Week 14

This week, which is also a final week of this project, I was trying to integrate all the previously studied elements of the deliberate practice of my archetype. It includes:

• focus on vowels
• focus on consonants
• pronunciations of compound words
• pronunciation of English borrowings
• prominence
• word stress
• thought groups division
• linking and blending
• intonation

All these elements contribute to the overall fluency and accuracy of my own recording of the archetype.

Overall, I believe that deconstructing and reconstructing this speech made me understand not only the system of the German language, but also the way different elements contribute to this organization.

I believe that this project was very beneficial for me from the educational and informative point of view. It made me think how students usually feel when they attempt to imitate native English speakers and how much time and effort they spend on this. This project also made me experience a tiny bit of frustration, when I was not able to hear or reproduce the word even from the tenth attempt, and it made me very proud, when the final recording was completed. Moreover, it was also an enjoyable task. I was glad that I had a chance to refresh my German language knowledge, because I was afraid I had lost it all already. As the things turned out, my German is still good enough, and this project is a soothing evidence of that.

In the course of this project except from the archetype and my own recordings I used Sounds of speech website. This resource has been of great help to me to understand the individual consonant and vowel sounds in German, as well as to compare them with the English IPA.

Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin's (2010) course book had also been my constant reference in this project. It not only provided clear guidelines on what to practice on, but also included suggestions for teaching certain phonetic and phonological features.

I discovered Vocaroo website as one of the most convenient online audio recorders.

Even after 14 weeks of my deliberate practice I still feel that the production of my /r/ does not sound very natural. Some other individual sounds also need some more polishing.

However, I think I have a pretty good grasp of the intonation patterns in German, as well as speech prominence. My overall fluency of speech definitely improved. Accuracy, however, is something that would require a longer period of time to develop.

Here is my final recording.

References

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. M. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A course book and reference guide. New York: Cambridge University Press.