Pronunciation is the general term for that part of teaching that deals with sound. This includes the individual sounds of English, sounds in connected speech, word and sentence stress placement as well as intonation.
1. Individual Sounds
- Vowels (e.g. /i/ as in “read” and “meet”)
- Consonants (e.g. /k/ as in “car” and “action”)
2. Sounds in connected speech
Certain sounds “blend” together in informal speech particularly when a word ends in a consonant or vowel and is followed by a word beginning with a vowel. (e.g. “Now and then”, “not at all”).
3. Stress
Word Stress - When a word in English has more than one syllable, one of these syllables is made to stand out more than the others by saying that syllable slightly louder, longer and clearer. (e.g. “London”, “jacket”).
Sentence Stress - Speakers often decide to give more/less prominence to a word in a sentence. A word may be given less weight because it has been said already, or it may be given more weight because the speaker wants to highlight it. (e.g. A: “I saw John yesterday” means that it was John I saw not somebody else.)
4. Intonation
Speech is like music in that it changes in tone. Speakers use tone to send various messages. (e.g. If we said “You’re John” in a gradually rising tone, this would convey the idea of amazement or surprise. Conversely if were to use a gradually falling tone, this could imply disappointment.)
Teaching techniques
Effective pronunciation teaching needs to pay attention to all the above aspects. In terms of classroom activities, you might like to consider some or all of the following:
A. Minimal pairs
Ask learners to separate words in any given list into two groups according to a particular sound. For example: /i/ (read) or /I/ (kill) in the following words “live, leave, ship, sheep, feel, fill, feet, fit, seat, sit”.
B. Sound count
Ask learners to listen to a short text and count the number of times they hear a certain sound. For example, how many times is the sound /i/ (read) produced in the following: Some teachers’ teaching pleases some people but other people feel the same teaching isn’t pleasing. It isn’t easy to please each person but teasing the teacher won’t please the teacher and each teacher needs to be free to teach as he pleases.
C. Odd man out
Ask learners to listen to a set of words and say which one is different. For example: meat, thief, knit, steal
D. Listen and mark
Learners listen and mark the stressed/reduced/blended forms in a short utterance. For example: “I saw John and Mary eating fish and chips last night”.
E. Clap it
Ask learners to listen to a short utterance and then clap to the stress and rhythm of what they hear.
F. Context drama
Give learners a short dialogue which could be heard in a number of different contexts. For example:
A: What are you doing here?
B: Nothing much
Then give the learners a number of different contexts and ask them to perform the dialogue according to the situation:
A is a policeman and B is a suspicious character.
A is a friend of B - B doesn’t look very well.
A wants to be friendly - B doesn’t.
G. Songs and Rhymes
Songs and rhymes are useful for practising new grammatical patterns or vocabulary once they have been presented. However, one of the main advantages of using such materials in the language class is that when learners are taught to sing or recite in the foreign language, their accent virtually disappears.
H. Getting warmer
An object is hidden in the classroom. One learner is chosen to try and find it - he/she was of course not present when the object was hidden. Everyone else knows where the object is, and may help the finder, but only by giving clues about how close the finder is to the hidden object by saying “warmer” if the finder moves closer to the object or “colder” if he/she moves further away. As the game proceeds, the learners will naturally use rising tone to show excitement (as the finder gets closer and falling tone to show disappointment (as the finder gets further away).
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