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Teaching
pronunciation
Glasgow June 15th
Consider the following questions
What do you understand by ‘comfortable
intelligibility’?
What is your approach to teaching
pronunciation?
What aspects of pronunciation are more/less
important than others?
What pronunciation difficulties do your learners
have?
What areas of pronunciation can be of benefit
to learners from a variety of L1s?
Potential
Difficulty
Korean Arabic Tamil
/f/ Does not exist;
replaced with
/p/
Replaces /v/;
‘very’ becomes
/ferɪ/
Likely to confuse
with/v/ or /p/
/v/ Does not exist Does not exist /p/ /b/ x /p/ does not exist;
replaced with/b/
Difficulty
distinguishing
between the sounds
Distinguishing
between vowel
sounds
x English has 22 vowel
sounds, Arabic 8
Difficulty
distinguishing
between short and
long vowels.
Potential difficulty Korean Arabic Tamil
Inserting a vowel sound
after a final consonant
sound
‘dark’ becomes/dɑ:ku/
‘‘church’
becomes/tʃɜ:tʃi/
/u/after a
consonant, ‘fan’
pronounced as
/fænu/
Consonant clusters Insertion of a vowel
sound between the
consonants.
‘strike’ becomes
/sɪtɪraɪkɪ/
Insertion of a vowel
sound before the
initial cluster:’ sport’
becomes/ɪsɪpɔ:t/
Tamil does not have
some consonant
clusters. Omission of
a consonant: ‘train’
becomes /reɪn/
Stress patterns Over-stressing the
wrong vowel sound
In Arabic, stress is
regular so speakers
have difficulties
dealing with the
seemingly random
nature of English
stress patterns.
Problems stressing
the correct syllable
as it is a syllable-
based language
Vowel length
Consonant clusters
Stress/unstress
Strong and weak forms
Tonic stress and intonation
Options for pronunciation work
A planned discrete focus
Whenever you are introducing new language
When a need for pronunciation arises in the
lesson
Sound foundations chart- Underhill
http://www.macmillanenglish.co
m/methodology/phonetic-
chart.htm
Telephone numbers
0 5
1 6
2 7
3 8
4 9
Use this for any problematic sounds
0 coffee 5 copy
1 ship 6 sheep
2 pat 7 part
3 fur 8 fair
4 chew 9 shoe
Consonant clusters
Crisps
Wasps
Against all odds
Matched
Next day
Spring
Pronunciation journey
Left Matched
Bring
Climbs
Steaks
Skis
Right Match
Spring
Climbed
Staked
Keys
Have a look at the following
sentence and decide what
phonological features you notice.
I think I might have left the gas on
Do the same for the following
sentences
1. If she hadn’t got the job, she’d have been devastated
2. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she found out?
3. She should have rung before she left
4. If you catch that train, I’ll be able to meet you
5. What would you have done if she’d missed that plane?
6. Why do you think he’ll have got there before you?
Back-chaining
Applies to tone units rather than sentences
If a sentence consists of more than one tone
unit, each tone unit will need to be practised
separately before being combined.
The tonic prominence usually appears at the
end of a tone unit- hence back-chaining
Start from the tonic prominence
1. If she hadn’t got the job,
she’d have been devastated
2. Can you imagine how she
must have felt when she found
out?
3. She should have rung
before she left
4. If you catch that train, I’ll be
able to meet you
5. What would you have done if
she’d missed that plane?
Some other techniques
Mutter drill
Miming sounds
Showing the articulation of consonant
phonemes
Using the phonemic chart to illustrate the
articulation of vowel phonemes
Demonstrating lip position in vowel production
A bad day
I overslept and missed my train,
slipped on the pavement in the pouring
rain,
sprained my ankle, skinned my knees,
broke my glasses, lost my keys,
got stuck in the elevator,
it wouldn't go,
kicked it twice and
stubbed my toe,
bought a pen that
didn't write,
took it back and had a
fight,
went home angry,
locked the door,
crawled into bed,
couldn't take any more!
Carolyn Graham
Jazz Chants 1978 OUP Inc
Some possible strategies
Segmental difficulties
Possible activities:
Telephone numbers
Pronunciation journey
Minimal pairs- which word do you hear?
Aural discrimination: the first stage is to check if students can hear the problematic sounds and distinguish between sounds before we ask them to produce the sounds.
Production
Practise the articulation of the sounds;
silent drilling; ask the students to use the
above activities to produce the sounds;
students test each other.
Consonant clusters
Consonants together- consonant clusters
Lots of drilling; drilling forwards and back
chaining; breaking down the words
Some strategies
Elision of a sound in a final cluster
Insertion of a sound in an initial cluster
Word stress
Make stress visible and physical- mark it;
beat it; march it.
Match words to stress patterns
Vocabulary chants
Stress maze
The rhythm of English
Sentence stress
Which words do we stress? Drill whole
sentences; use Jazz Chants and other
rhythmic materials.
Some resources
How to Teach Pronunciation: Gerald Kelly:
Longman
The Book of Pronunciation: Jonathan
Marks and Tim Bowen: Delta Publishing
Adrian Underhill:
www.macmillanenglish.com/pronunciatio
n-skills/ Video on You Tube