Vowels and Consonants

Diphthongs – Vowel Combinations

Diphthongs are vowel combinations such as /oi/, /ai/, /ea/, /oa/, etc. Most English mono-thongs, have a strong tendency towards diphthongization, meaning they tend to distort toward a blend of vowels.

For example, say the word about

Do you hear the blending of the vowels a and u? This blend is called diphthongization.

Diphthongization is one of the biggest sources of interference or negative transfers in English Language learning. This means the L1 skills that an ELL transfers over will actually have a negative impact on his or her learning of English as opposed to a positive transfer where the skills in a student’s L1 help their acquisition of English. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, for example, there are no unstressed syllables. All syllables in the words within these languages are uttered or spoken. So the tendency of ELLs is to produce all syllables clearly and true to the mono-thong. For example, L1 ELLs will often pronounce both vowels in words like “fear” and “boat.”

Scwha /ə/

The scwha /ə/ sound, which is an unstressed and indistinctive vowel sound, can also cause confusion for ELLs. In words like notice how the schwa /ə/ is an almost indistinguishable sound that becomes obscured by the overstressing of a neighboring sound. This simple sound, unpronounceable in isolation, is responsible for many misunderstandings in ELL pronunciation.

Pronunciation versus Communication

Helping students acquire the English vowel system is a process that takes time and meaningful practice. A question that English language teachers often encounter is one of pronunciation. Many teachers exhaust themselves trying to have the students repeat after their own model of standard, English pronunciation. This can often lead to frustration and embarrassment of the student, particularly when done in front of peers.

Sometimes in an attempt to help students, teachers will talk more loudly to students, or ask them to repeat a sound or word over and over. This is rarely helpful. Often a powerful motivator for students is simply the fact that they begin to realize that people do not understand them. It is important to realize that students may have great difficulty changing their pronunciation, but over time they can modify their speech, given the opportunity to hear and to use the language. Practice, then becomes key. ELLs need frequent opportunities to develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in a guided and safe classroom environment where speaking is encouraged and errors are not a source of criticism. Also, by knowing about the phonology of the language of the student, we can often predict what sounds will cause problems and devise activities that will help with the new language.

A rule of thumb that English teachers can keep in mind when it comes to pronunciation with English learners is to correct when mispronunciation interferes with communication. When communication is, in fact, compromised because of pronunciation, we should correct by simply modeling the correct pronunciation of the word or phrase. One non-threatening way to model correct pronunciation is to repeat what the student said in the form of a question.

Click on the projector to listen to a linguist’s recommendation for when it is appropriate to correct pronunciation.

The development of native-like pronunciation takes a long time and needs to be combined with plenty of listening and speaking practice. In language classes, however, our main objective is not to teach students to replicate American-like accents, but rather to facilitate the development of effective communication skills. By providing consistent opportunities for comprehensible input (listening/reading) and meaningful output (speaking/writing), ELLs will develop effective communicative skills in English.