北外李晨：英语语音学习目标“可理解性(Intelligibility)”的三个层级

Li Chen: Intelligibilty is the goal of learning pronunciation. Let's first of all establish that. And intelligibilty, we have three levels or three layers. We talk about intelligibilty. And for example, I'm speaking English. Let's switch a little bit. I'm speaking my native tongue, which is Chinese, and see if you can understand me. For example, Lao Shi.

Joanna & Richard: Teacher.

Li Chen: But if I say Lao Shi.

Richard: I assume there's something else. There's another meeting that are missing. That's what I assume. If I hear it like that.

Li Chen: Then it's not intelligible.

So the three levels, first of all, you have to make yourself understood in terms of the way you speak. So that's what intelligibilty is all about. Intelligibilty is to do with the recognition of a word or grammatical structure of an utterance. It usually refers to speech perception. So everybody, intelligibilty is speech perception. Okay?

The second layer, a layer that's above intelligibilty, is called comprehensibility. Comprehensibility is not just about speech, but to do with what is conveyed. For example, I'm saying Lao Shi, what I'm trying to convey?

Joanna: You're upset.

Richard: You're trying to call the teachers.

Joanna: You are whining.

Li Chen：Yeah, whining. Like "Come on, teacher!" Or if I say, Lao Shi!

Richard: You're trying to call them, “Come here!".

Li Chen: It's all in the tone, right? It's to do with intelligibilty, but at the same time, it's to do with the message I'm trying to convey. But that's from the speaker's side. What about the interlocutor's side? For example, you as the listener, when you listen to me, you have to interpret the message I'm going to speak. So that's the Top layer, which is called interpretability.

So, guys, today I'm trying to establish three things, intelligibilty, which is speech perception. That's the foundation. So next time you study pronunciation, first of all, make sure yourself is perceived in the way that's very clear and also with appropriate stress and intonation. So that's speech perception -- intelligibilty.

Comprehensibility. When you say Lao Shi. So it's no emotion when you say Lao Shi, it's a little bit whining. When you say Lao Shi, it's upbeat. So that's the comprehensibility.

And finally, you have to check not just on the basis of the speech, but also on the basis of the intentions or connotations so to speak. That's interpretability.

So everybody, let's see this slide, down below you have interpretability requires cultural competence as well.

The point for this particular discussion here is that students, they study English pronunciation. And they think that getting the sounds correct is the only goal. But to me, that's just the very beginning. They haven't even started yet. When you get the sounds right, you have to make sure that the sentences coming out of your mouth is actually comprehensible and is also interpreted the exact way you wanted it to be interpreted.

For example, if you are late to work, your boss says, "What time is it?" And then you literally check your watch and say it's ten o'clock, then you're doing a very stupid thing. And also they interpretability for ten o'clock is not just so much about whether or not you said ten o'clock correctly or with the correct international or stress is to do with whether or not your boss is asking you the time.

So again, guys, even if today's topics to do with accent and also do accent matter in English pronunciation learning. My point, and also I I certainly think that our guests would agree with me that learning English -- learning the sounds or getting the sounds right is just the beginning.

Joanna: Actually another thing that happened to me and this was more from the other side. So me being, um, misunderstanding somebody. So my friend, every time she would see me, she would say, you look tired. And in western culture, when somebody says you look tired, it basically means like "Go put some makeup on!" Because the bags under your eyes are showing and you're not looking so fresh. Like something's going on there. Like fix what's going on. Whereas I learned later that in Chinese culture, when somebody says you look tired, it's more of a caring gesture. So it's kind of like in English when we say take care, right, it's more of they're concerned for you. They're expressing that they care about you. And so that was a Complete miscommunication. Even though the intelligibilty was there, I knew exactly what she said. Understanding the interpretability was very misunderstood. Cross wires.

Richard: I think the same thing with work-related conversations is, in English, in British culture supposedly, if someone's done something, even if it's a work colleague, the job they're paid to do it, you would say, "Thank you!" I finish a lesson or something and say "Thank you!". And at the end of the day, even though they are paid to be there, it's a job, right? They found it very odd. The Chinese stuff were confused -- "Why are you thanking us? What have we done? This is what we're supposed to do."

Li Chen: Okay, guys, that's what we're trying to show you the intelligibilty, the comprehensibility. And also finally the interpretability. If you want yourself to be interpreted the way you want it to be, then learning pronunciation is just the beginning.

Learning pronunciation. A lot of people, they try to pick a book and study the rules. After learning the rules. I have nothing against that. Learning the basics is the starting point. But once you have got past that starting point, next, you have to really think about what I just mentioned. The three layers, intelligibilty, comprehensibility, and interpretability. Once you get there, then you can reverse engineer the way you study. And then you know which rule would really apply to the way you want to sound like.

Otherwise, you simply study the rules, you follow the rules. Even if you've put in a lot of time and effort, then in the end, you still don't know how to really express yourself. One thing that I think is a great legacy for Bruce lee, for example, is that he says, "martial art is a way of expressing yourself". And also learning pronunciation is a way of expressing yourself. But if you don't establish that from Day One, you will lose the point along the way. You will see that learning pronunciation would not be an expression of yourself, would be just a a mimic of a reference model. They would follow one particular person, Barack Obama, for example. And that's totally missing the point.

So you see there are so many disastrous results if you don't start right!