The Joy of English Pronunciation with Jennie Reed

Welcome back to the Elevate blog. I'm here with Jennie Reed today. Hi Jennie. 

Hi Abbie, thanks for inviting me. 

No problem, where are you in the world? 

I am in Scotland in the UK. 

I see, have you lived there a long time? 

Where I live now, we've been here about four years, but I've been in Scotland for eight years now. 

How's that? You like Scotland? 

Yes, we love Scotland. It's so beautiful. The people are so friendly and welcoming. The weather is very changeable and the long days in the summer are lovely, short days in the winter not as nice, but they're all part and parcel of the experience of living in Scotland. 

That's right, and so you're an English teacher? 

Yes, that's right.

And who do you help? 

I help lots of different people but mainly I work with English teachers so people who are non -native speakers who want to feel more confident with their pronunciation and also help their learners with pronunciation too 

So pronunciation's your main interest? 

Yes, I think it's fascinating. So honestly, up until 2018, I probably didn't consider pronunciation very much in my classes at all, other than to give direct corrections to my students. And that would just be if it was something that I really couldn't understand what they were saying, and it would just be correcting what they said and then in 2018 I started a diploma in teaching English as a second language and through that I learned so much about pronunciation and I started using it in my lessons at the time I was working in a language school in Edinburgh and the difference it made for my students I could just see their confidence increasing in their communication and from that point on, I just knew that it was not quite magic, but it was something that was a key part of speaking another language. And I think that's been really fun. And it has so many different possibilities and so many different ways that it can help people increase their confidence in their communication. And I think that's really important. 

I see. So, what changes do you see when you're helping your learners with pronunciation? I mean, maybe some people think, there's no way, nobody can help me with my pronunciation. What can you do to help them?

There's two sides to this. Lots of people come to me initially saying, oh, my accent is too strong. And first of all I'd like to clarify that it's not about accent. Everyone has an accent and it doesn't matter whether that's a Scottish accent or an English accent or an Italian accent or a Spanish accent or a Japanese accent, as long as you can speak clearly enough for other people to understand what you're saying. accent isn't the problem as long as you're consistent with the sounds and this is where it's key because the consistency allows other people to understand what you're saying and so when I work with my clients it's about distinguishing sounds that are quite similar that can maybe cause confusion So this could be vowel sounds, for example, and some consonant sounds, although not so much because we're a bit more forgiving with the consonant sounds, but also thinking about the stress patterns. So some languages, the stress is very regular, but English, it changes depending on what the person is trying to say. And this can be very subjective and you have the same sentence said by five different people and each person could stress a different word in the sentence depending on what they wanted to say and so for some learners who have never heard about this just understanding how they can impact what they're saying and the way other people understand them can just change the way they communicate with everyone which is brilliant 

Yeah, it's something maybe as English teachers we haven't been good at teaching, especially intonation. And maybe school, yeah, when you're learning at school, the English teachers don't really get that either. 

Exactly. And I think there's two reasons for this. One is that when you first start teacher training, it's not really spoken about because you're focused on other aspects of teaching, perhaps like managing the class or creating new activities and things and you're looking at mainly things that are tested, so grammar and vocabulary and listening and writing and reading and speaking but actually understanding how the pronunciation works can help with so many of these things, because when you understand how the pronunciation works, you can hear what other people are saying more easily, and so your listening comprehension increases. And when you're speaking in a speaking test, you'll be able to make yourself understood more clearly. And so pronunciation actually has a knock -on effect. And even on reading, this is a little bit more tricky because English spelling isn't so uniform, there are so many exceptions. But actually, once you know some of the rules with the pronunciation, it can make reading much easier as well. And all of these things tie together and pronunciation can help with all of them. And yeah, but it's because it's not specifically tested that I think we sometimes ignore it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And I have seen learners who, especially listening skills. So I'm knowing my listening is not good, but then you do a little bit of pronunciation and suddenly they're understanding what they're hearing because they've learned how people are saying it. 

Do you have any examples of learners or breakthroughs that they've had? 

Yes, so several. So first of all, one who's not a teacher, but a lady that I work with here in Scotland, and she's been living in the UK for, must eight years now. And we've been working together for the last two on and off. And when she first came to me, she's like, I've been living here for ages, but my accent is horrible. I just want to sound more professional. I want to get a job, a proper job. She was working in bars and in a pub, in a local pub. And she wanted a full -time job in her career, which she's a creative designer and so we worked on her pronunciation to build up her confidence and I will say now she still has an Italian accent because that's not what we're changing but she has the confidence in her spoken communication and she got herself her dream job as a creative designer and she also a little while later came back to me and said Jenny I'm going to do a talk about my artwork and so we worked together a bit more on her confidence and her pronunciation and she gave a talk about her artwork in front of a hundred people here in Edinburgh in English which was absolutely incredible like when we first started working together there's no way she would have done that and also with my teachers so often they come to me and they, so I work with a lot of Italians and they use a lot of Italian in their lessons to give instructions because it's easier or they feel that it's easier and actually once they start understanding pronunciation and how it works and building up their confidence in their spoken English, they begin to use a bit more English in their classroom which which interesting, and then this trickles down to their students and they can see their students using more English because they're using more English which has been really nice. And I've already had several teachers come back to me and say, my students are speaking more English. It's amazing. And so that's been really lovely to hear as well. And yeah, just really nice feedback. 

Yeah, that's great. Oh, it's so nice to hear from the learners. and then it's trickling down to the kids as well. That's great. Ah, great.

So, I have an idea, but what keeps you being an English teacher? 

Well, many things, but I love communicating. I love meeting people from all around the world and I also love working with teachers, building up their confidence and helping them feel better about their job and getting better results for their learners as well. And I just love the fact that me working with one teacher can have this huge impact on all of their students. And that might sound a little bit like I'm bragging, but that's not the case. I just love the fact that one little tweak can just have a massive effect all around. 

Yes, I think that's a good lesson for everyone because you don't have to affect like hundreds and thousands of people. One person and then one drop here makes spreads and spreads. 

Great, thank you Jenny. 

Thank you Abi, really nice chatting with you. 

Yeah and you too and good luck.

Connect with Jennie on the Elevate Directory of English language teachers