Hi Vu,

Yes, this is how in works with English textbooks used in Germany for students of English as well. I think in fact that it is the only way of doing it. You cannot produce real sounds of the English language unless you do it with the words, phrases, sentences and contexts of the English language. There is no such thing as an absolute pronunciation, e.g. you get all sort of /l/ phonemes when pronouncing words like little, please, build,built. They will be clear, dark, syllabic, more or less voiced depending on the contexts (systematic variations or allophones) and then of course depending on the speaker (free variation). It's only when you abstract from these variations which exist in reality that you can get to an abstract phoneme /l/.

But you as a teacher (nor anybody else) cannot pronounce an abstraction, so we have to produce the variations and listeners will (hopefully) hear the difference and learn to reproduce the correct allophone.

This same idea holds true likewise for the sentence and the context level, where stress and intonation are involved.

So I would also be interested to know, whether somebody out there knows of another way of teaching pronunciation.

Regards,

Marylou 

Hello Marylou:

     One way of teaching pronunciation is to begin by teaching the articulation of the individual sounds using isolated words (i.e, one particular allophone of the phoneme is choosen.  For example the vowel sound in the AE word "bit" rather than in the AE word "beer," or the AE /i/ in the AE word "beat" rather than in the AE word "he").  The purpose in doing so is not to teach vocabulary, but for the students to conceptualize the sounds in one particular context.  I think the best context to use is one that exists in the students L1 (i.e, before or after a bilabial, fricative, etc).  For example, the Mandarin /i/ in the Mandarin word 'bin" and the AE /i/ in the AE word "bean."  Learning the pronunciation of one particular allophone creates the context for acquiring the other allophones. After the students have conceptualized the sounds in one context, learning them in another context is much easier.  For example, in the AE word "girl" there is a sound (schwa) between the /r/ and the dark /l/.  However, this schwa sound occurs naturally as a result of the tongue moving from the /r/ position to the dark /l/ position. After the students have conceptualized the individual sounds in one context, they then progress to other words in isolation, in phrases, in clauses, and in sentences.  After first teaching the AE vowel sounds using this technique my students have no problem with the vowel sounds in other contexts and in going on to learn the pronunciation of the consonants, and their allophones, using other words involving different allophones of a phoneme that was used to teach the vowel sounds.

Dan Jenkins (Foreign Expert, English Department, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China)