Arabic-L:PEDA:Teaching Emphatics Response

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 03 May 2001
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Teaching Emphatics Response

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1)
Date: 03 May 2001
From: Ernest McCarus <enm at umich.edu>
Subject: Teaching Emphatics Response

It would be great to have communicative drills to teach Arabic
emphatics, but I would not ditch minimal pair drills:  there is no
substitute for pinpointing the contrasts between the Arabic emphatics
and their plain counterparts as well as the contrasts between
phonetically similar Arabic and English phonemes.  Such drills should
follow or be accompanied by explanations and illustrations of the
phonetics involved in the production of the consonants, and how they
act on adjacent vowels and non-emphatics.

Communicative drills would come at the second stage, I suppose,
possibly word games where pronunciation distinctions are significant.
Offhand, I wonder whether you could construct a situation where two
or more learners discuss a given topic involving a number of supplied
vocabulary items which include minimal-pair emphatic - plain
contrasts, where mispronunciation of an emphatic would lead to basic
misunderstanding.

Ernest McCarus

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End of Arabic-L: 03 May 2001