This is a rhyme designed to work over the melody of the French nursery rhyme Frère Jacques. The melody is represented by the position of the words on the musical stave.
Do you remember the millennium bug? We were all warned that on new year’s day of 2000, our computers would cease to function properly. Didn’t happen. What DID happen around that time however was a quiet but seismic shift in assumptions about the goals of pronunciation teaching.
This short video (see link below) is a rap. It features a high density of the vowel minimal pair in ship and sheep – namely, fit and feet, sit and seat, bit and beat and fill and feel. Note that the vowel in the first word in each pair is shorter, with the mouth muscles more relaxed.
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.
"If it weren't for the hands, the clock would be useless" (Polish proverb). A detailed description of the phonology of English is of no use in pronunciation teaching if it is not combined with a consideration of learners' needs, especially in a world where English is a global lingua franca. In this talk, we will explore the implications of this idea. Download the slides below - 2 PDF files.
Tonic stress is a speaker’s use of emphasis to focus a listener’s attention. It’s an aspect of the speaking skill which is often neglected, but is crucial signalling the connections between ideas in both monologues and dialogues. Here’s a quick example:
