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