Teaching pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: the th sound

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[@LanguagewithChris]

Hey Marek! Thank you so much for sharing!

[@TEFLEquityAdvocates]

Thanks for watching 😊

[@modesty5496]

I'm an English teacher as well , my first language is Arabic , I wanna know how to be a better speller and how to forget all those sounds that telling me that I'm not enough ..Thank u

[@calincucuietu8220]

the Th groups are so easy to teach... Not teaching them is just laziness... Moreover, the real problem is teaching them when to say f,t,s or v,d,z.

[@Sound_British]

But who you yourself sound very British? 😂😂

[@adamcarson5311]

Hey. Does this really make sense? At first glance, it seems you are cherry picking your data and research. International context? So essentially contexts with non-native speakers, right? Why are we excluding native speakers now? What is your basis for prioritising L2 speakers? I would also possibly challenge your claim that the TH sound is very difficult. How do you figure? It is very uncommon, which is true. But that doesn’t make it super difficult, just unusual. Many children from different language backgrounds lisp. Lisping is essentially the TH sound. They just learn not to do it because their mother tongue doesn’t use it. Even if we take your argument that "the TH sounds is too difficult, let’s replace it" it implies we should not aspire to teach or learn difficult things, which is a problematic recommendation all in itself. Another problem with your argument is that you can do this in any language with any one sound because changing one sound rarely poses a huge problem for intelligibility. Not only that... you can also continue like this. Let’s change this sound to this sound (because it’s easier) and then another and another and another. Going down this path it seems we could then say that you’re proposing a variation of the ship of Theseus paradox - language edition. If you replace one sound in English, it’s still English. If you replace three, it’s still English. If ten...? If twenty...? At what point would you stop calling it English if ever (given changes like that are gradual) and why? I appreciate your sentiment, which seems to be making English more opened but I wonder if blurring it is the way to go. Yes, Irish English and other speakers may have replaced the TH sound by another sound but it is not the only sound they have replaced. So why are you picking just that one and completely removing the context? I would agree that teachers shouldn’t push for a specific accent but I do feel it’s also fair to mention that the request for a particular accent usually comes from the students in my experience. And if someone says: "I want to sound like an American", I’m not sure it is the teacher’s place to push this idea of "it doesn’t matter how you pronounce things" on them either. Thank you for your video.

[@p4ul1w4uli]

'What is your basis for prioritising L2 speakers?' Wow, you really didn't understand what he was saying? I guess you are a monolingual English user?

[@adamcarson4557]

@@p4ul1w4uli Well, what is your basis for prioritising L2 speakers? What did you understand? Maybe you are a monolingual?

[@p4ul1w4uli]

@@adamcarson4557 please do some reading on international Englishes and the Lingua Franca Core. Also the "native-speaker deficit model".

[@adamcarson4557]

@@p4ul1w4uli And why do you think they’re correct?

[@p4ul1w4uli]

@@adamcarson4557 I believe it because I have seen it throughout my own extensive experience and research with teachers and learners. That's good enough for me.

[@calincucuietu8220]

Come on, /oˈpɪnjən/ instead of /əˈpɪnjən/, really?! It is too much...