English Language Teaching (ELT)

This is a field within psycholinguistics, of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). There's a lot on the subject, and we'll try to keep it light as an introduction here.

There's a few reasons for why English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students find listening difficult. It could be a decoding problem, unfamiliar grammar, unfamiliar vocabulary, and even unfamiliar pronunciation of particular words. Grammar can be pre-taught, so too the vocabulary (and its pronunciation), but decoding?

Essentially, we native speakers can decode long streams of speech with quite few problems. If I asked you (speaking at normal speed), "What's the first thing you think about when I ask you about 'phonology'?", you don't actually hear every syllable, but you get every word, just the same. It is assumed that pronunciation (phonology) and listening go hand in hand. That is, if you know how to pronounce it, then you can hear it. So, in real life I say to you "wha'sth'firs'thin'gyu'thin'bout'wheniyask'ya'bout phonology?" It's difficult to read, but easy to hear. For our students, it's damn near impossible to hear (discern the words), but easy to read. Interestingly, if it were a Korean saying this to a Japanese person, then the Japanese person will find it much easier to understand than when it comes from a native speaker of English. Why's that?

Well, something like the principle of 'economy of effort' (or lack of it) (Roach 2006). We native speakers have ways to say things quickly, smoothly, and easily (with less effort for our mouth and muscles). This is compared to non-native speakers like Koreans, who typically speak in a kind of EFL-ese (Rinvolucri 1999), where they annunciate each word in clear dictionary form.

So, what's the difference?

Assimilation: Words are blended, where the last syllable (usually consonant) is affected by the first sound of the next word. For instance, EFL students say, "ten cars", but native speakers say "tengcars"; "that boy", becomes "thapboy"; and "this shirt" becomes "thishirt". (Grimson 1994)

Adding sounds: Between vowels, we add either a /w/, /r/, or a /j/ sound, though the /j/ sound in English is a 'y' (note in other European languages j, like 'jump', is pronounced as 'yump' in English). So, "...to open the envelope..." would be pronounced as "towopen the-yenvelope".

There's more, but this is just the start.

References

Grimson, A (1994) Grimson's Pronunciation of English (5th Ed.). London: Edward Arnold.

Roach P (2006). Phonetics, Oxford Introductions to Language Study. Oxford University Press.

Rinvolucri, M. (1999) The UK, EFLese sub-culture and dialect. Folio 5(2): 12-14