Clarify and practice Pronunciation

Pronunciation is maybe one of the areas of language, which teachers feel the
most insecure about working on explicitly with students. It is important to react
to students´ pronunciation mistakes with wrong sounds as they crop up and
some teachers are ok about doing that, but we need to make sure we focus on all
aspects of pronunciation.

I beleive the areas of pronunciation I find the students most commonly have
problems with are:

Sounds:
This is how vowels, consonants and consequently syllables are pronounced. We
can use a phonemic chart to describe the sounds of English.

Word stress:
This describes which syllable in a word is stressed. We can use stress bubbles to
show this.

Sentence stress:
This describes which words are stressed in a sentence. Again we can use stress
bubbles to show this to learners.

Connected speech:
This describes how words are linked when we speak naturally in English. In fast
or natural speech sounds disappear, change, new sounds are even added and the
ends of words link with the beginning of others. You can use arrows and
phonemes to show these features of connected speech.

Intonation: This describes how the tone of your voice goes up or down to help
express meaning.

Bjarne Vonsild
 There comes a time when you as a teacher perceive that there is a general aspect
of pronunciation which most, or all, of your students, need to work on, and this
is where you need to clarify and practice this specific area of pronunciation.

Below is a sample lesson plan for doing this. In the class used, I focus on the
minimal pair: /ʃ/ vs /tʃ/ so I would be working on sounds.

Generally speaking minimal pairs are pairs of words that differ in only one
phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme.

So let us now have a look at the lesson on sounds (minimal pairs):

Stage:
Clarification.
Aim:
To clarify the aspect of pronunciation you will be working on.
Procedure:
Use pictures and 2 words that students are familiar with to clarify the sounds: /ʃ/
vs /tʃ/ through the words “ship” and “chip”. Drill briefly but not with a view to
achieve great results from students but really mainly to diagnose how well they
produce these sounds.

Stage:
identification.
Aim:
To ensure students can hear and identify your target pronunciation aspect.
Procedure:
Option a): Students are given 2 flash cards; one with the sound/ʃ/ and another
with the sound /tʃ/.  Say short words that students are familiar with supported by
pictures for good measure. Students should raise the sound they hear in each
word so that the teacher can see if students can identify the sound(s). It is
important the teacher keeps working on having students identify until students
can do this fairly well before proceeding with subsequent stages. 

Bjarne Vonsild
 The teacher may have to isolate the sounds and drill only the isolated sound to
clarify the difference further. Option b): Instead of using flashcards the teacher
uses a list with 2 columns of minimal pairs like “chair” and “share” and when
he/she reads the words aloud students circle the word they hear.

Stage:
Initial oral practice.
Aim:
Drill the target language.
Procedure:
First drill words with the whole class, in groups and then individuals that contain
the same sound (Ship/share etc) and then the contrasting pairs like “share” and 
“chair”.

Stage:
Practice.
Aim:
To give students confidence in using the target language.
Procedure:
Students use sheets with columns of words that contain minimal pairs. Student
a) circles half of the words and reads them aloud while student b) listens and
underlines the words he heard. Thereafter they can look at each other´s handout
to see how well they did. They then change roles and do the activity again.

These are the general stages used for clarifying and practising pronunciation:

Stage: Clarification
Aim: To clarify the aspect of pronunciation you will be working on.
Stage: Identification
Aim: To ensure students can hear and identify the target pronunciation aspect.
Stage: Initial oral practice.
Aim: Drill the target language.
Stage: Practice.
Aim: To give students confidence in using the target language.

Bjarne Vonsild