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One More Step to being Freer in Learning
ESL Andrew Weiler
I have recently been working with Hong Kong students who are enrolled in tertiary courses
at the college I work in. Due to the difficulties they are experiencing because of their
inadequate command of the English language, they come, or are referred, to the unit I work
in.
As I work with them, either individually or in groups, on a range of matters, I am struck that
many of them are not successful in articulating various phonemes or combinations of them in
a way which resembles a standard of English which is easily understandable by native English
speakers. Many of them have also not made the necessary adjustments to the unique melodic
requirements of English, however this area I will not expand on for now.
At the times where I have difficulty in understanding a student or where her sounds are too far
removed from what I deem to be acceptable, I have made it a policy to intervene. It is this
intervention and what results from it which I will make the subject of discussion in these
pages.
The actual case I will describe below represents a common type of problem which I now
encounter day to day. Though the following was not taped, it represents a close description of
what actually happened. The words below might not exactly be the same as the ones uttered
on the actual occasion but the events are identical to the ones which actually occurred.
A few weeks ago a student, K, asked me to help her to pronounce the word "pharmacy". I had
worked with her a number of times before, both in class and individually, so she was familiar
with my way of working. The following was what ensued as a result of her question.
T: Try to say it. Sometimes students will make a pretty good fist of saying words which they
claim they can't say. K: I can't. T: Have a go and see what comes out. K: Here she struggled
trying to put /pi/, as the letter "p" is said in the alphabet, with /ha/. T: Ok, I covered the "ph"
with my hand leaving "armacy" visible, say the rest. K: /ams/ tentatively. T: I covered "acy".
Say what you can see. K: /a:m/ (Standard Australian) T: I now covered "arm" and left only
"acy" uncovered and indicated she say it. K: After some mouth movements and whispering to
herself /as/. T: Even though the first phoneme was not correct, I left this for another time. I
left "cy" uncovered. Try it. K: Silence. T: Do you know any words with the letter "y" at the
end? K: After some hesitation. Baby. T: I went back to "cy". Say this now. K: Some
whispering to herself. T: I went back to baby and covered "ba". Say that, pointing to "by". K:
After some mumbling of the sounds to herself /bi/. T: I now pointed to "cy" K: With some
hesitancy. /si/. T: I now left "acy" uncovered. K: /asi/

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It appeared to me the awareness that words are made up from the addition of single
phonemes, which can be subtracted as well, was not evident to K. Her approach seemed to be
to utter words using her memory of them. When she was confronted by syllables or isolated
letters, her response was either to freeze or to pronounce the letters as they are sounded in the
alphabet. She appears not to have realised that phonemes are discrete arithmetic units in
English, each of which can be written. The awareness that letters can evoke sounds which can
be quite different to their name seemed to genuinely surprise her. This can be seen in the
following when she attempts to utter "pharm".
T: I now wrote down "photo", thinking that this word might be familiar to her. Can you say
this word? K: /foto/. With no hesitancy. T: I took her back to "pharmacy". Now? K: Silence
with a quizzical look on her face. T: I then wrote down "philosophy" - not a wise choice on
reflection! What does this say? K: She slowly got out something that sounded like
Philosophy. T: And this pointing to "photo"? K: /foto/. T: Pointing to "pharmacy". K: Silence.
T: I then decided to change tack and get her to work on how many sounds were present in the
two letters (ph). How many sounds in "photo"? K: After some thinking. Two.
When she said two, I decided to probe to see if she could split the second syllable, which she
was able to utter with ease, into two. I asked her if it was possible to divide it up. She was
adamant at first, no. When I covered "t" and left her with "o" to say, she had no choice but to
come to the conclusion that "pho" consisted of two sounds also. She straight-away asked me
if I was sure there were four sounds in that word. I then took her back and had her work over
what we had done, but on this occasion she didn't need much time. As I was not sure whether
she was aware of what she had done, I asked her, "How many?" She replied with no doubt in
her voice, "Four".
T: At this point I decided to bring her back to the earlier problem. I wrote down "pho". Say
this now. K: /fo:/ T: And this, writing down, "phar". K: Silence for a while with much mouth
moving. T: Say something. K: /fo:a:/ T: I took her back to "pho". Say this. K: /fo:/
I took her backwards and forwards a few times yet she was unable to separate the /f/ from the
/o:/. I then tried a similar strategy with "phi". The same phenomena occurred. I then asked her
to place her attention in her mouth to the first sound she made when she uttered "pho". After a
few attempts, she was able to transform her utterance into an awareness which she could
articulate.
K: It's an "f"! With some surprise. Even though she was mistaken in what she said, I decided
not to intervene here, but leave it for another time. T: I now pointed to "phar". Say it. K:
Tentatively. /fa:/
The transitions from being able to:
▪ take the first phoneme out of "pho";
▪ label it as an /ef/;
▪ be able to utter it in another phonemic environment.
I would suggest, are significant steps within her development as a student of language. She
made these steps by resorting to the powers she has within herself, powers which she will
need to continually exercise if she is to improve on and refine her English.
Previously, she seemed to not have come to the awareness that individual phonemes have
their own character which can be abstracted from the linguistic environment they occur in.
From what I have seen on many other occasions with students I have worked with, I believe
that had I written down "farm" she would probably have had no problem in uttering the
required sounds. The ability to read words already known is one thing. But to be able to
separate sound clusters into their individual components (phonemes), from which one can be
taken and uttered in another sound environment, requires an awareness of phonemes and a

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sensitivity to one's auditory apparatus.
K was convinced at various times that /fo:a:/ was the only way to say /f/ + /a/. She had linked
the phoneme /f/ to /o:/ from the word "photo" and she was unable to separate them. Not
having the awareness that some phonemes can be added to other phonemes, and can be just as
easily taken away, had limited her ability to improve her own pronunciation because
phonemes didn't exist in her awareness. Hence any refining was dependent upon working
with the whole word, which was bound to be a poor approach in working on individual
sounds that needed adjustment, insertion or deletion. Her ability to utter words which she had
come across for the first time was also severely restricted.
The case presented here, I believe, provides some insights as to why some learners of a
second language experience difficulties in improving on their pronunciation. Without having
recourse to the awareness of what one utters at the phonemic level, improvements that can be
made are limited. For example, how is it possible to refine a sound when there is no
awareness of what sound is being made in the first place?
It is at the beginning levels of language acquisition that students can be best brought to the
awareness of phonemes. When learners learn to place their awareness in their ears and in their
speech organs, they will no longer need to be reliant on others for confirmation or support, but
will be demonstrating their autonomy and independence, on the road to a quality in their
pronunciation which would not require anyone else's intervention. When I work with students
like K, I know that this has not been part of their learning experience. They have in effect
missed out on one of the building blocks necessary for learning a second language and thus
continue to remain dependent on others for guidance.
© Andrew Weiler Australia, July 7, 1992
The Science of Education in Questions No - 9 - June 1993
"One More Step to being Freer in Learning ESL" by Andrew Weiler is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.