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!
The English phoneme /w/ presents difficulties for learners from a wide range of language backgrounds, but not always for the same reason. Some pronounce the /w/ like a /v/ so that west becomes vest. Others interpret it as a vowel sound, so that woman becomes ooman.
PronPack 5: Pronunciation of English for Spanish Speakers provides materials for 18 lessons focusing on common difficulties faced by Spanish-speaking learners.
This webinar looks at four kinds of classroom activities and materials for teaching pronunciation. Here are links to the resources mentioned in the talk:
This article, which first appeared in Modern English Teacher 29.3 (July 2020), argues for a more democratic use of the IPA phonemic symbols in English language teaching.
Pronunciation teaching can be a joy – it doesn’t have to be all complicated theory and difficult symbols. With a playful and experimental approach, it can be a part of the lesson that your students look forward to most. In this session, we will take a look at some example activities designed to practise some of the pronunciation features that Spanish learners need to focus on.
Most learners today need English to communicate in a lingua franca (ELF) environment. The recognition of this fact has disrupted pronunciation teaching. What model can learners aspire to if not a ‘native speaker’ model? What can be considered ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’? In this talk, we will look at what is to become of pronunciation teaching these post-ELF times.
Phonemic symbols – we love them or hate them, but often for the wrong reasons. For some, they are symbols of an elite accent which is not our own. But there is an alternative way of viewing them which is less prescriptive and more tolerant of accent variation. From this angle, they can be symbols of empowerment.
