Here's Gemma Archer at IATEFL Brighton (on the PronSIG day) explaining how she felt when, starting her teaching career, she was expected to teach pronunciation in a posh English accent. She was teaching in a Scottish environment and has a Scottish accent, so teaching RP just didn't make any sense. So she gave up on pronunciation altogether.
Proud and delighted to announce: PronPack 1-4 is a finalist of the 16th British Council ELTons Awards for Innovation in English Language Teaching 2018 in innovation in teacher resources.
IATEFL PronSIG is holding an event in the beautiful city of Chester on February 17th. Only 2 hours by train from London, Chester is a place steeped in layers of history, and the event will take place at the city's University. 'Pronunciation: the Missing Link'.
The PronPack Sound Chart isfeatured on the cover Modern English Teacher Volume 27 Issue 1, January 2018. Inside, there is my article on the hexagon vowel chart entitled 'Putting Vowels on the Map'. Plus, there is a review of PronPack by Brian Brennan in Ih Barcelona, including the following comments:
Great to see a review of PronPack in English Teaching Professional(Issue 113, November 2017, pp. 35, 36)
by Steve Hirschhorn in Hungary. Here are a few quotes:
Ebook
+ cheaper
+ integrated audio
+ quick to navigate to the page you want
+ good to have as your own personal copy
+ print the worksheets from pronpack.com
PronPack is a set of four resource books to help teachers focus on English pronunciation in class. The books contain printable worksheets along with teacher’s notes explaining how to guide the students through each activity.
Last class, a South Korean student told me about his weekend visit to Liverpool. He said it wasn’t easy to understand the local way of speaking, and gave the example of the question word What? He demonstrated how this word had been said, with the final ‘t’ replaced with a silence, or glottal stop, so it sounds like wha’?
Many teachers worry about what the best model accent should be, and whether their own accent serves as a suitable model. My argument is that the premise of the question is wrong – there needn’t be a single model accent, and that the teacher’s own accent will usually be the best model, providing that the teacher is an intelligible speaker of English.
