What is the focus of the Phonology Interview?
For many people choosing the Dip over the Delta, this aspect of the assessment is often cited as one of the strengths of the Dip which has a much deeper focus on phonology than you’ll find in the Delta.
Phonology often tends to be one of the elephants in the staffroom; very many teachers come in to the profession with no grounding in language and linguistics. Whilst the CELTAs and CertTESOLs of this world will prepare them with the essentials, this is rarely enough to give them confidence with teaching phonology. In my experience, the pressures of academy teaching often lead to phonology being skipped altogether, a fact which is perhaps more likely if the teacher doesn’t feel confident about dealing with it in the first place.
Can you give a more detailed breakdown of the interview?
There are three sections of the Phonology Interview:
- Talk by candidate (5 minutes) and discussion with examiner (5 minutes).
Here, the candidate presents a 5 minute presentation showing an activity or task cycle which they have designed to help their learners with a specific aspect of English phonology. For example, my talk focused on a listening-based activity to raise learners’ awareness of features of stress and connected speech. The examiner will then delve deeper into the choice of activity and rationale, as well as it theoretical and practical implications. This section carries 100 marks.
- Phonemic transcription (5 minutes)
The examiner will naturally dictate an utterance that includes at least two phrases or sentences, and is usually between 14 and 16 words. The candidate is required to transcribe this using phonetic symbols. They are also expected to show any connected speech features in the utterance, as well as accurately marking the stress and intonation patterns. During the five minutes, the candidate can ask the examiner to repeat the utterance as many times as they like, although they cannot ask for a specific section of the utterance. This section carries 50 marks.
- Discussion on theory and practice of phonology (15 minutes)
In this final section, the examiner will lead a discussion with the candidate about theoretical and practical aspects of phonology and pronunciation teaching. The examiner will base their questions on the specific interview, and will be guided by aspects of phonology that the candidate has already discussed. For example, in my interview the examiner expressly stated that we would skip over aspects of connected speech and stress since we discussed it in the first section. A full list of potential topics appear in the official Trinity Validation Requirements.
How did you prepare for the interview?
There were four modules of the extensive course dedicated to phonology, and these provided a solid grounding in different aspects of the phonology interview. This included basic elements of phonology, practicing for the phonemic transcription, and preparing and practicing the presentation for section one. This was sufficient to get a basic grounding in the structure of the assessment for the phonology interview, and combined with a mock interview a few weeks before the real assessment.
My own preparation for the assessment focused on revising my knowledge of phonology and brushing up on recent developments in the theory, whilst also practicing transcripts with some of my colleagues on the course. My presentation went through various stages of revisions, much like a conference talk would, and this was followed by multiple practice runs to try and get the timing under 5 minutes. In the end it was about 5 minutes and 20ish seconds, but this doesn’t seem to have affected my marks in any significant way.
What was your experience when doing the interview?
Phonology has always been one of my passions in teaching. That is not to say that I don’t feel that I have developed in this area: quite the opposite, in fact, as the Dip afforded me the opportunity to really delve deeper into an area of teaching that I have long been fascinated with. With this in mind, the interview was the one aspect of assessment that was actually looking forward to doing. The transcription was a pain, and I know that I missed some details with this, but it has nevertheless increased my awareness of features of phonology, and in particular connected speech. The discussion elements of the interview, however, were far more enjoyable. I thoroughly appreciated the opportunity to discuss these issues with my assessor.
What advice would you give candidates doing the interview?
I fully recognise that my experience with phonology does not reflect many other teachers, and for many this aspect includes a much steeper learning curve than the one I had to face. For candidates preparing for the interview, here are my top tips:
- Buy Gerald Kelly’s How to teach pronunciation and work your way through it methodically.
- Then buy Adrian Underhill’s Sound Foundations and work your way through that methodically.
- Dip in and out of Mark Hancock’s blog at www.hancockmcdonald.com, and also check out www.pronpack.com
- Prepare your presentation during the extensive course, and use it multiple times with your learners. Teaching something is the best way to learn it, and this will not only help you make valuable revisions but also to introduce vital ‘learner experience’ notes to your assessment.
- Get a study group together which is dedicated to transcription practice. Send each other short voice recordings, audioclips from coursebooks, clips from YouTube and so on. Transcribe it, send a photo to the group, and then discuss each other’s work. At first, I was put off by the lack of a definitive answer to each one, but over time you gain confidence with this.
- Take the opportunity to read in more detail the topics for section three. I made my examiner giggle when, on asking “how do you know this?” about my explanation of English as a Lingua Franca, I replied “well, I’ve known this for years, but I guess I probably read Jenkins or Robin Walker.” Do expect to have to justify where your knowledge has come from at least a couple of times.