For the presentation last Tuesday, the group mentioned the term “ideology” applied in the natural pronunciation. However, I don’t agree with the pertinence of term use here. We must recount the definition of “ideology.” “Ideology” means a communal consensus induced by a group of people in a nation, especially for political consciousness. Therefore, I dissent that the australians’ native articulation is a sort of “ideology” because their ancestors hadn’t held a congregation and proposed that their pronunciation shall be different from the one of the US and the UK. Instead, I suppose it’s a “intrinsic habit” for the australians to pronounce peculiarly. Specifically speaking, such a pronunciation derives from the segregated accents scattered in diverse sectors of Australia. As a result, multiple pronunciations are formed in the country. Like in China, Mandarin has been split into a few dialects and accents. Put them in all aspects, We cannot stipulate that the Chinese predecessors asked their progeny to establish an “ideology” to speak Mandarin with specific accents. Moreover, we cannot deprecate that many a Taiwanese student has poor English pronunciation, and teachers’ responsibility is to rectify their inveterate fallacious pronunciation. By what ways? I think every teacher has his or her mechanisms. As a matter of fact, K.K. symbols are very helpful for students’ pronunciation; nevertheless, many students still cannot correctly articulate and teachers just have no patience to care about them. Finally, they have lost faith in learning English well piece by piece and completely given up after attending college. What a shame! Teachers should realize the significance of pronunciation, shouldn’t they? Pronunciation is the primal step to learn a foreign language, and I don’t approve that everyone should ignore it.
March 30, 2008...8:32 am
Response to Ch.3 Focus on the learner
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2 Comments
April 6, 2008 at 2:48 am
To be honest, I can’t recall the term “ideology” being used in that particular class now. Some dictionary defines ideology as “the body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture,” so it may not be appropriate to be applied to language pronunciation. So, you’ve got your point. Since pronunciation is fundamental when it comes to language learning, it’s our responsibility to help students lay a solid foundation.
April 6, 2008 at 5:24 am
Yes, the term appeared at the very beginning of the presentation, but the presenters didn’t emphasize on it much. That was my doubt at that time; however, we didn’t get enough time to discuss it.