Pronunciation: Practical Pronunciation Tips and the L1 as a Resource

Episode 4 September 18, 2024 00:32:36
Pronunciation: Practical Pronunciation Tips and the L1 as a Resource
Talking ELT
Pronunciation: Practical Pronunciation Tips and the L1 as a Resource

Sep 18 2024 | 00:32:36

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Show Notes

How can we use our learners’ first language to support and improve their English pronunciation? What are the key areas to focus on when teaching pronunciation? Explore practical tips and ideas to improve your pronunciation teaching in this hands-on episode.

You can get more advice and resources on the topic of pronunciation by downloading our position paper ➝ https://oxelt.gl/3Z20ydJ

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hi, everyone, and welcome to talking ELT, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. I'm joined again today by Robin Monce and Jordanka, and we're going to be continuing our conversation about teaching english pronunciation, a global world. We've talked a fair bit about accent prejudice in some of the previous episodes and how non native speakers can sometimes feel less confident teaching pronunciation because of it, how there's that accent prejudice, which can get in the way. But actually, I think a lot of things we've talked about, both in the position paper and in, and in Robin and Jabba's new book, is the fact that being a non native speaker can actually have a lot of benefits in the classroom. And I think you touched on it briefly earlier, but I'd like to get into that a little bit more. And why that is the case, why non native speakers as teachers can actually have a lot of advantages? [00:01:11] Speaker B: Well, we can identify potential challenges and problems and then focus on them. Like, as we said, the length of the vowels is something difficult for spanish speakers, for example. And this is something you have to touch in the class. And I probably won't focus on other consonants, like, for example, the w in with and what. Because that's okay in Spanish, or quite okay, at least. But probably a french teacher would touch on that because for French, it's a more difficult sound. So you know where you will, you're going to find the difficult aspects. And you have some strategies that you've used for pronunciation. For long and short vowels, for example, you use mimic a lot. You use your phase like the. That we exaggerate, of course. [00:02:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:11] Speaker B: So I can use a pencil, like. So you start helping your students realize that there's a different sound there. And that sound has an opposite friend, which is the. So you use the pencil and fish faces to start dealing with this with younger students, but also with teenagers and with adults. And this is something that unless you're told you don't know and probably in other languages, you won't need this. But when you know you do, it's so important to tell, I think, and to put on the table to start helping them with all this phonological awareness as a first step and then touching on other more difficult things, like stress, which is also quite challenging. [00:03:10] Speaker A: And I suppose since you've been through that journey, you then you know the road. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Exactly. You know, and with stress, it's something you also have to touch on because it's so different. I mean, compared to Spanish, it's so different. And so important for intelligibility, I think. And probably Robin can tell us more about that. But unless you get the stress right, you will get lots of misunderstandings. I mean, in regular and speech, when you try to visit, like, an english speaking country, and you misplace all the accents, well, you've got quite a lot of communication problems, so that's something to touch on. [00:03:58] Speaker D: It's interesting because if you go back to Jenny's 2000 book, she classes word stress as a grey area. [00:04:06] Speaker E: Okay. [00:04:07] Speaker D: So there's this very explicit statement. There's just not enough data for me to be able to say it's in the lingua franca core or it's not in the lingua franca corpse, because that was one of the elements that people said, my God, she left word stress out, you know, what is this thing that. Okay, she said, we don't have enough data. And I don't think we've advanced very much because not a lot of research has been done. There are two pieces of research that suggest that there may be a value of teaching word stress, even if you're going towards international intelligibility. But it's not totally convincing data. So word stress is interesting. And certainly if we don't have enough data, then let's continue to teach it, because it definitely affects the way native speakers hear your English. [00:04:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:04:59] Speaker D: So there is data to suggest that, in fact, it's part of the way native speakers reach into the mental lexicon. It's one of the first things they use to identify a word. But myself going to international conferences, the non native speakers, I don't think were ever confused by incorrect word stress. [00:05:18] Speaker E: I think that's my observation, with no data. So it's still anecdotal. It's anecdotal, very much so. [00:05:25] Speaker D: But I spent God in your notes, how many hours with a professor of bio organic chemistry, the university where I live, and he'd been in Germany, spoke German, now needed to speak English for international conferences. And he worked on enzymes, and he was incapable of producing the sound, the word enzyme, with the correct word stress. You only got two possibilities. And he got the wrong one every time. And I would say to him, vicente, enzyme. And he'd go, yeah, yeah, robin, enzyme. Come on, Vicente, do it like this. And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, in time. And one day I said, hey, vicente, you've got the conference here in Oviedo. And he said, yeah. And I said, I'd like to come and listen to people speaking. And he was one of the speakers, and he said ensign all the way through his 1 hour paper and nobody batted an eyelid. So there's a mixed bag. But I think that it is. Word stress is important for native speaker listeners and less so for non native speaker listeners. So if you go to a pure international intelligibility approach, you wouldn't give it much importance. And if you know your students will interact with native speakers, then they're going to have to remember, at least in order to have a sort of self checking mechanism. Oh, God, I always got this one wrong, and then they're putting the blank face on. Perhaps I got my word stress wrong and have that as a sort of backup mechanism, something like that. [00:06:55] Speaker B: That's so interesting. [00:06:58] Speaker E: I remember when we were having our initial conversation before the recording today, you gave some really interesting examples of how, how you create a more memorable situation for your students with vowels. Do you remember with the opening of the fridge? Because this is quite incredible, the length people will go to to help explain vowels. [00:07:19] Speaker D: I used to. I was so, I mean, if you come into pronunciation very much via the back door, it's all very intimidating. And finally, you understand the vowel chart, and you can put the dots in the right place, and you can make the sounds that correspond to the dots, and you feel very good. And again, with a science background, it felt very comfortable to me. So that's how I taught, but it doesn't mean anything to your students, and they've got other things to do with their lives. So I go, this is not working because they're not approaching it like me. And it's about time, Robin, that you are the teacher, you are the one that has to make the effort to get to them. And then you start looking for other things. And, for example, going back to the value of the first language, I suddenly go, Han, when you were learning Spanish and you couldn't do the letter r, and you would say Pero, and they'd all laugh. And then that friend who said, can you do an american accent? And I said, well, not very good. Can you say water with an american accent? And I say, yeah, water. And she said, okay, that letter t with an american accent, put it for the letter r and go, pero. Okay, water. Pero. And she said, that's it. So she started with my ability to imitate accents, native speaker accents of English. She pulled out a single element. She said, can you do that? Yes, I can. Pop it into the spanish word. Yes, I can do that as well. Well, there you go. Now, I didn't work immediately. Every time there's a long transition from the first time I did it with careful, totally focused coaching from my teacher on an individual level to it comes out of my mouth automatically. And in training, I always told teachers, it's like seven steps. I can do it occasionally when my teacher's next to me, giving me very, very tight guidance to I do it virtually every time my teacher asks, and so on and so forth. But the starting point with Pero was another english accent. It was my l one. I go, wait a minute. I wonder if I can do this the other way around and get my students to use things in their l one to access things that they say they can't do in English. Of course, there's loads of things in Spanish, regional accents, or regional languages which they can access. So I say to my students, we live on the coast here in the north of Spain, and our local town is called Chihon, but you don't call it Gijon when you speak locally. And they say, no, it's Shishon. And I said, okay, so there you've got the sh sound. What? I said, that sh sound with that funny symbol that I'll stop using now. It's sh as in Shishon. It's not actually phonetically, it's slightly different, but the difference is irrelevant to communication. And they go, it's, it is, it is. And we can. Yes, you can. Oh, that's good. Anything else? And I go, yeah, and I could go through different accents. The j sound, as in television. I go, okay, let's go to Argentina. And they go, yeah. And I put up a flag, an argentinian flag, and I say, Jean. Jean Meis Jamo. And they go, ah, that's good, robin, you can do an argentinian accent. It's not very difficult because it's the sound. Can you do that? And ah, sure, jean ma jamo. And I say, okay, that's the sound in television. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. No, seriously. Yes, seriously. And so we're deep digging in to the l one, which often is way, way more interesting than appears on the surface. The n as in swimming, the. The vila n. It's all over Spanish. [00:11:14] Speaker A: Yes, of course. [00:11:15] Speaker D: Anytime a written letter n is followed by the letter c or the letter k, then it goes from Alvila, the tongue moves back to Vila. In order to prepare for the k sound in Spanish, in French, in Polish, I imagine in Bulgarian, the mouth has to do it. And so, hidden away, but happening in your students mouths every single day of their lives, every single hour of every single day, is a sound that they think is a foreign sound of English. [00:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:49] Speaker D: And it's not. It's in your language. You do it now. Do it for me. [00:11:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:53] Speaker D: And then the one that I absolutely, I love doing this because they got such a laugh. I wanted my students to actually make a nice alveolar t because they would make a dental one. They go, t and that would tend to blend in with and so on. So I wanted them to make a nice tache. And I went in one day and I said the word for teapot, and I said I wanted to have tea with my mother in law, and I asked for the tetera and she burst out laughing. And I used a very english term. All my students burst out laughing and they said, of course your mother in law burst out laughing. That is so English. You said to terror. And I said, you said te terra. And I said, what should I have said? And they said, you said, te terre. I said, ah. And I said, and so if I say tifa tu, and they all burst out laughing again, I said, why are you laughing now? And they said, because you sound so like us. You sound so Spanish. And I said, okay, so what should it be like? And they said, oh, it should be t for two. And I go, oh, wow, that's good. How did you do that? And they said, well, we're imitating you. When you speak, you make a really funny tea. It's like tea for two. [00:13:18] Speaker E: Do it again. [00:13:19] Speaker D: They go, tea for two. And I go, sorry, guys, you're imitating me. And they said, yeah, it's the way you speak. It's ever so funny the way you make your teas. And I said, but you're just doing it. And they said, yeah, because we can imitate you. And I said, well, I'm sorry, you're making an English. Yeah, you're doing it to laugh at me, and I'm really happy about that. But you're making it and therefore you are capable of doing it. [00:13:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:41] Speaker D: And they go, oh, yeah. And I say, and because you've done it today, I actually don't want you slipping back to the spanish one. I don't want t for two. I want t for two. [00:13:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:52] Speaker D: And they go, but let's relax a little bit, get into Pairs. And one of you has to say, t for two. And the other one has to say whether it's been said with a Spanish Tache or in English, t. And they would sit in pairs and you could hear the room going, t for two. Spanish. Spanish. Tea for two, English. And they're playing. [00:14:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:17] Speaker D: And what they're doing is actually beginning to be able to choose which articulation, the Spanish dental t or the English Alvila T. They're choosing voluntarily. They're automatizing, ultimately. [00:14:33] Speaker E: Yes, absolutely. [00:14:34] Speaker D: And this is wonderful, but it's all pulled out. I mean, okay, this is first language laughing at english people speaking Spanish, but it's still basing what I'm going to teach them on what they can do in their first language, like the hidden sounds and so on. It's. Wow. It's just so. There is so much there in the first language. [00:14:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:55] Speaker A: It really is such a resource. Like, there's so much you can get out of it. [00:15:00] Speaker D: A student came one day and it was the air vowel, as in there or chair. And I can see, you can see the cogs going. And I say, pedro. And he said, it's a long Spanish e. And I said, no, it's a diphthong. We've talked about diphthongs. He said, no, it's a long spanish ethereum. And I thought, go on, Robert, don't try and tell him it's a diphthong. He's off somewhere else. And I said, you used your description as long spanish air and pronounced the word for silla, which is a spanish word for chair. And he said, chair. I thought, yeah, that's fine. And I thought, wow, this is really powerful because he has created an image based on Spanish in his head. That's his description. It's unique to him and it produces very nice pronunciation. [00:15:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:57] Speaker D: Identical to mine. No, but totally intelligible. Yes. And unforgettable for him and based on his mother tongue. It's way too important. Yeah, I love that. [00:16:13] Speaker A: So when talking about the l one, we touched a bit on some practical elements and some practical teaching examples, and I kind of want to pull back a bit and take a look at some of the practical elements of pronunciation teaching for all of you, just as a kind of overview, what are some of the key areas and approaches to focus on when teaching pronunciation? [00:16:36] Speaker D: The elements of the lingua? Frankly, yes. [00:16:39] Speaker A: That's fair. That's fair. [00:16:41] Speaker D: So we need most of the consonant inventory. You have to have good pronunciation. And there are the famous exceptions of the dental fricatives. The th sounds, and also the letter rhino can be pronounced in multiple ways and you retain intelligibility, but you have to be pretty good at pronouncing the consonants of English because they seem to create the shape of the word, or perhaps they're part of the way that we start looking for the word in our mental lexicon. You have to be good at the way you deal with consonant clusters at the beginning of a word. And there are many languages which don't allow such complex consonant clusters as English does. That's going to be problematic. I mean, for spanish speakers of English, there are certain combinations of consonants that are simply not permitted in Spanish, and so they will be difficult for students. What did come out from the research was that there are two common strategies for students who find consonant clusters difficult. One is to actually pop in little epithetic vowels. So, like, a turkish student of English will not say stone. A turkish student will say to okay, and pop in a little vowel to separate the two consonants. And of course, it's famous that spanish speakers of English don't say Spain. They say Spain, and they pop the little vowel in before. [00:18:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:18:17] Speaker D: So this is one strategy. You pop in a little vowel to facilitate the pronunciation of the cluster. And the other strategy is you delete one of the offending consonants and you get rid of the cluster altogether. Of the two strategies, deletion is far, far more damaging. Okay. To intelligibility. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Yes, of course. [00:18:37] Speaker D: Than the addition of a little vowel, which internationally, people seem to accommodate to quite comfortably. So that's the consonants, with the exception of the dental fricatives and the options for the letter r, initial consonant clusters, especially, also, to some extent, medial consonant clusters and addition of added vowels is better than deletion of consonants. Vowel duration we talked about earlier, and it's a nightmare area, but you need to work on your vowel duration. And the last one is nuclear stress, which, as teachers, we just keep talking about sentence stress. Technically, it's nuclear or tonic stress because it's the focus. If you say four words and one of them is given more importance, it's what people will focus on and try to make sense. [00:19:32] Speaker A: Yes, of course. [00:19:33] Speaker D: If you focus on the wrong word, they'll try and make sense from the wrong word. So these are the four areas where, if you've got very, very little time, work on these four areas. We could, I think, probably at this point, think we can add word stress to that because we don't have enough data on its impact on international intelligibility. So we can add it, but also add it because pedagogically, there is word stress in all languages, and word stress is therefore familiar territory, and you can use it then to introduce students to nuclear stress. So it's a pedagogical tool to access sentence stress. So that's five areas we've got, isn't it? [00:20:17] Speaker E: Yeah. And it's a big relief that the dental fricatives are out, because how many lessons have we been in as a learner of English where the teacher has, and we don't have those in books. Bulgarian. So, yes. And still, I mean, nowadays, my children and their friends, they drive me crazy when I say we've, I was like, what? Why? You say we've? It's absolutely horrible. Poor English. So even the native speakers try to avoid them sometimes. [00:20:48] Speaker D: Enormously. [00:20:49] Speaker C: Yeah, enormously. [00:20:51] Speaker D: I remember there was this thing, God knows how I picked this up, living in Spain. It was for kids and it was by the BBC, I think. And if my memory serves, it was called raster mouse. [00:21:03] Speaker E: Oh, I know, rastermouse. [00:21:05] Speaker D: Oh, it's utterly brilliant. Jamaican English. So there's all these middle class english kids learning jamaican english pronunciation and the dental fricatives are nowhere non existent. And I go, oh, this is absolutely stunning. This is the. So, yeah, we were. What are the priority areas? I think those are the five priority areas. And then you can start adding things like, which have not been dealt with ever before. Well, clusters were seldom dealt with in course books and need dealing with. And from those five basic areas, which would be a level one pronunciation for international intelligibility, you then also need to start adding things like accommodation skills. And they would need dividing into receptive and productive. And the receptive is I can hear people speaking in different accents and I understand them with little or no effort because I've been exposed to different accents. And that needs to begin right down at level a one, a two. You need to be exposing your students to different accents. It's not necessary to go into it and say, I'm going to put some accents on. You have to say which accents they are. We're not here to analyze accents, but you do need exposure, because what happens is, when words come at you, they will come at you in different ways and you build up experiences of this word pronounced in different ways. And the more experiences you have, the quicker you spot the word when it's pronounced in a way which is not yet part of your experience. [00:22:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:22:43] Speaker D: And the more you limit people to one single pronunciation of a word in one single accent, the harder it is for them to pick up the word when it's pronounced in other accents. So begin with the pronunciation of the consonants, clusters, vowel duration, stuff and so on and so forth. Move on to exposure to accents. Increase that exposure as students go up into b one, b two, and by the time you get to c one, c two. You then would be exposing them to colloquial native speaker speech, which is a nightmare to understand, of course, but that's very much the stuff that should be dealt with at c two level. Whereas previously it was being pushed in at b one level and b two level. No, no, that is like way too difficult. And at the same time, you need to start building up your students productive accommodation skills. And we mentioned before making students aware that their word stress could be problematic. So they have a little self check mechanism, and each student from each first language background will have this little mechanism. Again, with Spanish as your first language, you will remember if you see a blank face. Has it been the thing? I know that I make them a similar sound that's not English, so perhaps I've done that one again. So you have a little checking mechanism that gets bigger and bigger as you, and then finally you evolve out of that and you develop the ability to voluntarily change your pronunciation in order to become more intelligible to this interlocutor at this moment in time. So that's quite a complex syllabus. [00:24:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:27] Speaker E: And there's always the question which, sorry, lots of things are going through my head, but when, when I was learning English at the beginning, I couldn't actually tell the difference between accents because you're so focused on understanding. Accents was the last thing that you think or you pick or even you become aware of. But now with the way we're thinking and we're introducing non native speaker accents, there is always debates, or there is an existing debate out there. What is your benchmark? So what type of accent do you expose and how fluent should the other non native speaker being English? We'd expose them to their accents. So what do you think? [00:25:08] Speaker D: Again, last night we were talking about one. There's a town in the south, a city in the south of Spain. Everyone says an andalusian accent in Spain is quite hard if you're not used to it. And this city is like the extreme example of an andalusian accent. Well, I wouldn't send anyone there immediately and say this is where you're going to. So there's a distance from, there are more marked and less marked accents. And so let's not throw people in at the deep end. But I also, at the same time, let's just push in people speaking with different accents and without actually highlighting it. It's not necessary to highlight it. [00:25:50] Speaker A: You can just integrate it. [00:25:51] Speaker D: That's right. And I totally agree. I spent years in Spain before I could pick up on regional accents, but I was clearly hearing them. I traveled all over the country from the word go. And you're right, you don't focus on, well, I'm here in Andalucia. I can't understand anything because of these andalusian accents. No, you go, I didn't quite catch that. You asked for a repetition and then you. And in class, teachers can say, is there anything you didn't quite catch? Yeah, the bit. There's a bit. Okay, let's listen again. And that would be a perfect replica of what happened to me all my early years in Spain that people will repeat and you get a second chance. You use context, you. You work out. But I'm not sitting there analyzing. Is this a northern andalusian accent or a Cary vandaluthian accent? No, I'm just trying to get my communication to work. We need to replicate that in class and from the very beginning, but obviously working with, shall we say, less marked. [00:26:51] Speaker E: Yes. So don't put glaswegian accent in a one. [00:26:54] Speaker D: Oh, no, no. You can have a very unmarked glaswegian accent. There's no reason. And Gemma will be the first person we've worked together on live streams, Gemma and I. She didn't change her accent. No live stream. [00:27:08] Speaker A: No, she didn't. [00:27:09] Speaker E: I've never heard her speak. Yeah. [00:27:10] Speaker D: Oh, it's. I mean, I love her accent. [00:27:14] Speaker A: It's a good livestream. We. Yeah, me, Robin and Gemma were all talking together. Our pronunciation. It was. It was when we first launched. Launched the book, actually. But no, that was. That was excellent. It was, it was. It was very good. [00:27:26] Speaker E: Fantastic. [00:27:27] Speaker D: Let's not stigmatize accents from certain places. And it happens a lot within the UK, I think it happens way, way, way less in. In Spain. We couldn't really care at all where a person from. Their accent is not a handicap in that way. [00:27:43] Speaker B: No, not really. Sometimes you change it a little bit, of course, but not really. [00:27:49] Speaker D: But that's automatic. We accommodate the minute I get out. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Exactly. That's accommodation. [00:27:54] Speaker A: But, yeah, in Britain, I think you've. [00:27:55] Speaker E: Got a lot back to that idea of, shall we name it as the class system or background bias, identity, all of those big social elements that come into play as well. [00:28:07] Speaker A: And it feels like that has infiltrated the language in a lot of ways and the way we teach it. [00:28:14] Speaker D: Yeah, but there is. I mean, this is some of the work that I was doing for OUP was programming the business of what? Because we're talking about what do we teach, we went through the lingua franca call, we added words. Just now I'm saying we've got to add accommodation skills. [00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:30] Speaker D: And that first would be to accommodate to different accents. And you can't wait until they see one to start through. [00:28:36] Speaker A: No, no, you can't. You can't. [00:28:39] Speaker D: Whatever we've got up here as a language learning ability is absolutely able to deal with accent because accent is natural. If there are two people speaking a language, there are two accents. Whatever this thing is up here, this language acquisition device or whatever you want to call it, it can deal with accent. So let's give it the data it needs to be able to do its job. And let's not screen beginner students away from Accent, but let's not make a big thing about it, saying, now I'm going to let you listen to a Carolina accent from the USA. No, forget it. Just let them listen to stuff with different accents. [00:29:15] Speaker E: And if I remember correctly, somewhere in earlier discussions we were talking about the fact that about two thirds of communication breakdown is due to pronunciation. And probably accents have a role to play. So the sooner you expose them, the more confident communicator they can become, of. [00:29:31] Speaker A: Course, and the more they can take that on board and absorb it. [00:29:34] Speaker D: And also actually, because when, when all of your accommodation stuff fails, and it will fail sometimes and there is a breakdown, have students trained so that they are confident enough to look at the interlocutor in the face and say, I don't understand you. [00:29:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:29:50] Speaker D: Now we can find a thousand ways of saying it and being less direct, but your students need these tools to be able to say, oh, you've lost me there. [00:29:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:29:59] Speaker D: Are you, in other words, are you saying, and all these little things that we've got available to negotiate with the other person and reestablish the communication, get it back on a firm footing, and then off we go again. And for students to understand, it's totally normal for conversations to suddenly fall apart because as native speakers, in every language, as native speakers, our communications are constantly. [00:30:24] Speaker A: Falling apart and we just get each. [00:30:26] Speaker D: Other back on track. Yeah, absolutely. So if your conversation falls apart when you're using English as an additional language that is normal and just pop it back on track, just make the repairs that are necessary. [00:30:39] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. And the many times in daily conversations at work, you hear this, oh, sorry, you lost me. People don't hear or they don't understand between native speakers. So that's very interesting. So in a way, it was a wake up call for me when I realized, oh, sometimes they don't get each other. [00:31:00] Speaker B: That's true. [00:31:01] Speaker A: Makes it all a lot easier. [00:31:02] Speaker D: Yeah, there is so much has come out of Jenny Jenkins work, and there are so many things that were no go areas and that we're suddenly realizing, wait a minute. This is the way language works, and it does admit failure to communicate. It's impossible that there not be failure to. That there not be breakdowns in communication. So what we need to be doing is equipping our students with the best pronunciation we can give them to be intelligible as they travel around the world using English, but also equipping them to accept that even with that pronunciation, there will be moments where it all falls apart. Okay. [00:31:43] Speaker A: Just got to put it back up again. [00:31:44] Speaker D: Put it back together, put it back on track. [00:31:46] Speaker E: And that's a skill, and that's confidence. [00:31:48] Speaker D: Yes, yes. But if your teacher tells you in advance, this will happen. You don't have that awful moment of nobody understands me. [00:31:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:57] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:31:57] Speaker A: You just know how to deal with it. Thanks for listening to this episode of talking ElT, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, don't forget to like and subscribe. Or if you want to take a deep dive into pronunciation teaching, try our book, teaching english pronunciation for a global world by Robin Walker and Gemma Archer. Just follow the link in the description. Thanks.

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