We often present at ELT conferences and events. Just select the title below if you're looking for the handout or download from a talk or workshop you have attended.
Before we get our students to listen, we prime them for what they are about to hear. However, the types of tasks we use tend to use are similar to (if not exactly the same as) those we use to prepare students before they read a text.
Colegios Arenas, Facultad Filologia, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria
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Pronunciation lessons can be both fun and focussed. In this session, we will look at 8 features of English pronunciation which are of particular relevance for Spanish speaking learners of English. These will include vowels, spelling of vowels, consonants, clusters, word stress, stress patterns, tonic syllables and joined up speech.
English UK North Academic Conference 2015, Liverpool
Location:
LILA, New Barrett House, 47 North John Street
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Many students studying English want (or even need) to be able to understand the spontaneous, unscripted speech they find themselves immersed in as people chat away around them. For students schooled on a diet of scripted ELT material the challenge is truly daunting; for teachers wishing to help, the unruly nature of conversational spoken English makes it difficult to know where to start.
LILA, New Barratt House, 47 North John Street, Liverpool L2 6SG
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Do you speak and teach in a standard RP accent? How bad is it if you don’t? In this session, we will look at a phonemic chart and how it is organised. We will then consider some of the ways the sounds are different in the North of England.
The slides from the talk can be found below. Also, check out the 'Materials' section of this website to see full downloads, including audio in some cases, and lesson plans for some of the activities demonstrated in the talk.
On the surface of it, unscripted language is a total mess, and it's a wonder that anybody can understand any of it. It stops and starts, interrupts and stumbles, slows and accelerates, and generally breaks all the grammar rules you’ve ever learnt. So, how can we help learners to make sense of it?
(pdf of slides below) Proverbial wisdom tells us that if you give someone a fish, they can eat for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. It’s a message about the long-term value of learning new skills and becoming independent. A similar thing could be said about pronunciation and dictionaries.
The slide show of this talk can be found on the PDF below. In this talk, we will focus on pronunciation at three levels – 1 sounds, 2 words, and 3 phrases. For each of these, we will look at some of the typical problems for Italian learners, and try out some fun activities for raising awareness of these.
