ИСТИНА

The presentation is primarily aimed at sharing the experience of teaching English phonetics as part of an ESP course at several faculties of the Moscow State University. Professional needs of budding philologists as well as those studying world politics, regional studies and intercultural communication call for specifically developed skills of phonetics which would enable them to speak in public – literately, coherently, and convincingly. Thus, during the last 30 years prof. O.S. Akhmanova’s disciples at the department of English linguistics have been designing both new branches of research (cognitive syllabics, pragmaphonetics) and new practical methods of teaching based on them, new courses of phonetics for the students of the aforementioned specialities. This completely new approach to teaching English phonetics relies on teaching people to communicate and impart information in the most competent and linguistically correct way. We call it ‘cognitive phonetics’, because in accordance with cognitive approach to linguistics in general, it is now the conceptual basis of the language which comes to the fore, and all language processes are assessed and analysed with respect to the speaker/listener as the ‘situated agents’ involved in communicative activities of various kind. We do not limit ourselves to contrasting Russian and English articulatory behavior and subsequent practicing certain sounds in separate words and word combinations – we rely on the target principle. A target text is an example of contemporary English speech which is public, rhetorically oriented and delivered by the best speakers. The choice of a suitable target text and the process of its phonetic adaptation is ‘dynamic modelling’, something which presupposes active participation and constant, conscious effort on the part of the learner. The choice of target is fully conditioned by the learner’s professional pursuits. So, when the text is adapted pragmaphonetically, it is given to the students with full phonetic and tonetic transcription of the syntagms (which they gradually learn to make themselves). The students use it when they pronounce the text themselves, ‘reforging’ their articulation basis and emulating the prosodic parameters which have already been carefully explained. Further on, there comes the time to slide gradually from drills of that kind to something the student has got to say of his own. Since he or she is still far from being confident and actually automatic at producing proper English sounds with English pauses and English tones, the target principle helps him to fit the ideas into something already familiar, and he is expected to incorporate phrase patterns from several already studied texts. All the contours and rhythm units remain familiar and easy, most words are also pronounced automatically without any difficulties, so the speaker can concentrate on his/her chosen subject and the new words he/she has introduced. The concluding part of the presentation deals with examples of how the pragmaphonetic modelling can be applied to analyse rhetorical functioning of phonetic units (which is also there to be taught and mastered).