NC 319: ESL: American English Pronunciation II

Citrus College Course Outline of Record

Citrus College Course Outline of Record
Heading Value
Effective Term: Fall 2021
Credits: 0
Total Contact Hours: 72
Lecture Hours : 72
Lab Hours: 0
Hours Arranged: 0
Outside of Class Hours: 144
Strongly Recommended: NC 318: ESL: American English Pronunciation I and/or demonstrate a low intermediate level of English fluency.
Transferable to CSU: No
Transferable to UC: No
Grading Method: Non-Credit Course

Catalog Course Description

ESL: American English Pronunciation II expands on pronunciation and communication skills learned in ESL: American English Pronunciation I. This course is intended for students who have successfully completed ESL: American English Pronunciation I and can demonstrate at least a low-intermediate level of English fluency. Special attention will be placed on more complex sounds, sentence/word stress, communication and presentation skills, and pronunciation techniques for various settings. Open entry/exit. 72 lecture hours.

Course Objectives

  • Use standardized phonetic alphabet (such as IPA) as needed to represent and recognize various sounds in American English.
  • Discriminate between minimal pairs in sound, meaning, and spelling.
  • Categorize sounds by their phonetic value and spellings.
  • Demonstrate improved listening comprehension skills.
  • Read texts and perform and dialogues for fluency, appropriate sociolinguistic use, aural comprehension, and pronunciation in topics/contexts relevant to intermediate level ESL such as job interviews, personal and professional letters/texts, community involvement, improving and maintaining health, reporting an emergency, and expressing states.
  • Recognize basic different regional and registral varieties of English.
  • Recognize and reproduce sounds linguistically dissimilar to student's native language.
  • Distinguish between and employ articulation devices appropriate to casual and formal contexts.
  • Deliver a short presentation (2-3 minutes) using pronunciation devices and techniques.
  • Participate in interpersonal oral communication appropriate to the intermediate ESL level such as job interviews, expressing opinions, and resolving problematic situations.
  • Record dictation of conversation samples and 3-5 sentence passages.
  • Produce basic American English vowels and consonants in isolation, in words, phrases, and simple and complex sentences, including diphthongs, schwas, consonant clusters, affricates, voiced/unvoiced stops and fricatives.
  • Demonstrate ability to use vocal techniques/devices correctly, including various vowel sounds, stops, liquids, nasals, fricatives, affricates, and aspiration.
  • Make use of basic word stress in isolation and in context, including vowel sounds related to stressed and unstressed syllables, secondary stress, compound nouns, and phrasal verbs.
  • Produce and demonstrate recognition of American English sentence stress and intonation patterns, including emphasis of content, de-emphasis of structural words, rising/falling intonation and rhythm in complex sentences, and rising/falling intonation in questions/lists.
  • Demonstrate recognition and use of sociolinguistic implications of basic stress and intonation patterns, such as expression of importance, correction, unfinished/finished thoughts, surprise, disagreement, uncertainty, questioning, enthusiasm, reluctance, dissatisfaction, satisfaction, politeness, rudeness, sarcasm, and urgency.
  • Use linking/blending and reduction between words in isolation and in sentences, including combinations of stop, continuing and vowel sounds, off-glide, reduced sounds, and silent “h” words.
  • Demonstrate understanding of sound-grammar relationships (including various verb tenses), and how affixes and derivational morphemes affect parts of speech.
  • Identify sound-spelling correspondence and patterns (such as common silent letter patterns, clusters, and vowel rules) in speaking, reading, and writing.

Major Course Content

  1. Use a standardized phonetic alphabet (such as IPA) in description and production as needed.
  2. Produce American English vowels/consonants in isolation, in words, phrases, and simple/complex sentences
    1. Demonstrate ability to use vocal techniques/devices correctly (e.g., pursed lips for /ou/ sound in “hope,” vibrating throat for voiced sounds, aspiration, sibilants, stop sounds).
      1. Use appropriate visual and physical aids to demonstrate vocal techniques/devices (e.g., rubber band stretching for short vs. long vowel sounds)
      2. Consonants - stop sounds, fricatives, affricates, liquids, nasals, glides
      3. Vowels - long, short, irregular, schwa, diphthongs
    2. Demonstrate proper mouth and tongue correlation for basic American English sounds. 
      1. Vowels - tense and relaxed vowels
      2. Common problem and areas of focus such as:
        1. /∂/ or schwa (e.g., “cup,” “mouth")
          1. as a vowel sound common to reduced syllables
        2. /æ/ vs. /ε/ (e.g., “black” vs. “red”)
        3. /ey/ vs. /ε/ vs. /I/ (e.g., “late” vs. “let” vs. “lit”)
        4. /a/ vs. /∂/ (e.g., "cop" vs. "cup")
        5. /ow/ vs. /a/ vs. /a:/ (e.g., "boat" vs. "pot" vs. "bought")
        6. /uw/ vs. /u/ (e.g., “food” vs. “book”)
        7. /iy/ vs. /Ι/ (e.g., "sheep" vs. "ship")
        8. common diphthongs
      3. Unstressed vowels in words (i.e., /∂/ or schwa)
      4. Consonants including /r/ after vowels - /∂r/, /or/, /ar/ (e.g., "bird" vs. "four" vs. "car")
      5. Voiced and voiceless consonants
        1. Voiceless stop consonants (e.g., /p/, /t/, /k/)
        2. Aspiration
      6. Common problem areas and areas of focus such as:
        1. /θ/ vs. /ð/ (voiced vs. unvoiced “th” sound - “three” vs. “those")
        2. /p/ vs. /b/ vs. /f/  vs. /v/ vs. /w/ ("pen" vs. "boy" vs. "foot" vs. "very" vs. "wet")
        3. /s/ vs. /z/ (voiced vs. unvoiced “s” sound)
        4. /∫/ vs. /Z/ (e.g., “shoe” vs. “television”)
        5. /t∫/ vs. /dZ/ (voiced vs. unvoiced sound - e.g., “chicken” vs. “jacket”)
        6. /r/ vs. /l/ (e.g., “right” vs. “light”)
        7. /m/ vs. /n/ vs. /η/ (e.g., “mouse” vs. “nose” vs. “sing”)
        8. /y/ vs. /dZ/ (e.g., “yet” vs. “jet”)
      7. Consonant clusters
        1. With /y/ (e.g., “regular” and “particular”)
        2. With /s/ (e.g., “sp,” “sl,” “sm,” “str,” “sw,” “scr”)
        3. With /r/ and /l/ (e.g., “pr,” “bl,” “thr,” “cl,” “gr,” “sl”)
        4. With /w/ (e.g., “twelve,” “quick,” “swear,” “question”)
      8. Final sounds
        1. Shorter vowels before voiceless consonants, longer vowels before voiced consonants
        2. Final consonant clusters (e.g., /g/ vs. /gz/ in “dog” and “dogs”)
        3. /d/ vs. /t/ vs. /l/ vs. /r/
        4. Voiced vs. voiceless stops (e.g., “back” vs. “bag”)
    3. Compare sounds dissimilar and similar to native languages.
    4. Discriminate between minimal pairs.
  3. Recognize and reproduce stress/intonation patterns. Demonstrate understanding of the socio-linguistic implications (e.g., statements, information questions, yes/no questions, listing, either/or)
    1. Word stress
      1. Stressed vs. unstressed syllables
      2. Longer “peak” vowel in stressed syllables
      3. Secondary stress
      4. Vowel sequences
      5. Common rules
      6. Stress on the first syllable in two syllable nouns and adjectives, stress on the second syllable in two syllable verbs (noun-verb pairs “a present” vs. “to present”)
      7. Stress associated with common suffixes
        1. “-tion,” “-sion,” “-cian” (e.g., “education,” “politician,” “profession”)
        2. “-ic” and “ical” (e.g., “economic,” “terrific,” “political”)
      8. Compound nouns and phrasal verbs
    2. Sentence stress
      1. Word/thought grouping (into meaningful phrases)
        1. Falling pitch to signal end of group
      2. Stressed content words vs. unstressed grammatical/function words
        1. Commonly reduced words
          1. High-frequency structure words (e.g., “and,” “or,” “are,” “is,” “a/an,” “the,” “has,” “have,” “had,” “would,” “will”)
          2. Contractions
          3. Dropping /h/ as initial letters and in unstressed words in sentences
        2. Common stress and rhythm in prepositions and phrases (e.g., “at night,” a cup of coffee,” “to enjoy,” “between the desks”)
        3. De-emphasis of structure words such as pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and “to be” verbs
        4. Strategies for determining the content/focus word
        5. Emphasizing structure words for importance, strength of feeling, and correction
    3. Rising and falling intonation
      1. Final rising to show uncertainty/questioning, yes/no questions, unfinished speaking, and asking for clarification/repetition/agreement
      2. Final falling intonation to show certainty and statements, finished speaking, and “wh-“ questions
      3. Intonation in lists
      4. Choice questions (e.g., “Are you going to study or go out?”)
      5. Difference in tone affecting difference in meaning ("pretty good" vs. "pretty bad" – increase/decrease in meaning)
      6. Emphasis of important, new, and contrasting information
      7. Intonation patterns in complex sentences
      8. Recognize and make use of intonations that express surprise, disagreement, uncertainty, questioning, enthusiasm, reluctance, dissatisfaction, satisfaction, sarcasm, urgency, indifference, etc.
  4. Distinguish between and employ articulation devices appropriate to casual/formal contexts.
  5. Use linking/blending and reduction between words in isolation and in sentences.
    1. Linking/blending
      1. Continuing sound + vowel sound (e.g. “Her apron”, “opens at”)
      2. Continuing sound + continuing sound (e.g. “Peter never”, “Chris saw”)
      3. Stop sound + vowel sound (e.g. “old apple”, “world is”)
      4. Vowel sound + vowel sound (e.g. “do it,” “fly a lot”)
      5. Same sound + same sound (e.g. “Dave’s store”, “Allen never”)
      6. With off-glide
      7. With reduced sounds
      8. With silent “h” words
    2. Reduction
      1. Shortening of words with “-er” spellings (e.g. “every,” “interest,” “different”)
      2. Common reduced phrases (e.g. “gonna,” “shudda,”)
      3. Common question words (e.g. “Did you” to “Di-ju;” “don’t you” to “don-chu”)
      4. Common contractions (e.g. “who’s,” “where’d,” “why’ve,” “I’ll,” “that’s, “I’d”)
  6. Morphophonemics (sound-grammar/sound-spelling correspondence)
    1. “-ed” endings in past tense, past participles, nouns, and adjectives
      1. /d/ vs. /t/ vs. /Id/
        1. Demonstrate understanding and use of rules determining various “-ed” endings (e.g. /t/ sound for unvoiced endings).
    2. “-s” endings in plurals, possessives, contractions and the present tense third person
      1. /s/ vs. /z/ vs. /Iz/
        1. Demonstrate understanding and use of rules determining various “-s” endings (e.g., /s/ sound for unvoiced sound endings).
      2. Spelling rules (e.g., /f/ to /v/ in "knife" and "knives")
    3. Orally and aurally discriminate between various verbs tenses based on pronunciation.
    4. Common silent letter patterns (e.g., silent /l/ in “walk”, “talk,” “half,” “could,” should”)
    5. Common clusters (e.g., “-igh-“ in “night,” “tight,” etc.)
    6. Two vowel rule (in short words, single syllables and stressed syllables) – “alphabet” sound of first vowel; second vowel silent
      1. “ea” (tea, wheat)
      2. “ai” (rain, train, paid)
      3. "ie” (pie, tie, fries, cries)
      4. "oa” (boat, soap, coat)
      5. “ue,” “ui” (cue, blue, suit, fruit)
      6. “e” endings
    7. One vowel rule (in short words, single syllables and stressed syllables) – “relative” sound of vowel (not “alphabet”) (e.g., “a” in “cat,” “hat,” “apple,” “thanks”).
    8. Discriminate between sounds in words presented orally/aurally and visually including spelling variation and minimal pairs.
    9. Difference in meaning of closely related sounds in words (e.g., “sit" vs. "seat”, “sheep" vs. "ship”, “can” vs. “can’t”).
    10. Distinguish how various affixes and derivational morphemes affect parts of speech.
  7. Read selections or dialogues for fluency, aural comprehension and pronunciation in context.
    1. Topics and contexts relevant to intermediate level (e.g., job interviews; personal and professional letters/texts; community involvement; improving and maintaining health; reporting an emergency; expressing states, feelings, advice, opinions, desires, preferences, and abilities; description of experiences, future planning, past and ongoing activities, expectations)
  8. Recognize some different regional and registral varieties of English.
  9. Demonstrate improved listening comprehension skills.

Examples of Required Writing Assignments

Dictation exercises, spelling exercises of minimal pairs, relating aural pronunciations to grammar relationships, short dialogue and text creation, outlining and note-taking for oral presentation, creation of texts and dialogues demonstrating sociolinguistic implications of pronunciation devices

Examples of Outside Assignments

Oral minimal pair practice, correct vocal technique and placement (mouth, tongue, throat, lips) practice, memorization of common pronunciation rules and patterns, practice of level-appropriate oral readings and dialogues, dictation and spelling correspondences practice, annotations for pronunciation on written texts, sentence stress exercises, practice of correct sociolinguistic effects for situational texts, answering listening comprehension questions, preparation for oral presentations.

Instruction Type(s)

Lecture, Online Education Lecture