Hancock McDonald ELT

Integrating pronunciation into classroom activities In my work as a teacher trainer I have been surprised at how often experienced teachers are reluctant to tackle pronunciation issues in class. I can think of at least two reasons why pronunciation tends to be neglected: firstly, the lack of clear guidelines and rules available in course books, and secondly the fact that isolated exercises once a month do not seem to have much of an effect. This is not surprising, however; like all other areas of language teaching, pronunciation needs constant attention for it to have a lasting effect on students, which means integrating it into daily classroom procedures. I find that addressing issues regularly during the language feedback or group correction stage of a lesson helps to focus learners' attention on its importance and leads to more positive experiences. Using student talk to teach pronunciationWord stressVowel soundsDiphthongsWeak formsSentence stressConclusion After the activity, on the board I draw a column with the heading /e/.

Non-native pronunciations of English Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native users of any language tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their mother tongue into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language. Overview The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from such speakers imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English, either by transferring the phonological rules from their mother tongue into their English speech ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used in primary language acquisition.[1] They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.[1] English is unusual in that speakers rarely produce an audible release between consonant clusters and often overlap constriction times. Examples

Authentic communication: Whyzit importan' ta teach reduced forms? This paper focuses on the evolution of my awareness of the importance of teaching connected speech forms in ESL/EFL classrooms. It also includes my recent efforts to compile the literature on the topic and formulate the rules underlying continuous speech forms including such concepts as word stress, utterance stress and timing, elisions, reductions, insertions, intrusions, simple transitions, assimilations, contractions, and combinations of all of the above. My quest began when I was teaching in the People's Republic of China back in 1980. One day a student came up to me after class and asked me why it was that he could understand me when I spoke to the class, but could not when I spoke to other Americans. Table 1 shows an edited list of the reduced forms that we collected. In addition, we agreed to teach these reduced forms for 5-10 minutes in each of the 50 intermediate speaking classes that students took over the course of their ten week term. Table 1. [ p. 13 ] Table 2. Table 3.

BBC Learning English | For teachers | Exam Skills Elementary Tests - PET / KET Practice GrammarBank.com Menu Elementary TestsKET / PET Practice Here you will find easy grammar worksheets with short questions covering basic grammar rules, basic vocabulary, short readings for beginners. Mixed ESL / EFL Level 1 to Pre-Intermediate Beginners ESL / EFL Exercises By Subject 1 - Adjective or Adverb Exercise2 - Nouns and Prepositions Exercise3 - Possessive Pronouns Exercise4 - ESL Simple Prepositions + Tenses5 - Simple Past Tense + Vocabulary Exercise6 - Verb Tenses - Simple Present or Present Continuous Beginners Exercises with Short Readings Reading Fill in the Blanks Exercises:Reading Passages CompletionBeginners Reading Comprehension Exercises:Beginners Reading Comprehension TestMore advanced reading comprehension practice You are here: >> Home >> English For Beginners - KET / PET Print exercises and lessons: Hint: For exercises, you can reveal the answers first ("Submit Worksheet") and print the page to have the exercise and the answers. Print This Page Site Search Custom Search Home

Future - Why does your voice sound different on a recording? What makes a recording of our voice sound so different... and awful? It’s because when you speak you hear your own voice in two different ways. Greg Foot explains all. The first is through vibrating sound waves hitting your ear drum, the way other people hear your voice. English phonetic transcription software Phonetizer Prosody (Suprasegmentals) Prosody (and Suprasegmentals) 1. Terminology The IPA provides a group of symbols for stress, length, intonation, syllabification and tone under the general heading "suprasegmentals", reflecting a conceptual division of speech into "segmental" and "suprasegmental" parts. However, as we shall see, this division is not very clean, with phonetic correlates of stress, intonation etc. often manifest in the consonants and vowels, i.e. at the segmental level. 2. In English, the term "stress" is used in reference to the degree of prominence of individual syllables of single words (lexical stress), e.g. elephant (stressed - unstressed - unstressed) vs. elephantine (unstressed? IPA symbols for primary stress [ ] and secondary stress [ ] may be placed before vowels, or equally well at the beginning of each syllable (thus also providing some information about syllable boundaries): elephant [ elIf nt], elephantine [ an t In]. a) In some languages (e.g. b) There are other phonetic correlates of stress too. su

BBC Learning English - Classroom teaching tips Welcome to AzarGrammar.com English teachers, are you asking the right questions? Declan Cooley, CELTA Opens in a new tab or window. trainer at the British Council in Poland, explains why some questions are not as effective as they first appear, and offers some alternatives. Questions of all kinds are a teacher's most basic tools for generating interest, provoking thoughts, encouraging students to speak, developing text comprehension skills and checking understanding. New teachers on courses like the CELTA spend a lot of time honing their skills at using effective questions in the classroom. Here are a few questions that do not always give the results intended. Do you understand? This seems like an obvious question for checking comprehension. understands correctly and completelythinks he or she completely understands (but doesn't)partly understands (but which part?) In addition, learners might answer in the positive when they've lost interest, want to move on to the practice task, or don't want to admit to a lack of understanding. Other options for 'Do you understand?'

Phonetic Chart Interactive Phonemic ChartCreated by Adrian UnderhillThis excellent teaching tool gives audio examples of the English phoneme set. Click on the phonemes to hear the sound and a sample word. Find out more about how the chart works and how it can help you in the classroom in a series of exclusive videos with Adrian dedicated to teaching pronunciation skills.Adrian Underhill is the series editor for the Macmillan Books for Teachers and author of Sounds Foundations, the inspiration behind the award-winning Sounds: Pronunciation App. More about Adrian Underhill Pronunciation Skills Videos

Helping students with connected speech There is a huge difference between what our students see printed on a page and what we actually say in everyday speech. In a recording of a TESOL Spain Presentation on Youtube (well worth watching), Mark Hancock makes the following joke: Patient: Doctor, Doctor, I’ve got two theik, a near rake, sore rise, bruise darms a stummer cake and I far tall the time. Doctor: I see, perhaps you’d like to way tin the corridor? (Try reading it aloud) The joke [apologies for the vulgarity ;) ] showcases a good number of examples of features of connected speech. Features of connected speech As a brief overview, there is a strong tendency in English to simplify and link words together in the stream of speech, in order to help the language flow rhythmically. Assimilation This is when the sound at the end of one word changes to make it easier to say the next word. ‘ten boys’ sounds like ‘ tem boys’ (the /n/ sound changes to the bilabial /m/ to make it easier to transition to the also bilabial /b/) Catenation