Table 3. Proposed features of oral proficiency
Authentic communication: Whyzit importan' ta teach reduced forms?by James Dean Brown (University of Hawai'i at Manoa) |
This paper focuses on the evolution of my awareness of the importance of teaching connected speech forms in ESL/EFL classrooms. It also includes my recent efforts to compile the literature on the topic and formulate the rules underlying continuous speech forms including such concepts as word stress, utterance stress and timing, elisions, reductions, insertions, intrusions, simple transitions, assimilations, contractions, and combinations of all of the above.
My quest began when I was teaching in the People's Republic of China back in 1980. One day a student came up to me after class and asked me why it was that he could understand me when I spoke to the class, but could not when I spoke to other Americans. I discussed that question over lunch with my nine American colleagues. We decided that the issue was probably related to the way we enunciated very clearly when teaching, but used more relaxed pronunciation, which we began calling "reduced forms", when talking to each other. We decided to collect as many samples of reduced forms as we could by listening carefully to each other and to ourselves when we spoke, jotting down any forms that we noticed.
Table 1 shows an edited list of the reduced forms that we collected. In order to be included in this list, all nine of us had to agree that we produced a given reduced form in our respective dialects of North American English (from California, New York City, Boston, and the Midwest).
In addition, we agreed to teach these reduced forms for 5-10 minutes in each of the 50 intermediate speaking classes that students took over the course of their ten week term.
| Greetings | Other Combined Words | Question Forms |
| Howarya (How are you?) | c'mon (come on) | Howza (How is the) |
| Howdy (How do you do?) | g'won (go on) | How d'ya (How do you) |
| gedouda (get out of) | How'd ja (How did you) | |
| Farewells | wadda (what a) | How'ja (How would you) |
| G'bye (Goodbye) | Jawanna (Do you want to) | |
| 'bye (Goodbye) | Shortened Words | Yawanna (Do you want to) |
| Seeya (See you) | 'bout (about) | Whaddya (What do you) |
| S'long (So long) | 'nother (another) | Whatduzzee (What does he) |
| 'round (around) | Whaja (What did you) | |
| Modals + TO | 'cause (because) | Whaja (What would you) |
| goin'ta (going to) | in' (-ing) | Whad'll (What will) |
| gonna (going to) | jus' (just) | Whatser (What is her) |
| gotta (got to) | ol' (old) | Whatsiz (What is his) |
| hafta (have to) | yu (you) | Wheraya (Where are you) |
| otta (ought to) | yer (your) | When d'ya (When do you) |
| wanna (want to) | Where j'eat (Where did you eat?) | |
| Words + OF | J'eat jet (Did you eat yet?) | |
| Modals + HAVE | kinda (kind of) | J'ev (Did you have) |
| coulda (could have) | sorta (sort of) | J'ever (Did you ever) |
| mighta (might have) | type-a (type of) | Wouldja (Would you) |
| shoulda (should have) | a lotta (a lot of) | |
| in fruna (in front of) | ||
| Negative Modals | ouda (out of) | |
| /wõ/ [nasalized o] (won't) | ||
| /dõ/ [nasalized o] (don't) | Contractions | |
| duzn (doesn't) | N(or PN) + be(present) | |
| havn (haven't) | N(or PN) + be(future) | |
| N(or PN) + would | ||
| N(or PN) + will | ||
| N(or PN) + have(present) | ||
| N(or PN) + have(past) | ||
| Let + PN | ||
| there + be | ||
| there + have | ||
| here + be |
[ p. 13 ]
In addition to teaching these reduced forms daily, once a week we administered a dictation that included a sampling of the reduced forms they had learned up to that point. Table 2 shows an example of one such reduced forms dictation. During the dictation, students were instructed to write the full forms of the words that represented what they were hearing and were told to expect to hear the dictation read three times at natural speed — "once fast, once fast, and once fast" (that always got a nervous laugh). Pauses were provided between each reading to give students time to write. The scoring was done by counting up the number of underlined full-form words the students had managed to write down (for more on reduced forms dictations, see Brown & Hilferty, 1989, 1995, 1998).
| As it was read: | |
| Brian: | Whenerya goin' ta Peking? |
| Jim: | I'm gonna go on Sunday. |
| Brian: | Boy! I wish I were gettin' ouda here fer awhile. Ya gotcher plane ticket? |
| Jim: | No. I've gotta gedit tomorrow. |
| Brian: | Whaddya hafta do in Peking? |
| Jim: | I've gotta giv'em some lectures, but I also wanna do some sightseeing. |
| Brian: | Where'll ya go? |
| Jim: | I wanna gedouda Peking 'n see the Great Wall. |
| Brian: | Okay, hav' a good time. |
| Jim: | Okay, g'bye. |
| As it was scored: | |
| Brian: | When are you going to Peking? |
| Jim: | I am going to go on Sunday. |
| Brian: | Boy! I wish I were getting out of here for awhile. You got your plane ticket? |
| Jim: | No. I have got to get it tomorrow. |
| Brian: | What do you have to do in Peking? |
| Jim: | I have got to give them some lectures, but I also want to do some sightseeing. |
| Brian: | Where will you go? |
| Jim: | I want to get out of Peking and see the Great Wall. |
| Brian: | Okay, have a good time. |
| Jim: | Okay, goodbye. |
| Reduced forms: 46 (counting underlined words only). | |
In the end, we felt that these lessons helped the students a great deal with their comprehension of natural native-speaker speech. Indeed, when we did a four week experiment (reported in Brown & Hilferty, 1982, 1986a, 1986b), which compared pretest and posttest scores on reduced forms dictations (two forms counterbalanced to help control the practice effect). The results indicated that, in four weeks, student comprehension of reduced form sentences had improved from 35% to 61%.
We were quite happy to find a way to help students better understand native-speaker output.[ p. 14 ]
Years later, as I continued pondering the issues related to reduced forms (and collecting them), I realized that I was thinking about them in the wrong way. By collecting them in the way I was, I was lexicalizing them and thinking about them as individual units. I soon realized that what was needed, to teach them more effectively, was an understanding of the processes underlying these reduced forms. A great deal of reading, study, and thinking naturally let me to think about connected speech.
Crystal (1980, p. 81) defines connected speech as:A term used by linguists to refer to spoken language when analysed as a continuous sequence, as in normal utterances and conversations. Its significance lies in the contrast implied with studies of linguistic units seen in isolation, such as an individual sound, word or phrase, which were the subject matter of traditional linguistic enquiry. It is now realized that important changes happen to these units when they are used in connected speech, as demonstrated by such processes as assimilation and elision, e.g. and becoming /n/ in such phrases as boys and girls.
Crystal's definition works well for the purposes of this paper, except that I will expand the list of processes involved to include word stress, sentence stress and timing, reduction, strong and weak forms of words, elision, intrusion, assimilation, transition (juncture), liaison, and contraction.
It is also important to recognize that connected speech is part of a larger system of contextual constraints that affect our choices of linguistic tools through the rules of pragmatics that govern any particular language. Table 3 shows these contextual constraints and linguistic tools and how they are related to each other through pragmatic rules. I have written elsewhere about these constraints and tools (see, for instance, Brown, 1995, 1996), so will not waste space here going over them again. The features of connected speech are outlined in Table 3.
The nine processes that I have identified as underlying connected speech are: word stress, sentence stress and timing, reduction, citation and weak forms of words, elision, intrusion, assimilation, juncture, and contraction. Let's consider each of these briefly in turn.
[ p. 15 ]
Word stress. Crystal (2003, p. 435) defines the stress in word stress as:A term used in phonetics to refer to the degree of force used in producing a syllable. The usual distinction is between stressed and unstressed syllables, the former being more prominent than the latter . . .
In other words, this can be defined as the way the stressed syllables in a word (which is in turn, the smallest distinctive unit that can
stand on its own in speaking or writing) are organized in terms of their relative prominence.Syllable timed languages tend to produce each syllable with approximately the same prominence. Japanese is one such language. In Japanese, arigato gozaimasu [thank you very much] contains ten syllables, or mora1, of approximately equal weight, broken up as follows: a ri ga to o go za i ma su. French is also syllable-timed. Thus, an utterance like Il est très fatigué [He is very tired] is pronounced in six equally weighted syllables as follows: Il est très fa ti gué.
Stress timed languages tend to produce each stress group with approximately the same prominence. English is stress timed. Hence, an utterance like, "When'll ¦ Tom be coming ¦ back?" is timed in two stress groups: "When'll ¦ Tom" and "be coming ¦ back".
Notice that I am careful in these definitions of syllable and stress timed languages to use the word tend
to qualify my definitions.
I do this because these definitions are only true under certain conditions and because the definitions are not necessarily the same for
all languages that are labeled as one or the other (for more on this topic, see Dauer, 1983; Crystal, 2003, p. 436).[ p. 16 ]
Elision. This connected speech process involves dropping either vowels or consonants that would otherwise be present in the citation form of a word or phrase. For instance, the citation form of chocolate is pronounced in three syllables as something like cha ko lut, but in connected speech, NAE speakers are much more likely to drop the middle vowel in chocolate in a two syllable version pronounced something like chak lut. Elision also occurs at word boundaries. For example, the citation form of old is /old/, but the last consonant is often dropped in connected speech as in He's a good ol' boy. Elision is a very frequent process in connected speech, especially in the weak forms what often turn out to be function words.[ p. 17 ]
Contraction. This is a written manifestation of a small set of connected speech processes, which are often used in written dialogue to give a spoken flavor. Examples include I'm, don't, she's, they'll, we're, you'd, etc. (for an excellent article on this topic, see Hill and Beebe, 1980).| ". . . connected speech is a very real part of the English language. Indeed, it may be part of all living languages." |
I'll bet that most ESL/EFL learners and even most NAE native speakers believe that speaking "good English" or "proper English" is the
same as using formal English. Put in terms of connected speech, I'll further wager that many believe that the use of weak forms,
reduction, linking, contraction, assimilation, elision, and intrusion is a sign of lazy, sloppy, careless, or even slovenly English.
Are people who hold these beliefs right?
Many linguists say these beliefs are wrong. For instance, the well-known phonetician Peter Ladefoged says point-blank that:
There is, of course, nothing slovenly or lazy about using weak forms and assimilations. Only people with artificial notions about what constitutes so-called good speech could use adjectives such as these to label the kind of speech I have been describing. Weak forms and assimilations are common in the speech of every sort of speaker of both Britain and America. Foreigners who make insufficient use of them sound stilted. (Ladefoged, 2000, p. 93)
This mistaken belief about connected speech may occur because many lay people also believe that the use of colloquial speech is a sign of
substandard, low-class, or low-status English. Richard, Pratt, and Pratt have countered that claim by stating:Colloquial speech is not necessarily non-prestige speech and should not be considered substandard. Educated native speakers of a language normally use colloquial speech in informal situations with friends, fellow workers, and members of the family. It is often difficult for language learners to realize that in certain situations colloquial speech is more appropriate than extremely formal speech. (Richards, Pratt, and Pratt, 1993, p. 63)
Briefly, what does the applied linguistics literature have to offer to date on the topic of connected speech? Unfortunately, there is
not as much written about connected speech as there is about many other issues in applied linguistics. Indeed, the literature on connected
speech in English can best be characterized as being a collection of a bit here and a bit there over the last fifty years. Some researchers
have offered modest efforts to explain a few facets of connected speech and suggested ways to teach them (e.g., Brown and Hilferty, 1989, 1995,
1998; Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin, 2004; Dauer, 1993; Gilbert, 1984, 1993; Gimson, 1962, 1970, 1989, 2001; Grant, 1993; Morley, 1987;
Pennington, 1996; Sheeler and Markley, 1991).
Most of those authors have only touched on the issues involved in connected speech, and they have typically done so as one relatively small
part of learning listening comprehension or pronunciation. However, Griffee and Hough (1986), Griffee (1993), Hagen (2000), Hough (1995),
Kobayashi and Linde (1984), Rost and Stratton (1978, 1980), and Weinstein (1982, 2001) have provided more coverage and have focused
primarily on connected speech.
Sadly, actual research on connected speech is very hard to find indeed. Studies have been reported by Bowen (1975, 1976, 1977), Coleman (1977),
Henrichsen (1984), Brown and Hilferty (1986a, 1986b), Kim (1995), Kweon (2000), Ito (2001), Bley-Vroman and Kweon (2002), and Rosa (2002).
[ p. 18 ]
One new book (Brown and Kondo-Brown, 2006) offers a collection of (mostly) new research papers about connected speech. Table 4 shows the table
of contents of this book. Note that the first nine chapters focus mostly on connected speech in ESL/EFL, but also that four chapters (10-14)
address the issues involved in connected speech in Japanese. The final chapter on testing connected speech provides examples in English,
French, and Japanese.
| What do we know so far? | ||
| Chapter 1 | Introducing connected speech (Brown & Kondo-Brown) | |
| Chapter 2 | The significance of reduced forms (Ito) | |
| Chapter 3 | What do textbooks have to offer to teachers of connected speech? (Brown) | |
| Does connected speech instruction work? | ||
| Chapter 4 | The effectiveness of teaching reduced forms for listening comprehension (Brown & Hilferty) | |
| Chapter 5 | Comprehension of English reduced forms by Japanese business people and the effectiveness of instruction (Matsuzawa) | |
| Chapter 6 | Effect of reduced forms on input-intake process (Ito) | |
| How should connected speech be taught in English? | ||
| Chapter 7 | Don'cha know? A survey of ESL teachers' perspectives on reduced forms instruction (Rosa) | |
| Chapter 8 | eaching reduced interrogative forms to low-level students (Cahill) | |
| Chapter 9 | Visualizing English speech reductions using the free phonetic software package WASP (Varden) | |
| How should connected speech be taught in Japanese? | ||
| Chapter 10 | Categories and instances of reduced forms in connected speech in Japanese (Hasegawa) | |
| Chapter 11 | Pedagogical issues related to teaching listening to oral Japanese with a focus on reduced forms (Toda) | |
| Chapter 12 | Use of CAI learning materials for teaching sound changes in spoken Japanese (Sakai & Igashima) | |
| Chapter 13 | Why second language learners of Japanese need to learn difficult minute sounds in connected speech (Hirata) | |
| How should connected speech be tested? | ||
| Chapter 14 | Testing students' abilities to understand and used connected speech (Brown & Kondo-Brown) | |
Chapter 15 Testing students' abilities to understand and used connected speech (J. D. Brown & K. Kondo-Brown)
One other book (Brown, in progress) attempts to explain the processes that underlie connected speech and how they combine. Table 5 shows the
table of contents of that book.
[ p. 19 ]
| PART A BACKGROUND | |
| Chapter 1 | Why Teach Continuous Speech Forms? |
| Chapter 2 | Transcribing Speech Sounds |
| Chapter 3 | Word Stress |
| Chapter 4 | Utterance, Stress and Timing |
| PART B CONTINUOUS SPEECH | |
| Chapter 5 | Phoneme Variations |
| Chapter 6 | Simple Transitions |
| Chapter 7 | Dropping Sounds |
| Chapter 8 | Inserting Sounds |
| Chapter 9 | Changing Sounds |
| PART C PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER | |
| Chapter 10 | Contractions |
| Chapter 11 | Questions in Continuous Speech |
| Chapter 12 | Combining Multiple Processes |
Though it may not be clear from Table 5, all of the following topics are covered in the book: word stress, sentence stress and timing, reduction, strong and weak forms of words, elision, intrusion, assimilation, transition (juncture), liaison, and contraction. It turns out that all of the processes underlying connected speech are rule-based and relatively easy to understand and teach. Each of the processes is explained with many examples and rules are formulated and summarized in each chapter of the book. For example, the following are four of the rules that underlie anticipatory assimilation:
Anticipatory Assimilation A: The /t/ phoneme assimilates to bilabial /p/ when it is found at a syllable or word boundary before bilabial stops or a bilabial nasal such as /p/, /b/, /m/ (e.g., output and hat pin; outbid and that box; and Batman and cut meat.
Anticipatory Assimilation B: The /d/ phoneme assimilates to bilabial /b/ at a syllable or word boundary before bilabial stops or a bilabial nasal such as /p/, /b/, or /m/ (e.g., tadpole and good point; bedbug and good boy and admire and bad mouth.
Anticipatory Assimilation C: The /t/ phoneme assimilates to velar /k/ at a syllable or word boundary before the velar stops /k/ or /g/ (e.g., outcry and what kind; and outgun and cut grass).
Anticipatory Assimilation D: The /d/ phoneme assimilates to velar /g/ at a syllable or word boundary before the velar stop /g/ (e.g., mudguard and good game).
The book also supplies example exercise ideas for teaching each of the processes involved in connected speech.
[ p. 20 ]
Connected speech forms for listening or speaking, or both?| ". . . students need to be cautioned about when and where to use the various forms of connected speech." |
One issue that teachers often raise is the degree to which connected speech should be taught for listening comprehension only or also for
speaking or pronunciation. Some teachers prefer to dissuade students from producing connected speech because they fear that students will
end up sounding funny when they used connected speech, or that students may start writing things like gonna and wanna in their English essays.
Clearly, this is two-part problem.
Starting with the second part, students may indeed begin using gonna and wanna and similar connected speech forms in their writing if the
genre is right. Like any other aspect of ESL/EFL learning, the students need to be cautioned about when and where to use the various forms
of connected speech. For example, they need to learn that it is not appropriate to use connected speech forms in formal writing. However,
written connected speech does often appear in dialogues, short stories, novels, and other forms of fiction.
The other issue is that, in fact, students who know only one or two forms like gonna or wanna many sound odd using them,
especially, if the students do not fully understand them (see for instance the arguments presented by Hill & Beebe, 1980, pp. 322-323;
Avery & Ehrlich, 1992, p. 89; Hewings, 1993, p. 54). For instance, students might learn that going to is pronounced gonna
and then proceed to say I'm gonna San Francisco for I am going to San Francisco because they were not taught that
gonna is only used before infinitive verb forms. That's analogous to teaching students one or two phonemes and then faulting
them for not pronouncing them correctly in all phonetic environments. The solution is not to abandon all efforts to teach connected speech,
but rather, students must be given a more complete picture of how connected speech works. When they understand connected speech and how to
use it, they can steadily grow more comfortable using it. As part of this gradual build-up, certain teachers may prefer to have students
focus first on comprehending connected spoken NAE, before having them practice using those forms productively. Naturally, such decisions
are best left to the individual teacher.
The last issue I will address in this paper is whether or not we should in fact teach connected speech. My answer is a resounding yes.
A number of reasons underlie this belief. First of all, connected speech is a very real part of the English language. Indeed, it may
be part of all living languages. Students need to be exposed to and taught all seven sets of linguistic tools discussed in this chapter,
and connected speech is part of the suprasegmentals that figure into that expanded set of tools. In addition, students need to learn more
about grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation than we traditionally teach, and connected speech is part of the new information they need
to understand about pronunciation. Students also need to be able to adjust their styles and registers in using language, and the ability
to understand and use connected speech is essential for making such adjustments. Students also need to be able to respond to the seven
sets of contextual constraints discussed in this chapter, and ability to understand and use connected speech is essential to making such
adjustments. As Kelly, (2003, p. 113) pointed out, "In the same way that working on sentence stress and intonation can help students to
better understand spoken English, so can working oh the other features of connected speech."
Connected speech is not just a sign of lazy, sloppy, careless, or slovenly English. It is used in all levels of speech (those listed by
Hartmann and Stork, 1976, p. 136, after M. Joos, 1966) as well as others, including the most formal sorts of speech. In all of those levels,
connected speech may play an important "accentuation" role (as pointed out in Gimson, 2001, p. 249), the understanding of which can help
non-native speakers understand oral English and produce comprehensible spoken English. Research studies indicate that non-native speakers
have a problem understanding or producing the features of connected speech (Bowen, 1976; Henrichsen, 1984; Brown and Hilferty, 1986a, 1986b;
Kim, 1995; Kweon, 2000; Ito, 2001; and Bley-Vroman and Kweon, 2002). Research also indicates that the elements of connected speech can be
taught to non-native speakers of English (Brown and Hilferty, 1986a, 1986b). In many cases, the simple awareness of their existence can
help enormously in enabling students to better understand the language they hear. Perhaps most important of all, in my experience,
students enjoy learning about reduced forms because it is mostly new information that they find interesting.
[ p. 21 ]
References[ p. 22 ]
Dauer, R. M. (1983). Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 51-62.[ p. 23 ]
Kweon, S. O. (2000). The acquisition of English contraction constraints by advanced Korean learners of English: Experimental studies on wanna contraction and auxiliary contraction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation University of Hawaii at Manao, Honolulu, HI.
Topic Index
Author Index
Page Index
Title Index
Main Index
Topic Index
Author Index
Page Index
Title Index
Main Index
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