Finals week is approaching, and here is the final blog post for my deliberate practice which I have been doing since the beginning of the semester. In this post, I would like to recall the practices that I have done, note down the progress I made, and evaluate the problems that I still face in learning Received Pronunciation accent. I will also note down the pronunciation features that I have worked on, and the materials, resources, and techniques I used throughout the semester.
I started my practices focusing on the voice quality setting during the second week because the first week I only described my archetype. During this second week, I learned the posture of our lips, tongue, and jaw when pronouncing British English. I really think that it was a good start for it helped me realize the distinction between the target accent with my daily accent. Therefore, I think I made a good progress compared to my first recording that I posted when presenting my archetype. These five features of Received Pronunciation, namely spread lips, close jaw, creaky voice, falling intonation, and non-rhoticity, are important features to learn if we want to be fluent in British Pronunciation. When trying to understand these features, I found it easier if I had the visual. Thus, I used video trailer from Jane Eyre as the visual since my recording is audio only. By having video, can see the movement of the lips and jaw. The description and examples in the video from bbclearningenglish.com also helped me for this practice. This video is a good resource video for teaching English phonemes. It is very clear and completer with examples. Here is the video:
However, knowing these features only was not enough for me to be able to speak fluently in Received Pronunciation accent. Therefore, throughout week 3 to week 13, I learned phonological features, both segmental and suprasegmental features, of Received Pronunciation accent, tried to analyze my archetype based on the certain features that I learned during the weeks, and tried to imitate the archetype. I practiced my consonants and vowels during week three and four, trying to focus more in certain consonants and vowels that I found more difficult to pronounce, especially because these phonemes are not exist in my native language. I still used the above video to help me analyze my archetype, and to guide my practice in imitating my archetype. Other features that I learned during my practices were connected speech, stress, prominence, rhythm, and intonation.
I found that I learned a lot by trying to analyze my archetype, and then imitate it. This is a good way of learning pronunciation. I can see the differences in my first recording and my last one even though it is still far from being perfect. I still need to practice more on certain features of English. I could hear the improvement on my production of consonants and vowels even though I still need to improve some phonemes such as the voiced dental fricative /ð/, and the full aspiration of voiceless stops which is distinctive to British English for consonants, and /ɔː/ and some diphthongs for vowels. For learning vowels, I found that learning the differences between North American English and British English has helped me a lot in my practice, and this following Youtube video is particularly useful:
Other than consonants and vowels, I think I made some progress in connected speech and stress even though my production is not very accurate. However, judging from the length of my recording, it can be seen that my effort to connect the last sound of a word with the first sound of the following word works quite well. I also could hear improvement in the stress placements both in word-level and sentence-level stress. The intonation pattern is also improving because of my understanding of stress patterns, prominence, and rhythm.
Thus, I could say that I have learned a lot through this deliberate practice on Received Pronunciation accent. It has given me several practical insights into the teaching and learning of pronunciation especially British English accent. I have found several useful websites and videos that can be good resources to teach pronunciation. Also, the practices of analyzing the archetype has improved my diagnostic skills which can be useful for my future teaching practices.
Here is my final recording:
Finally, if I can do this practice differently, I would like to choose a different kind of archetype, not the one in which the person is reading a story like my current archetype, but rather one with free speech. I feel like I can learn a lot more features if my archetype is a free speech especially on rhythm and intonation I believe. It will be more challenging to analyze I am sure, but it means that I will learn a lot too.
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