Teaching
pronunciation
Glasgow June 15th
Consider the following questions
 What
do you understand by ‘comfortable
intelligibility’?

What is your approach to teaching
pronunciation?

What aspects of pronunciation are more/less
important than others?

What pronunciation difficulties do your learners
have?

What areas of pronunciation can be of benefit
to learners from a variety of L1s?
Potential
Difficulty
Korean
Arabic
Tamil
/f/
Does not exist;
replaced with
/p/
Does not exist
x
Replaces /v/;
‘very’ becomes
/ferɪ/
Does not exist
/p/ does not exist;
replaced with/b/
Likely to confuse
with/v/ or /p/
x
English has 22 vowel Difficulty
sounds, Arabic 8
distinguishing
between short and
long vowels.
/v/
/p/ /b/
Distinguishing
between vowel
sounds
Difficulty
distinguishing
between the sounds
Potential difficulty
Inserting a vowel sound
after a final consonant
sound
Korean
Arabic
‘dark’ becomes/dɑ:ku/
‘‘church’
becomes/tʃɜ:tʃi/
Tamil
/u/after a
consonant, ‘fan’
pronounced as
/fænu/
Consonant clusters
Insertion of a vowel
sound between the
consonants.
‘strike’ becomes
/sɪtɪraɪkɪ/
Insertion of a vowel
sound before the
initial cluster:’ sport’
becomes/ɪsɪpɔ:t/
Tamil does not have
some consonant
clusters. Omission of
a consonant: ‘train’
becomes /reɪn/
Stress patterns
Over-stressing the
wrong vowel sound
In Arabic, stress is
regular so speakers
have difficulties
dealing with the
seemingly random
nature of English
stress patterns.
Problems stressing
the correct syllable
as it is a syllablebased language

Vowel length

Consonant clusters

Stress/unstress

Strong and weak forms

Tonic stress and intonation
Options for pronunciation work

A planned discrete focus

Whenever you are introducing new language

When a need for pronunciation arises in the
lesson
Sound foundations chart- Underhill
www.macmillanenglish.co
m/methodology/phoneticchart.htm
http://
Telephone numbers
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Use this for any problematic sounds
0 coffee
1 ship
5 copy
6 sheep
2 pat
3 fur
4 chew
7 part
8 fair
9 shoe
Consonant clusters

Crisps

Wasps

Against all odds

Matched

Next day

Spring
Pronunciation journey
Left
Right

Matched

Match

Bring

Spring

Climbs

Climbed

Steaks

Staked

Skis

Keys
Have a look at the following
sentence and decide what
phonological features you notice.
I
think I might have left the gas on
Do the same for the following
sentences
1. If she hadn’t got the job, she’d have been
devastated
2. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she
found out?
3. She should have rung before she left
4. If you catch that train, I’ll be able to meet you
5. What would you have done if she’d missed that
plane?
Back-chaining

Applies to tone units rather than sentences

If a sentence consists of more than one tone
unit, each tone unit will need to be practised
separately before being combined.

The tonic prominence usually appears at the
end of a tone unit- hence back-chaining

Start from the tonic prominence
1.
If she hadn’t got the job,
she’d have been devastated
2.
Can you imagine how she
must have felt when she found
out?
3.
She should have rung
before she left
4. If you catch that train, I’ll be
able to meet you
5. What would you have done if
she’d missed that plane?
Some other techniques

Mutter drill

Miming sounds

Showing the articulation of consonant
phonemes

Using the phonemic chart to illustrate the
articulation of vowel phonemes

Demonstrating lip position in vowel production
A bad day
I overslept and missed my train,
slipped on the pavement in the pouring
rain,
sprained my ankle, skinned my knees,
broke my glasses, lost my keys,
got stuck in the elevator,
it wouldn't go,
kicked it twice and
stubbed my toe,
bought a pen that
didn't write,
took it back and had a
fight,
went home angry,
locked the door,
crawled into bed,
couldn't take any more!
Carolyn Graham
Jazz Chants 1978 OUP Inc
Some possible strategies


Segmental difficulties
 Possible
activities:
 Telephone numbers
 Pronunciation journey
 Minimal pairs- which word do you hear?
 Aural discrimination: the first stage is to check
if students can hear the problematic sounds
and distinguish between sounds before we
ask them to produce the sounds.
Production
 Practise
the articulation of the sounds;
silent drilling; ask the students to use the
above activities to produce the sounds;
students test each other.
Consonant clusters
 Consonants
together- consonant clusters
 Lots
of drilling; drilling forwards and back
chaining; breaking down the words
 Some
strategies
 Elision
of a sound in a final cluster
 Insertion
of a sound in an initial cluster
Word stress
 Make
stress visible and physical- mark it;
beat it; march it.
 Match
words to stress patterns
 Vocabulary
 Stress
maze
chants
The rhythm of English
 Sentence
 Which
stress
words do we stress? Drill whole
sentences; use Jazz Chants and other
rhythmic materials.
Some resources
 How
to Teach Pronunciation: Gerald Kelly:
Longman
 The
Book of Pronunciation: Jonathan
Marks and Tim Bowen: Delta Publishing
 Adrian
Underhill:
www.macmillanenglish.com/pronunciatio
n-skills/ Video on You Tube