I got my first teaching job in 1984, working at a large boy's secondary school in El Obeid, Sudan. This experience made it very clear to me that there's a lot more to teaching English than just being able to speak the language!
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:
Tonicity is a speaker’s use of stress to focus a listener’s attention. It’s an aspect of pronunciation which is often neglected, but is crucial in getting meaning across. In this session we will look at ways of presenting and practicing this important skill in the language class. The slides can be downloaded below. See more about Mark's books here.
Pronunciation teaching can be fun, but in a world where English is a lingua franca, we need to take a flexible approach. We can’t simply preach a single ideal target model, instead, we must teach learners to be adaptable, both receptively and productively. In this session, I will demonstrate this. Download the slides from the talk below.
In this talk, I will present a pedagogical chart of English vowels set in a hexagon figure. I will explain the rationale behind the design, which is based on a system of rings and spokes, with the long vowels in the outer ring, the short vowels in the inner ring and the schwa at the centre.
Pronunciation teaching is sometimes held back by an unhelpful insistence on the phonetic detail of target models. Some features, such as the schwa for example, seem to almost acquire the status of icons. What happens if we knock these icons off their pedestals? This presentation will start a day of talks brought together by IATEFL's Pronunciation SIG and Global Issues SIG.
This webinar has been organized by Stella Palavecino of the IES en Lenguas Vivas Juan Ramon Fernandez and hosted by Veronica Pintos of the British Council, both in Buenos Aires. Here's a summary of the main argument. You'll find the slides on a pdf below, and an MP3 of the rap, and a second karaoke version.
