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Presenter
Sunyoung OH, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics
City University of Hong Kong

Title
English pronunciation training with International Phonetic Alphabet in Hong Kong

Abstract
This paper investigates improvement in pronunciation of English words with International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) training in Hong Kong. English has been one of the two official languages in Hong Kong for many decades due to its British colonial history. However, contrary to what many people believe, most Hong Kong people do not have enough exposure to English and do not have access to correct English pronunciation. It is partly due to fact that the absence of native English speakers in the learning process during school years results in insufficient language input and/or incorrect language input by non-native speakers. Phonological aspects of Cantonese that words are monosyllabic and only voiceless stops /p, t, k/ and nasals /m, n, ng/ can appear as final consonants would also make pronunciation of English words challenging to many English learners in Hong Kong. While it has been suggested that the IPA could be used as a learning tool to assist ESL learners to acquire proper pronunciation, hardly any reports have been made on the effects of the IPA training in second language education. Thus, this paper aims to provide a foundation of the use of IPA training in ESL in Hong Kong. The study was conducted to see the effect of IPA training on the pronunciation of English words that are difficult to guess the pronunciation from the spellings (e.g., ‘subtle’, ‘receipt’, ‘margarine’). 16 ESL learners participated in the study (10 with IPA training, 6 without IPA training) were asked to read the wordlist twice: the first time without the IPA transcriptions; and the second with the IPA transcription of 20 English words (15 target words, 5 control words). Results show great improvements upon the second trial with the IPA transcriptions among those ESL learners with the IPA training. No significant change was observed among the ESL learners without the IPA training. The details on the improvement of the pronunciation will be discussed more in the paper.