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5 books match the query 'Pronunciation by foreign speakers'

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cover of Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film

Indian Accents

Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film

Shilpa S. Dave

University of Illinois Press, 2013



Amid immigrant narratives of assimilation, Indian Accents focuses on the representations and stereotypes of South Asian characters in American film and television. Exploring key examples in popular culture ranging from Peter Sellers' portrayal of Hrundi Bakshi in the 1968 film The Party to contemporary representations such as Apu from The Simpsons and characters in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Shilpa S. Dave develops the ideas of "accent," "brownface," and "brown voice" as new ways to explore the racialization of South Asians beyond just visual appearance. Dave relates these examples to earlier scholarship on blackface, race, and performance to show how "accents" are a means of representing racial difference, national origin, and belonging, as well as distinctions of class and privilege. While focusing on racial impersonations in mainstream film and television, Indian Accents also amplifies the work of South Asian American actors who push back against brown voice performances, showing how strategic use of accent can expand and challenge such narrow stereotypes.
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cover of Instructor Guide for Speechcraft: Discourse Pronunciation for Academic Communication

Instructor Guide for Speechcraft

Discourse Pronunciation for Academic Communication

Wayne B. Dickerson

University of Michigan Press, 2027

Instructor Guide for Speechcraft helps shoulder time-consuming, non-teaching tasks so that instructors can focus on working directly with their students. Four-part lesson plans are adaptable for instructors who want to insert critical pronunciation topics into a non-pronunciation ESL/EFL course. To aid in professional development, each lesson plan includes a commentary on the order of topics in the syllabus and common student questions. Appendices provide pre- and post-tests to make sure that instructors have the resources they need to teach confidently. In addition to the 232 audio recordings for the textbook, instructors can access 37 additional recordings that can be used for class preparation or for in-class progress checks. With the Instructor Guide for Speechcraft, teachers will be able to help their students achieve the clear, intelligible speech they need to pursue their studies in their chosen discipline, to serve as international teaching assistants, and to interact well in their chosen professions.

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cover of Pronunciation Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching

Pronunciation Myths

Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching

Linda Grant with Donna M. Brinton, Tracey Derwing and Murray J. Munro, John Field, Judy Gilbert, John Murphy, Ron Thomson, Beth Zielinski and Lynda Yates

University of Michigan Press, 2014

This volume was conceived as a "best practices" resource for pronunciation and speaking teachers in the way that Vocabulary Myths by Keith S. Folse is one for reading and vocabulary teachers. Like others in the Myths series, this book combines research with good pedagogical practices.

The book opens with a Prologue by Linda Grant (author of the Well Said textbook series), which reviews the last four decades of pronunciation teaching, the differences between accent and intelligibility, the rudiments of the English sound system, and other factors related to the ways that pronunciation is learned and taught.

The myths challenged in this book are:

§ Once you’ve been speaking a second language for years, it’s too late to change your pronunciation. (Derwing and Munro)

§ Pronunciation instruction is not appropriate for beginning-level learners. (Zielinski and Yates)

§ Pronunciation teaching has to establish in the minds of language learners a set of distinct consonant and vowel sounds. (Field)

§ Intonation is hard to teach. (Gilbert)

§ Students would make better progress if they just practiced more. (Grant)

§ Accent reduction and pronunciation instruction are the same thing. (Thomson)

§ Teacher training programs provide adequate preparation in how to teach pronunciation (Murphy).

The book concludes with an Epilogue by Donna M. Brinton, who synthesizes some of the best practices explored in the volume.

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cover of Teaching the Pronunciation of English: Focus on Whole Courses

Teaching the Pronunciation of English

Focus on Whole Courses

John Murphy, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 2017

This volume fills a gap by introducing readers to whole courses focused on teaching the pronunciation of English as a second, foreign, or international language. This collection is designed to support more effective pronunciation teaching in as many language classrooms in as many different parts of the world as possible and to serve as a core text in a teacher development course dedicated to preparing teachers of ESL pronunciation. 

Teaching the Pronunciation of English illustrates that pronunciation teaching is compatible with communicative, task-based, post-method, and technology-mediated approaches to language teaching.  This theme permeates the volume as a whole and is well represented in Chapters 3-12, which are dedicated to specialist-teachers’ firsthand depictions of pronunciation-centered courses.  Each of these ten chapters features a set of innovative teaching strategies and contemporary course design structures developed by the chapter contributor(s). 

To prepare readers to more fully appreciate the substance and quality of Chapters 3-12, the volume’s two initial chapters are more foundational.  Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overview of core topics language teachers need to know about to become pronunciation teachers: suprasegmentals (thought groups, prominence, word stress, intonation, and pitch jumps) and the English consonants and vowel sounds.
 
 
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