TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Published by john@teachers-zone.com in Teaching Tips · 16 September 2015
Tags: methodology, speaking, articles

To avoid misunderstanding the learners have to differentiate between English sounds. That is why activities to practice sound pronunciation, word stress and intonation are crucial for the learning process.

Here are presented several examples of the teaching pronunciation techniques:

1. Imitation

This technique may be used to teach producing sounds, word and sentence stress, and intonation. The learners follow a good model to command of the spoken language.

2. Rhymes

The teacher says a word and the learners try to find another rhyming word (e.g. hat – cat, higher – choir, train – rain etc).

3. Minimal pairs

In this task there are given pairs of words whose pronunciation differs at only one sound, such as ‘sheep’ and ‘ship’ or ‘peg’ and ‘beg’ etc. The learners should identify if they hear the same words or different ones.

4. Odd man out

The teacher gives three words and among them there are two identical and one different. The learners have to guess which one should be out (e.g. sit – seat – sit).

5. Tongue-twister

It is memorising and repeating some sequences of the words, such as short poems, nursery rhymes or jokes, difficult to articulate quickly.

Teaching pronunciation is not optional, but it should be an integral part of an English teaching programme from the early stages, just as teaching vocabulary and grammar structures.

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2 reviews

Tharwat lasheen

14 Oct 2015

Thanks alot.I need more for phonetics

Kika

30 Mar 2016

Thanks you! I know is very important to teach pronunciation!