One Response to IPA: The theory and beyond. Is knowing the IPA essential? Do you use phonemic script in class? Why or why not? #ELTchat Summary 22/02/2012 (my comment to post at  http://eltchat.com/2012/02/26/ipa-the-theory-and-beyond-is-knowing-the-ipa-essential-do-you-use-phonemic-script-in-class-why-or-why-not-eltchat-summary-22022012/
  1. Gregory Quinlivan says:February 27, 2012 at 5:55 amFor the half of the world’s population whose first language does not use a Latin script, IPA is a waste of time.

    In my situation, I teach students in Taiwan 40 minutes per week. Their first language uses traditional Chinese script and its more than 10,000 characters take many years for them to master. As one of the speakers mentioned, IPA is just another level of complexity to impose on them, which is why we don’t do it.

    Students are quite capable of learning to speak reasonable English without IPA. For example, the excellent Synthetic Phonics approach used widely in the U.K. (and increasingly in the USA) offers a more straightforward system linked closely to English spelling.

    Once students know some reference sounds used within key words, they can use them to learn new words, rather than trying to recall isolated, decontextualised symbols.

    Although I had to endure some IPA as part of my own formal training, I see it more as a tool for professional linguists than for second language learners.
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Greg Quinlivan (12:24:18) :
OK, I’m a simple teacher, so I may be completely wrong. However, I assume you’re referring to incremental improvements that you might be trying to produce in intermediate or higher level students who have had significant exposure to English already.
I can’t imagine you would subscribe to the same conclusion in the case of beginners. For example, one group of my students are first grade elementary school Taiwanese kids. Many have never seen English Ietters before, and both their Chinese characters and “bopomofo” phonetic system are of no assistance for reading, writing or pronunciation of English. I can’t see myself standing in front of them with an alphabet flashcard and just letting them pronounce the letters any way they feel like on first exposure to them. If I showed them “a” and let them say “b” their chances of being able to communicate ANYTHING would be nil.
While I don’t expect many of them to ever approximate the pronunciation of a native speaker, I do hope they will get to the point where they can at least be understood by one.
Am I wasting my time and theirs?

Posted 1st August, 2010 at http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/p-is-for-pronunciation/#comment-1588




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