Understanding Connected Speech (with Mark Hancock)

We ask Mark Hancock (author of Pronunciation Games, English Pronunciation in Use and Pron Pack) what makes authentic English listening so difficult for students and what teachers can do to help learners understand connected speech

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Ross Thorburn: Hi, Mark. Thanks for joining us. To start off with, what is connected speech? What makes it difficult for students? Is there ever a time when we speak English where we're not using connected speech?

Mark Hancock: Well, if you imagine an old fashioned robot saying, "Salt and pepper, salt and pepper, I want the salt and pepper." That's English with no connected speech about it. Each word is separate, as if it were the dictionary version of the word.

Salt and pepper, actually used that as an example. Salt and pepper, we've got the t of salt appears to join the and, salt and pepper, t and pepper, t and pepper, salt and pepper. That's called linking. You've got the a of the and is reduced to a weak vowel. Salt and pepper. So that's called a weak form.

Then you've got the d of and disappears, that's called elision. Instead of ‘and’ you've got ‘n’. Then finally, the ‘n’ of and changes into something like a ‘m’. Because if the ‘p’ in pepper involves the lips being closed together. In preparation for that when the mouth is saying ‘n’, it tends to want to say ‘m’, so that it's ready for the pepper that comes later.

That's called assimilation. Those are all examples of connected speech. As you can probably tell that they are features for the benefit of the mouth, like the n changing to m is not so that I'm going to be more intelligible to you, so it's easier for me to say it. These features of connected speech are about streamlining the articulation.

Ross: Obviously, there's lots of things there that are really hard for students in terms of listening to connected speech. I think often when we do listening activities in class, the way we run them, maybe doesn't actually help students very much, right?

Mark Hancock: Yeah. It's interesting that in teaching listening, teachers often assume that the problem is going to be with difficult vocabulary or difficult grammar, and they pre‐teach the new vocabulary in the listening. Then they focus on listening comprehension questions.

If the students get them wrong, just play their audio again and say, "No, no, no, listen again. Do you hear it now?" If a student goes, "No, I don't hear it still." It's nothing to be done about it. What the teacher is missing here is that the problem wasn't with the long words.

The problem was with the short words or the common words that the student is not familiar with, in the connected speech form. For example, in connected speech, there are five words which may be reduced to homophones, like the word a, the. I can't say it right now, but there's a lot of different words end up sounding exactly the same.

If this student is expecting them to sound the way that they sound in the dictionary or said separately, then they're not going to be ready for that, what they're not ready for is the way that the words blend together.

What we can do I think is, devote some class time to focusing specifically on the way that words blend together in connected speech for the purpose of making the students better equipped as listeners.

Ross: As part of the problem there, Mark, that when we teach new words or phrases, we tend to drill them in a way that sounds a bit more like Robby the robot saying salt and pepper, rather than saying salt‐and pepper.

Mark Hancock: I think your student is probably going to store it in their memory in something like a dictionary citation form. You're saying that that might be a problem because when they hear it in the flow of speech, it might not have that form.

I think you could probably do it in two stages. In the first stage, they would learn it as a separate form in the case of a word like salt. Then in separate stage, learn how it sounds in a joined up way, think it might be a bit much to do it all at once. However, with other words, which are typically reduced, like, and.

I probably wouldn't teach the word and in a citation form because it's never cited on its own. It's always in the flow of speech. It depends on the word really. Another example for a longer word would be actually. Actually is rarely, if ever, pronounced t...