this with a lecture, a dialogue, an everyday conversation. The poem is quite dramatic. This is evident from the tone of voice and the intonation of the speaker.
- Discuss the answers. Ask participants about the focus of this activity. Elicit a few random answers. Establish that it is meant to demonstrate that even listening to a text in an unfamiliar language one can infer a lot of meaning with the help of different phonological features.
- ☺ (5 min) Say that one phonological feature which has not yet been sufficiently covered in the programme is accent. Establish that in English-speaking countries, in particular, in Britain, accent plays an important role. Remind participants that various international dialects of English (e.g. American, Australian, Indian, Caribbean etc.) are receiving recognition on a par with the British English. They have their own accents that sometimes are quite different from each other. Ask the following question and elicit a few random answers:
∼ Do you think students should be able to understand different accents of English (in real life)?
- Remind participants that in Britain people can normally place each other’s accent geographically (e.g. from Newcastle, South-East, West Country etc.) as well as socially (e.g. working class, public school, etc.) To them it carries an important personal and social information (e.g. as in G.B Shaw’s Pygmalion). Say that you would like participants to do a listening activity from Headway Advanced that focuses on accents (Tapescript 22 ).
- ☺(15 min) Ask participants to listen to several people talking about the places they come from and their accents. Ask them to guess the place and to take note of some peculiar phonological features of a particular accent.
- Play 3 recordings of your choice (5 min) and discuss the texts. Distribute handout 11 with the transcript at an appropriate time.