How to teach pronunciation

5 tips for ESL teachers.

Of the hundreds of thousands of English classes that have taken place all over the world
today, only a tiny fraction of them will have contained any pronunciation training. The
reason for this is not that students do not want to learn pronunciation – they do. The
problem is that general English (ESL) teachers are not trained in teaching
pronunciation (it is not covered on most CELTA or TEFL teacher training
courses), which is a shame as the topic is challenging and rewarding for
teacher and student alike.

Here I have prepared some tips for you to incorporate pronunciation into the classroom.

1. Drill, drill, drill.

Students love being drilled – it is fun, energetic and really useful. There are three basic
drills:

 Group: everyone repeats together.

 Individual / Scatter: teacher randomly chooses people to repeat.

 Individual / Order: teacher goes round the group in one direction (EG left to right)

Note that students often feel that they are not drilled enough, whilst teachers often feel
they are drilling too much . So drill, drill, drill – students love it more than you realise.
Also note that it is absolutely essential that the group repeat together and that all the
group do it – otherwise the drill will fall apart.

2. The Big 3s for Consonants, Vowels, Stress &

Intonation
The four key topics in pronunciation (consonants, vowels, stress, intonation) can be
taught through a simple three fork approach as follows:

o CONSONANT SOUNDS – Place, Type, Voicing (a bi-labial, voiceless, plosive is

/p/).

o VOWEL SOUNDS – Jaw, Lips, Tongue (an open, spread, front vowel is /æ/)

o STRESS – pitch, volume, length (a stressed syllable is higher, louder and

longer)

o INTONATION – fall, fall-rise, rise

From a teaching perspective these explanations are invaluable as they give a nice
simple structure to a topic that can be very confusing.

3. IPA is your friend

Most students find IPA a wonderful tool for improving their pronunciation and most can
learn it very quickly provided it is presented logically. If the teacher starts with the
whole chart it can seem overwhelming, so a nice way to order it is as follows:

VOWELS – Schwa – Long Vowels – Short Vowels – Diphthong Vowels

CONSONANTS – Fricative Consonants – Plosive Consonants – Approximant Consonants
– Nasal Consonants

Once students know the IPA system, you can have endless fun with games, crosswords
and transcriptions which are challenging, interesting and highly rewarding classroom
activities.

4. Learn your stuf

There is no getting away from the fact that English pronunciation is a huge topic, so in
order to teach it well and to be able to answer questions that arise in class, it really pays
to know the topic well.

5. Think (and teach) in connected speech

A lot of teachers when they first start teaching pronunciation, start to think in separate
syllables, explaining that the word ‘about’ would be pronounced ‘æ’ then ‘baʊt’
therefore ignoring the weak form /ə/ at the beginning. This is not helpful for students
who need to speak and hear the language in connected speech. Teach joining and
weak/strong structures so that students start to experience English as a native speaker
does. The best place to start is always with the schwa /ə/ sound within words and
sentences.

These then, are the basics – any English teacher with teaching levels from pre-
intermediate upwards can add a bit of pronunciation to spice up their classes and give
students something they really want.