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Teaching Silent Letters to Czech Learners
Pospíšilová, Markéta ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Žďárek, Karel (referee)
This diploma thesis follows up on the bachelor thesis which dealt with the phenomenon of silent letters and which was created by the same author. This bachelor thesis has revealed that Czech learners tend to mispronounce every fifth word containing a silent letter which should be seen as alarming. The diploma thesis therefore tries to find some way how to change this situation. The theoretical part of this thesis focuses on the analysis of various techniques and materials which are concerned with silent letters. In the practical part this materials are adjusted to the needs of the Czech learners in order to create a battery of activities which would cover this area of pronunciation. In the next step these activities will be introduced in English classrooms. In the research we will monitor the progress of the respondents over a larger period of time and assess how effective the created activities are.
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(Non)rhoticity in English pronunciation teaching
Kobák, Anett ; Uličná, Klára (advisor) ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (referee)
This diploma thesis deals with the role of rhoticity in English pronunciation teaching. The theoretical part focuses on the characterisation of rhoticity as a distinctive feature of English accents. It describes and compares approaches to pronunciation teaching and the factors which influence the choice of pronunciation models in English language teaching. It also introduces the development of English as a lingua franca and its impact on pronunciation. Finally, it characterises the processes of speech perception. The practical part describes the creation and implementation of research which aimed at the discovery of the degree of intelligibility and comprehensibility of rhotic and non-rhotic samples of speech. The results imply that Czech learners of English find non-rhotic speech less intelligible and more difficult to understand. Key words rhoticity, non-rhoticity, pronunciation teaching, speech perception, intelligibility, comprehensibility
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Teaching Aspects of Connected Speech
Benková, Kateřina ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Dvořák, Bohuslav (referee)
This thesis concerns teaching aspects of connected speech. The theoretical part briefly introduces aspects of connected speech from a phonetic and didactic point of view. It further scrutinizes the relation between teaching aspects of connected speech and the development of decoding skills. The practical part presents research aimed at the effects of explicit instruction and training in selected aspects of connected speech on understanding of authentic speech. The results indicate that twelve 45-minute lessons based on authentic TV series may have had a significant positive influence on the development of the students' listening skills. They further show that the students found the training enjoyable and useful.
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Effectiveness of teaching synthetic phonics to EFL students
Urbanová, Lucie ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Uličná, Klára (referee)
The effectiveness of teaching synthetic phonics to EFL students Abstract This diploma thesis deals with the effectiveness of systematic and explicit Synthetic Phonics teaching methods in the EFL learning environment. The theoretical part of the text investigates the similarities and differences between teaching Synthetic and Analytic Phonics. Whether synthetic phonics is essential not only for native English speakers, but also for EFL students is examined. Furthermore, it introduces the changes and development in phonics teaching in a historical context. The practical section describes the test preparation and presents how the research methodology was applied. It also examines the data collected from testing four groups of Prague primary school children who have different experience of phonics. Last but not least, the empirical section presents the results of 60 students' readings and analyses their performances concluding with an assessment as to whether explicit Synthetic Phonics teaching instruction helps EFL students in pronouncing words or not. Key words: synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, phonemes, graphemes, pronunciation and articulation, spelling, reading, writing
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Pre-fortis shortening in Czech English
Hrychová, Helena ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Pípalová, Renata (referee)
This bachelor thesis examines the role of a phenomenon called pre-fortis shortening in Czech English. This term is used by phoneticians to represent the shortening of vowels before fortis consonants. It is not characteristic only of English, Matthew Chen even suggested that it could be a language-universal phenomenon. In English it is a very significant feature since English vowel duration was proven by various experiments to serve as a cue to the perception of the voicing characteristic of the following consonant. This thesis advances our understanding of pre-fortis shortening in Czech English where vowel duration was hypothesized to correlate with the speaker's proficiency in English. As a result, this work aims to examine the extent to which 20 Czech students divided into two categories depending on their English level (A2, C1) exploit this phenomenon and whether their proficiency has an impact on vowel durations before fortis and lenis consonants. They were recorded while reading 40 English sentences and their vowel durations were compared to those obtained from two native English speakers.
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