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Class: CT1- 05
ASSIGNMENT
Subject: Teaching Methodology
Teacher: Đoàn Minh Nguyệt
Topic: About Teaching Pronunciation
Length: 2000 words
Teacher’s comment:
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1, Introduction
The role of pronunciation in the different schools of language
teaching has varied widely from having virtually no role in the
grammar-translation method to being the main focus in the audio-
lingual method where emphasis is on the traditional notions of
pronunciation, minimal pairs, drills and short conversations. The
pronunciation class was one that gave primary attention to
phonemes and their meaningful contrasts, environmental
allophonic variations, and combinatory phonotactic rules, along
with ...attention to stress, rhythm, and intonation. In many
language programmes the teaching of pronunciation was pushed
aside, as many studies concluded that little relationship exists
between teaching pronunciation in the classroom and attained
proficiency in pronunciation; the strongest factors found to affect
seem to have little to do with classroom activities.
Student: Phạm Khánh Linh
Class: CT1- 05
2, What’s Pronunciation?
• Pronunciation : the way in which we pronounce a word (or we
make the sound of word)
Notice that we just said three words, and the teacher could already
tell if our English was good or bad. Why did the teacher think our
English was good? Because of the difficult words we used? No.
Because we used advanced grammar structures? No. It was our
pronunciation.
When you meet a person, and you just say a sentence or two, do
you think they will notice your poor vocabulary or bad grammar?
Probably not. But they will notice if your pronunciation is good or
bad. If your pronunciation is poor, they will immediately think
about you as "the guy/girl who speaks bad English". Your
pronunciation creates the first impression you make.
Communication
Good pronunciation should be one of the first things that you learn in
English. You can live without advanced vocabulary — you can use
simple words to say what you want to say. You can live without
advanced grammar — you can use simple grammar structures
instead. But there is no such thing as "simple pronunciation". If you
don't have good pronunciation, you have... bad pronunciation.
And the results of bad pronunciation are tragic. Even if you use great
vocabulary and grammar, people may simply not understand
what you want to say.
2. Be slow and careful. In the beginning, you should write very slowly.
If you need 2 hours to write an e-mail message with 10 correct
sentences, that's okay. That's how long it should take if you're just
starting to write.
Why should it take so long? Because you should read your sentences
many times, looking for mistakes. You should correct your own
sentences frequently. You should check if your sentences are correct
Student: Phạm Khánh Linh
Class: CT1- 05
by using a dictionary and the Web. And you should look for example
sentences to imitate.
3. If you're not sure how to say something, don't say it. If you
can't say something correctly, it's almost always better not to say it.
You don't want to teach yourself the wrong way to say it. You can try
to look for the correct sentence in a dictionary or on the Web (see
next point), but when speaking, usually you don't have time for that.
So it's a good idea to say something else — something that you know
is correct. It can even be something on a different subject.
4. When writing, always look things up. Whenever you're not sure
how to use a word, look it up in a good dictionary to find example
sentences with it. When you've written something, and you are not
sure if it's correct, search for it on the Web with Google. If many
pages contain your phrase, then it is probably correct. Dictionaries
and Google should be your everyday tools, and you should use them
even many times in one sentence (especially if you've just begun
writing in English).
5. Know where you can screw up. Sometimes learners don't even
realize how different English is from their native language. When
speaking, they translate word for word from their native language,
and they think their sentences are okay.
• Word stress
• Vowel sounds
• Diphthongs
• Weak forms
• Sentence stress
• Conclusion
Top of page
found that this soon passes and students enjoy the pronunciation
work. Where possible, exercises should be communicative in that
they should (and do generate differences of opinion and
disagreement about what was said/heard. Below are two
examples.
Exercise A :
Stage 1 :
The teacher writes a variety of words containing the target sounds
(long and short vowels) on the board. The following is just one
possible set.
PORT PIT PAT PERT PET POT PUTT PUT PART PEAT
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Here, the only difference in sound is that of the vowel - familiar to
anyone who has done minimal pair work. As in these examples,
the word should begin and end with the same consonant. 0, 3, 8,
and 9, are long vowels and the rest are short.
Stage 2 :
The teacher then models each word and individal repetition
follows. The vowel sound can be isolated and the procedure
repeated until the teacher is reasonably sure that there are no
major problems. He or she then tells the students that they are
going to hear one of the words and must write the number which
corresponds to the word they hear. What the students have written
is then checked and compared.
Student: Phạm Khánh Linh
Class: CT1- 05
Stage 3:
Two or three words are then presented together and the procedure
repeated. The teacher then tells the class they are going to hear
six words and that the numbers correspond to an important
telephone number. The teacher delivers the words and asks ,
"What's my number?". Again there will be differences in what was
heard. This allows a focus on which sounds are not being
discriminated effectively by which students and where their
problems lie. Later discussion may revolve aroud what strategies
students may employ to improve their discrimination skills - songs,
minimal pair games with friends, movies, radio, etc.
Stage 4:
Learners are then invited to model the telephone number. This
stage usually generates much discussion and disagreement along
the lines of - "You said ...... ", "No I did'nt ", "Say it again" and so
on and is usually very lively. The teacher is, of course, the final
arbiter of what was really said. The important thing is that the
learners are thinking actively about their pronunciation and how to
repair it if necessary. They also begin to hear themselves (often for
the first time) and this is of immeasurable importance in the
retention of sounds.
Student: Phạm Khánh Linh
Class: CT1- 05
Some Conclusions
• Poetry
• Drama
• Bingo
• Contrastive stress
• Pronunciation Partners
• Humming
• Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts
Example utterances
Student A Student B
Would you like some ice No, thank you. I'm not
cream and cake? hungry.
(double-rising
intonation)
an /r/ sound.
• room
• clock
• blackboard
• eraser
• Have students compete to build syllable
pyramids. The teacher gives a topic (clothing,
objects in the classroom, animals, food, etc.) and
students race to build a pyramid. (One syllable
word at the top, the a 2-syllable word, 3-syllable
Syllables
word, etc.) Download the worksheet.
7, Testing Pronunciation
What to test
- Sound recognition
- Sound production
- Usage in context
- Stress/intonation/rhythm
- Pausing/phrasing
It's a good idea to rotate the starting team with each round
because otherwise, students will start changing their guesses
Student: Phạm Khánh Linh
Class: CT1- 05
8, Conclusion
Improve your American English pronunciation quickly, easily,