Pronunciation Corner
Joyce Mandell

Joyce Mandell

Greetings! My name is Joyce Mandell, and I work as a speech and pronunciation coach for the non-native speaker.  In this column, I will offer some useful tips that will aid our students in becoming clearer and more confident speakers of American English.  I invite you to send in your questions and comments on teaching pronunciation skills.

Tip for students with problems forming the American “R” sound instead of the “L” sound.

So many Asian students cannot discriminate between the R and the L – not just in being able to say it, but being able to see it!  I have found that pronunciation tactics must work on three areas:  how they hear the sound, how they see the sound as it is formed on the articulators, and how it feels inside their vocal apparatus.  With L and R, the two sounds have very different physical manifestations.  All the diagrams show that the tongue will touch the gum ridge for the L in words like “light” and “love”, but will not touch for the R.  That doesn’t always help the student, so I have found a really useful way of getting students to produce the necessary physical shape of the R sound. 

I tell them that R is just a rounded W; they usually can make the bilabial W sound with very little problem.  You can then tell them to locate their tongue – where it is in the mouth.  They can easily feel that the tongue is not touching the alveolar ridge in producing the W.  Then I instruct them to tense and round their lips from the W to make the correct R sound – this makes the R in the frontal position, as opposed to many dialects of English where the R is produced behind the teeth (Indian English and many other dialects produce R in that fashion).  I also tell students that R is a very complicated sound that takes a lot of muscle tension in the tongue, and that little American children often have a problem making an R and often substitute a W  (think “Mommy, I see a WABBIT with big white ears”).  Knowing that even young native-speaking children who are developing their speech muscles often substitute the easier W sound for the R makes them aware of the importance of this sound in terms of how it looks on the face of a native speaker. 

I do a lot of practicing from W to R ( Wa-Wa-Wa; Rah- Rah- Rah) until they can easily move from W to R.  Then I move to “Wa-Rah -La” combinations, all the time making students aware of how it feels, how it sounds, and how it looks.  Try it with your students and let them know their muscles will be getting a workout in this exercise!

Joyce Mandell has been teaching speech and pronunciation skills to the non-native speaker for over 15 years, working in a variety of educational and business settings.  She is an adjunct at Baruch College in both Continuing and Professional Studies and the Communication Studies Department, where she teaches public speaking.  She also works individually with business professionals.

Feel free to contact her with questions or suggestions at dialogue@nystesol.org.