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!
Pronunciation puzzles are challenging game-like activities which students can do on their own, although they are fun to do in pairs or small groups. They include such puzzle types as mazes, sudoku, word searches and crosswords.
Pronunciation workouts are extended drills focusing on specific areas of English pronunciation. Think of them like the scales and other exercises which pianists use to improve their fingering technique. Or like a fitness workout which a gymnast might use to tone the muscles. But in the case of pronunciation, it’s the vocal articulators which are getting trained – the tongue, lips, jaw and vocal cords.
The PronPack collection is an award-winning set of materials for teachers who want to work on English pronunciation with their students. Each book takes a different angle on the topic.
On the TESOL Spain website (click here), you can now see videos of various speakers from the 2016 conference in Vitoria, conducted by Gerard McLaughlin.
Most teachers of English will have come across a sound chart at some point, but few realise how arbitrary they are. I do not mean 'arbitrary' in the negative sense of 'with no good reason', but rather in the sense that there are choices that the designer has had to make. At every stage in the creation of a chart, the author will have made decisions which could equally well have been otherwise.
Friday, March 11, 2016 - 09:15 to Sunday, March 13, 2016 - 14:15
We're off to the north of Spain this weekend for the 39th annual TESOL Spain convention, which is taking place in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Mark will be presenting a complete pronunciation workout.
In this talk, we will look at ways of exploring sounds in class, in a way which is both meaningful and fun. The slide show for the talk can be downloaded below. Various versions of the sound chart can be downloaded from here.
Sometimes pronunciation deserves more than a passing correction or one-off task. In this workshop, we will see how pronunciation points can be worked on from various different angles, in coherent and enjoyable task sequences. The handout, slides and audio tracks used in the talk can be downloaded below. The raps are taken from my new book 'PronPack', which is coming soon! Keep checking back!
A collaborative project by ELT Writers Connected, the No-Nonsense Guide to Writing is an e-book for anyone who is interested in designing and writing materials for the learning and teaching of English as a foreign (or additional) language.
