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!
We will look at features of pronunciation which are relevant for French learners of English. These will include vowels, consonants, spelling patterns, word stress, rhythm, tonic stress and connected speech. Each feature will be explained and demonstrated with an example game. Get the sound charts and other classroom material here.
In this session, I will deal with the question of how pronunciation teaching can be flexible enough to accommodate different varieties of English. We will focus on individual sounds, and I will begin by presenting a new phonemic chart and explain how it is organized. We will then look at areas of the sound system which are particularly prone to variation across different UK accents.
This version of the Pronpack Sound Chart uses the symbols for the American sound system as used in Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin Teaching Pronunciation, CUP 1996. The r-coloured vowels are given as separate hexagons.
This infographic gives a brief explanation of how the new Pronpack Sound Chart is organized. You can download colour or black and white versions below. Download versions of the actual chart/poster itself here:
This version of the Pronpack sound chart uses typical spellings rather than phonemic symbols. Use this version if the phonemic symbols seem to be too hard for your students to take on board. You can download versions below with or without pictures, black and white or colour.
This wall chart includes the sounds of English with pictures illustrating example words. Get the students to say what the example words are! Download below.
LILA, New Barratt House, 47 North John Street, Liverpool L2 6SG
Extra info:
Plus downloads
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.
Give out the worksheet and ask students to complete the lyric before they listen to the song. They should be able to do this because each missing word is the opposite of the word at the end of the previous line, and the lines are rhyming couplets.
