Teaching Pronunciation
Teaching Pronunciation
“The most precious things in speech are the pauses.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Pronunciation is one of the hardest skills your English learners will need to master. Many words in English change meaning with the way they are pronounced. For instance, ‘Did you read the book?’ or ‘Have you read the book?’ the word ‘read’ changes in each although it looks exactly the same.
Your students are going to need to work hard on their pronunciation to be able to be understood. Pronunciation goes hand in hand with speaking skills.
Talk, talk and talk some more
Create as many opportunities as possible for your students to be able to speak. The more they speak the more opportunities you will have to correct their pronunciation. When correcting, be careful not to overcorrect, you don’t want to stifle your students progress.
Tongue twisters and songs may help to improve your students pronunciation.
Similar sounds
You will find that there will be specific sounds or letters that your students may be mispronouncing. For example your students may be struggling with the ’s’ or ‘l’ sounds these are commonly mispronounced.
Help your student by demonstrating the mouth and tongue placement for each of the sounds. Practise drilling the sound using simple two syllable words to help them practise the sound.
Tongue Twisters
Another useful tip for intermediate to advanced students is to practise lounge twisters. These are great at helping students to work on one specific sound.
A few popular lounge twisters are:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Betty bought a bit of butter
But the butter Betty bought was bitter
So Betty bought a better bit of butter
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood
As a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood
These more simple ones are designed to be repeated over and over to continue practising producing the correct sound:
She sells seashells by the seashore
Irish wristwatch
Red lorry, yellow lorry
Be sure that you practise the tongue twisters with your students first so that they can hear how they are supposed to sound.
Singing along
When you sing a song, we often try to sound like the singer, we copy the way that they sing each of the words. This can also be helpful for students to improve their pronunciation, by trying to mimic the way the singer is singing, they will improve their pronunciation.
Just be careful to choose songs that have a neutral accent so that your students aren’t picking up any accent habits. Also be sure to choose a song with appropriate themes for the age of your students and for their culture.
These few tips will help you to improve your students pronunciation.
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