Book Review: Rules by the Sound
Veronica G. Sardegna, The University of Texas at Austin
Feinstein-Whittaker, M., & Katz Wilner, L. (2009). Rules by the Sound. Owings Mills, MD: Successfully Speaking.
Rules by the Sound is a newly released book designed to help intermediate to advanced nonnative English speakers improve their pronunciation. Written by two corporate communication trainers and speech-language pathologists, the book offers some easy-to-follow explanations and learner rules for pronouncing sounds, endings, and accurate stress in compounds, numbers, acronyms, and abbreviations. That is, the focus of the book is mainly on word-level phonology. However, the training materials include both sentence-level and paragraph-level practice.
The book has 11 chapters. Each chapter starts with a definition of a pronunciation target category (e.g., stop-plosives), followed by a short story for each sound (or contrastive sounds) or stress rule(s) that falls under that category. The stories (63 in total) follow a standard format: (a) the title of the story is the main character’s name; (b) one or more pronunciation rules (IPA sounds included) introduce the story; (c) one or more pronunciation targets for each story occur in the main character’s name and randomly at the beginning, middle, or ends of words in the story; and (d) the story is written first as isolated sentences and then as a paragraph. This format makes the book ideal for self-study and focused practice. The teacher or the students can decide what stories to read and how often, when, and in what order on the basis of students’ pronunciation needs. During independent practice, students can read the stories aloud as many times as they want and, through self-monitoring, improve their performance.
In addition to the stories, Rules by the Sound offers some practical information to assist students and teachers before and during practice. First, it provides a reference guide that identifies typical pronunciation and language challenges by speakers of other languages. This guide helps raise awareness of potential problems students might have because of their linguistic backgrounds. This awareness might help focus a teacher’s attention on areas that could be problematic for a student. Similarly, students using the book for self-study might also appreciate having these lists to guide their choices of what stories to practice. Surprisingly, the guide includes problems (e.g., linking, syllable reductions, sentence-level stress, intonation) that fall outside the scope of the book. Students who wish to improve any of these other problems or who want an individualized assessment of their problems should consult a pronunciation expert, who might need to supplement the book with other resources.
Second, the introduction to each of the stories describes precise articulatory information. It details for each targeted sound the manner and location of airflow; lip, teeth, and tongue placement and movement; velum movement; and whether the sound is voiced or voiceless. Although visual illustrations (a side or front view of a mouth) do not accompany these articulatory descriptions, the descriptions offer enough guidance to produce target sounds accurately. Furthermore, the optional CD add-on that accompanies the book includes sound charts that can be printed, duplicated, or e-mailed to students. The CD is available for duplication and electronic distribution to individuals and/or classes at an additional cost. These guidelines should prove valuable for both teachers and students.
Finally, Rules by the Sound provides readers with a chart that lists sound options and examples for common spelling patterns. This chart helps to raise students’ awareness of sound-spelling correspondences that they can use to predict correct pronunciations. In fact, good spelling patterns allow students both to identify correct sound and stress targets and to monitor their performance as they practice those targets (Dickerson, 1984), which can ultimately lead to an increased approximation to native-like pronunciation (Sardegna, 2009). Knowledge of spelling patterns that help predict sounds and stress unambiguously is empowering (Dickerson, 1994) because students can use these patterns to figure out for themselves how to pronounce difficult words. Spelling patterns that yield many different sound outputs, like those in this book, may help to inform and raise awareness but are not as empowering. If a spelling pattern can predict many different sound outputs, then the learner is left to figure out which sound option to pronounce when the pattern occurs in a word. It assumes that the learner has the knowledge to make the correct choice. According to Dickerson (1983), an effective rule is one that assumes no prior knowledge, that is, one that does not expect that the learner would know the target language to apply the rule. He calls this principle the No-Prior-Knowledge Assumption (NPKA). Despite being accurate, most of the spelling patterns provided in this book do not conform to the NPKA principle and are thus not as empowering as they could be. Nonetheless, students may still find some of these patterns helpful.
One important omission, however, is that students are not afforded a model to copy. Without this model, independent learners are left to their own devices and some overgeneralized spelling patterns to figure out which words in the stories have the targeted sounds. Fortunately, this shortcoming can be overcome if students are working with a teacher or a speech trainer who can provide them with these models. Alternatively, they could ask a native speaker to record the stories for them. In fact, it would have been ideal if the optional CD add-on, which includes pdf files of the stories, had also included sound files so that students could use them as models to compare their productions and check their predictions.
Rules by the Sound targets a wide audience: nonnative English speakers working independently, speech-language pathologists or corporate speech trainers, ESL/EFL teachers, college and university instructors, and others with pronunciation and communication problems. Undoubtedly, the stories offer students a chance to focus on, practice, and master English sounds and pronunciation rules during practice time in private. Although the training materials do not address some of the needs of students working independently, such as the need for models to copy, unambiguous prediction rules, and assessment tools, teachers and students working with teachers should find this book very valuable. The stories are amusing and provide plenty of practice with different targets. Above all, the articulatory descriptions are precise, detailed, and very easy to follow. For all these reasons, I highly recommend Rules by the Sound for one-on-one tutoring, classroom instruction, or speech training with a coach.
REFERENCES
Dickerson, W. (1983). Predicting vowel tenseness in English: A reply to Nessly. Language Learning 33, 389-394.
Dickerson, W. (1984). The role of formal rules in pronunciation instruction. In J. Handscombe, R. Orem, & B. Taylor (Eds.), On TESOL ´83 (pp. 135-148). Washington, DC: TESOL.
Dickerson, W. (1994). Empowering students with predictive skills. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory: New directions, new views (pp. 17-35). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Sardegna, V. G. (2009). Improving English stress through pronunciation learning strategies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana. (UMI No. 3363085).
