Hunter TS#10

On September 23, I met with Henrique and Blanca to work on pronunciation.  I have been making notes of Henrique's pronunciation over the course of this first fall session and had delayed working on pronunciation until we discussed it in class and I could equip myself properly.  Henrique has considerable difficulty differentiating between and saying the voiced and unvoiced alveopalatal fricatives [sh], [dj]   and alveolar fricative [s].   For Blanca, difficulty came to her not in distinguishing the [s] and [z] when she heard them, but just in pronunciation. 

In working with Henrique, I created a series of minimal pairs, first between [sh] and [s]  and then with [sh] and [dj].  When dealing with the latter, I demonstrated to him that tongue placement and mouth shape are quite similar to their affricate associates, [ch] and [j], but held out indefinitely like [s]. I then showed him that the [dj] sound is the exact same as [sh]; the only difference is that for [dj] you must vibrate your vocal chords. Once he understood well how to produce the sounds, we built up the sounds with syllables, tacking on vowel sounds to the end.  ex:  [sh]-[a]   [sh]-[i]  etc.  And then finally forming short, monosyllabic words:  Shoot.  Shot.  Sheet.  Shun.  etc.  I then would say a minimal pair aloud and have him differentiate between the two. 

I did similar exercises with Blanca.  Since she didn't need to work differentiating between [s] and [z] when she HEARD them pronounced by someone else, we simply went over the mechanics on how to produce [z].  Again, I had her pronounce [s] while vibrating her vocal chords and try to mimic the sound a bee makes.  We then built up to syllables.  Then monosyllabic words.  And then finally, I had her say a series of minimal pairs to contrast between the [s] and [z] sounds.