Do Your Students Know These 3 Secrets to Successful Listening Comprehension? What to Keep An Ear Out For
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Studies show that teachers use motherese (the same characteristics women use when speaking to babies), when speaking to nonnative speakers. The qualities of motherese include speaking more slowly, using more dramatic inflection, speaking at a higher pitch and articulating carefully. This may be helpful for students as they learn to speak English, but this will not help them when they are in the real world with native speakers who do not cater to and do not care to cater their speech to your students. Therefore, to adequately prepare your students, it is important to create as realistic an environment as possible for their English studies. Part of this realistic speech needs to include the phonological phenomenon of reduction.
Because reductions do not follow the grammatical rules we teach our students, we have to take time out to give special instruction on reductions. All teachers want their students to be successful. If we want our students to be truly fluent in English, then reductions must be taught. Don’t worry. It’s gonna be fine.