NATURE

The teaching of pronunciation is not an optional luxury to be left to advanced level studies of the language at university.

It should be an integral part of an English teaching program from the early stages, just as the teaching of strutures and vocabulary.

I have found the most useful and stimulating order to be: first meaningful sentence stress within a context, accompanied by relevant expression i.e. basic intonation; second help with the difficult and important sounds.

There are 2 key sides to pronunciation teaching – namely, the taching of productive skills on the one hand and the teaching of receptive skills on the other. In terms of reception, students need to learn to hera the difference between phonemes, for example, particularly whre such a contrast does not exist in their L1. They then need to carry that knowledge through into their production.

TRANG 55 CUON DÀI

Initial non-text stage:

1.       Introducing stress and rhythm (word stress, sentence stress, weak forms, sound linking.

2.       Introducing intonation

3.       Teaching the use of the whole voice range

4.       Introducing two adjacent stresses (adjective + noun)

à Problems with individual sounds will occur, but as they will have occurred as mistakes, then the strategy of dealing with individual sounds is one of remedial teaching and this can be considered as consisting of two separate approaches – (1) Instant Remedial and (2) Planned Remedial.

For instant Remedial, 4 parts (1) imitation, (2) demonstration, (3) association, (4) explanation (Miêu tả kĩ ở trang 209)

For non-specialist classes of learners, the teacher should of course not go into great phonetic detail in his explantion, but rather use layman’s terms to convey the idea…

SACH KHAC

The concept of “pronunciation” may be said to include:

- the sounds of the language, or phonology

- stress and rhythm

- intonation

Integrated materials (page 226, 227)

Children seem to pick up accent very quickly and the ability to do so seems to diminish with age, though this may be for psychological rasons (a need to preserve one’s identity as expressed in the way one speaks) rather than physical of physiological capability. However, this diminished ability is compensated for to some extent by adults’ increased ability to understand difficult explanations, discipline themselves and apply instructions. One conclusion might be that conscious pronunciation traiing is likely to be more helpful with classes of older learners.

TECHNIQUE

TEACHING SOUNDS

Draw a vowel chart à However, this aid may belong more to the lecturer of phonology addressing a group of trainee-teachers of English!!

For non-specialist classes of learners, the teacher may use the blackboard for a system of colour-coding to indicate a sound that is representd by different spelling.

The blackboard can also be used to draw objects that symbolize sounds, such as a (hissing) snake for /s/ and a (buzzing) bee for /z/…

ACTIVITIES

“Phonemic bingo” : Particular vowel sounds

Each student is given a card. The sounds are called out one by one. The students will cross off the ones they have on their cards. One variation can be calling out words instead of sounds. And the students may be asked to write another example word on their card instead of only crossing the sounds off. When a student has filled up her card, she shouts “Bingo” and the card is checked.

“Noughts and crosses” : Particular vowel sounds

Students work in pairs. It’s like “ca rô” in Vietnam. They choose a square and provide a word which contains that sound. If they get it right, they put a “nought” and in the other student’s turn, they do the same and put a “cross”. The winner is the first to complete a straight line of three noughts or crosses.

Phonemic crossword

“Hangman”: Consonant and vowel sounds

The game is slightly more complicated than traditional “Hangman”, because when using letters, there are only 26 to choose from, whereas ther are 44 phonemes.

Phonemic word search: Consonant and vowel sounds

Stop the bus

Types of exercise:

Practice of individual sounds in isolated words, in short phrases and sentences, in dialogues.

Practice of contrasing sounds in minimal pairs and in pairs of sentences; exercises contrasting three sounds in isolation and in context, contrasing more sounds, especially in a test exercise.

Practice of combinations of sounds – clusters of consonants can be practised in isolated words, in minimal pairs and in context.

Discrimination drills –> discrimination exercises (separate words, in sentence with or without the help of the sentence context)

TEACHING STRESS

WORD STRESS (primary stress, secondary stress, tertiary stress?, unstressed)

1.       Repeat whole phrase

2.       Isolate and repeat stressed syllable only

3.       Repeat whole phrase

You can do it in these two ways: (p 214, 215)

1.       Gesture

2.       The blackboard

Politician/ It’s important

Policeman/ He’s English

Electrician/ Can I help you?

Photographer/ You idiot

Interior designer/ I want to go to London

Types of exercise:

???

SENTENCE STRESS (content words, form/structure words)

He LIVES in the HOUSE on the CORNer

WEAK FORMS

???

SOUND LINKING

Three little words: Contrastive stress

The students work in pairs to see if they can work out any different meanings, through stressing different words in the sentences. Suggested answers are as follows:

TEACHING INTONATION

1.       Gesture (a sweep of the arm (from high to low, etc))

2.       The blackboard

3.       Other activities: Mood and attitude also matter in intonation.  We can use (a) a game-like activity or (b) mood cards or (c) cratng roles or enacting

DEMONSTRATION

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TABLES

CHAIRS

FLOWERS

BOOKS

STUDENTS

CHEFS