Module 9 - Teaching Phonology

20/07/2022, 19:54 Module 9: Teaching Phonology
Module 9: Teaching Phonology
Module 9: How to teach Phonology?
Site: TEFL Fullcircle

Course: Advanced 160 Hour TEFL Course
Book: Module 9: Teaching Phonology
Printed by: Anastasia Ushakova
Date: Wednesday, 20 July 2022, 6:53 PM
https://www.teflfullcircle.com/onlinecourses/mod/book/tool/print/index.php?id=1106 1/15
Table of contents
Introduction
Unit 1: Lesson Structure
Unit 2: Teaching Phonology
Unit 3: Drilling
Unit 4: Phonemic Chart and how to use it?
Unit 5: Spelling and Phonology and Video 24
Unit 6: Stress and Intonation
Introduction
Remember: Integration of skills is
paramount!
Teaching
Phonology is about teaching the correct sounds of words and sentences. This
involves
teaching the correct use of stress, intonation and pronunciation.
There is a phonetic alphabet which is
also very helpful when teaching
Phonology.
Remember: Teaching
the correct sounds of words and sentences will come up at some point in every
lesson you teach.
Let's now explore

the best ways to teach it.
Unit 1: Lesson Structure

Warmer:
Please see
the warmers and coolers section.
Introduction:
Introduce the
lesson with your objectives for the lesson.
Present:
You can use the

board or flashcards to introduce a word with the correct phonemic
letters
and pronunciation.
Practice:
Please see the

activities in the next section.
Production:
Please see some

of the recommended activities in the next section.
Summary:
Review and
reflect on your lesson.
Cooler:
See cooler
activities.
Unit 2: Teaching Phonology

Teaching Pronunciation as
a complete lesson is something you may wish to do if you are having
repeated
problems with students mispronouncing words.
Most of the time

you will use the phonemic chart and incorporate pronunciation into
your everyday
lessons, often spending time with just a few students who need
more practice.
You can also

encourage students to view your Wikispaces site to help them practise by
themselves.
Let's explore
the ways you can Teach Phonology:
Drilling or repeat after me
Spelling and phonology
Stressing or emphasising syllables and words
Intonation
Drilling or
repeat after me
When you
introduce a new word or structure, the students should repeat it a few times so
that they can
learn how to say it correctly. You can try group and
individual drilling.
This does not

mean that the students spend the whole lesson repeating words. You will get a
feel for
how much drilling you need to do within the normal flow of
the lesson. Often you will notice the same
errors occurring with a student and
you will make a note and give feedback to that student.
Phonemic Chart
and Spelling:
When
teaching pronunciation, we can use phonology to help students
understand the sound of a word.
The symbols we use are called 'phonemes'. Each
symbol represents a single sound in the English
Language. There are 44
individual recognised sounds in the English Language.
Let's explore the

symbols and a video. Don't get scared!
http://www.tedpower.co.uk/folkchart.htm
Also, please have

a look at the Phonemic Chart in the next section.
Phonemes look as
if they will be difficult to teach. They're not. The best way to teach them is
to write
the symbol on the board and get the students to repeat the sound after
you. There are also a lot of
videos on YouTube that you can add to your
Wikispaces or blog for your students to study.
Stressing or
emphasising syllables and words:
When you teach

English, you will stress certain words in a sentence more than others. We also
stress
certain letters in a word more than others.
It is much easier
to show students the stress of certain syllables and words on the board.
For example:
I went to watch a movie last night. It was

wonderful.
You can rewrite

the sentence as follows to stress the syllables:
I went to watch a movie last night. It was won/der/ful.

Where were you last
night? I waited for nearly 1 hour.
Intonation:
Intonation
through using tone can communicate mood and feeling. You can explain the
difference in
the tone in your voice when you are happy or sad.
Unit 3: Drilling
Drilling to
Teach Pronunciation:
Drilling is
when you get your students to repeat after you, to help them understand how to
pronounce a
word correctly. It's paramount that you listen for errors and
correct where possible. It's also a good
idea to listen out for common errors
and work on that issue in the Summary/Reflection part of the
lesson at the
end.
There are two

ways you can drill. One is individually and the other is collectively as a
group in a
chorus. Both work well and you will find yourself using one or the
other in most lessons.
Start by just
saying 'Repeat!'
You can also drill

whole sentences like 'What would you like to eat?'
With complete
sentences, start with the last word and work backwards. For example, ask the
students
to repeat 'eat' the 'to eat' then 'like to eat' until you have done
the whole sentence.
Unit 4: Phonemic Chart and how to use it?

Please explore
the following Phonemic Chart from the British Council
Phonemic Chart
Let's have a look

at the individual phonemes:
There are a total

of 44 phonemes made up of vowels, double vowels and consonants. We also need to
consider schwa sounds which we'll come to in a moment.
Vowels:
You say vowels with

an open mouth.
From left to
right, a row at a time:
1. tree/see/please
2. it/is/sit
3. put/look
4. food/too
5. extra/said
6. mother/around
7. early/
word
8.
door/floor/more
9. mat/hat/cat
10. cup
11. farm/arm
12. not/got
Double Vowels
(diphthongs):
Double vowels are

two vowels joined together.
From left to
1.
ear/beer/career
2. rare/bear/hair
3. photo/know
4. cow/plough/how
5. face/ace
6. my/eye
7. destroy/boy
Consonants:
From left to
1. up/pen
2. wife/off
3. tea/tight
4. bath/thank
5. cheap/cheese/
6. nice
7. sugar
8. cook
9. bubble/bad
10. voice
11. mud
12.father
13. general
14. jazz
15. visual
16. good/big
17. how
18. man
19. no
20. bling
21. red
22. leg
23. wet
24. yes
The Schwa: /ə/
This is the most frequent of all English

vowels. It is the easiest sound in the language, since
you don't have to do
anything to pronounce it.
The schwa is a special type of short vowel. It is a very weak sound that
is never stressed.
You find the schwa in words with more than one syllable.
It
is heard primarily in unstressed syllables, as in these words where we have
bolded the schwa sound:
above,
photograph,
America, mother
It
is the vowel we produce if we vocalise as we prepare to speak--uh.
The tongue is said to be in its
neutral position as we pronounce this vowel.
Any vowel letter

can be pronounced as schwa and the pronunciation of a vowel letter can change
depending on whether the syllable in which it occurs is stressed or not.
For example:
I see a man. /'mæn/
I see a policeman. /pə'li:smən/
In 'policeman', the syllable 'man' is

unstressed and the letter 'a' is pronounced as schwa.
In fact, this schwa sound very often

disappears and it is not pronounced at all, especially in
British English. For
instance, the word 'police' may sound /pəli:s/
or simply /pli:s/.
A schwa comes from an unstressed syllable that

became very weak, so today a schwa can
be written with any vowel or vowel
combination, for example (schwa sound in bold):
the
sun, important, station, festival, about, brother
Using the
Phonemic Chart:
You can use the

phonemic chart at any time during the lesson to help students understand the
sound of
a word. They will understand the chart more and more as you use it
more often in your lessons.
Whenever you introduce a new word, you can write the
word on the board and write the phonemic
letters underneath.
Unit 5: Spelling and Phonology and Video 24
04:31
Spelling can be
taught using phonemes.
The best way to

teach the pronunciation and spelling of words is to write the
phonemes on the board
and use drilling to get students used to the
sound.
Also, it's a good

idea to over-emphasise the movement of your lips and mouth and neck. This will
help
your students to get more familiar with making the sound.
Unit 6: Stress and Intonation

Words and
Syllables:
A word is made up
of phonemes, i.e. individual sounds, and syllables, which divide a word and
require
different stress.
You can put a

line above the part of the word or draw capital letters to show where the
stress occurs.
Let's look at the

following. The stressed syllables are bolded:
'prepare': you could show this as prePARE
'computer':
you could show this as comPUter
Sentence
Stress:
When we consider
a sentence, some words are stressed more than others.
The cat
sat on the mat
The words in bold

are stressed and the others are not stressed. We say different parts of the
sentence
with more or less stress, i.e., slower and louder, or quicker and more
softly. The word stress within a
sentence helps bring more meaning to
the sentence.
Often, though, one word in the sentence will have the main stress. This
is the word which the speaker
thinks is most important to the meaning of the
sentence.
Other words can have secondary stress. This is not as strong as main
stress and falls on words which
are not as important to the meaning as the word
with main stress.
Other words in the sentence are unstressed.
For example, in
this spoken sentence: She came home late
last night, the word with the main stress is
the underlined one - late; the words with secondary stress
would probably be came, home, last, night;
and the unstressed word is she .
But remember: It is
possible to stress any word in a sentence if the speaker thinks it is important.
Whether you are

looking at word stress or
sentence stress, provide the class with some guidance about
the position of the stress.
Either write the

word/sentence on the board and show the stress by using a symbol or capitals or
use a
hand to make a gesture (perhaps a chopping movement) to demonstrate where
to place the stress when
you say the word.
Word stress and sentence stress rules:
We're going to
stick to simple rules here as many rules are full of exceptions.
For example, there

are many two-syllable words in English which are spelt the same but their
meaning
changes depending on the stress:
1. You will progress a lot with your English

if you follow this rule.
You
will make a lot of progress with your English if you follow this rule.
2. He rejected the plan.
This
bowl was a reject, so I bought it at half price.
3. Everyone was present at the meeting.
I
will present my ideas to the company tomorrow in a presentation.
Here are some key word stress rules:
1. One word has

only one stress. One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear two stresses,
you hear
two words. Two stresses cannot be one word. It is true that there can
be a secondary stress in some
words. But a secondary stress is much smaller
than the main (primary) stress, and is only used in long
words.)
2. We can only
stress vowels, not consonants.
Here are some sentence stress rules:
1. Content words
are stressed. Content words carry meaning, e.g. main verbs, nouns, adjectives,
adverbs and negative auxiliaries (don't,
can't, aren't)
2. Structure words
are unstressed. Structure words are used for correct grammar, e.g. pronouns,
prepositions, articles, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs (e.g. do, be, can, have, must)
3. The time between

stressed words is always the same.
There's the odd

exception to sentence stress rules, but far fewer than word stress exceptions.
For example, we
have said that structure words are unstressed in a sentence. But look at the
structure
word she (pronoun) below,
which the speaker is stressing for emphasis whilst confirming information:
'Lisa didn't do
that, did she?'
'Yes, she did.'
Rhythm:
Sentence stress is
what gives English its rhythm or beat.
Look at this
sentence:
Will you CLOSE the DOOR because he's GONE to

WORK?
In our sentence,
the 4 key content words (close, door, gone, work) are stressed.
Why is this
important for pronunciation? It is important because it adds music to the
language. It is the
rhythm of the English language. It changes the speed at
which we speak (and listen to) the language.
The time between each stressed
word is the same.
There is 1 syllable
between CLOSE and DOOR and 3 syllables between DOOR and GONE. But the
time
between CLOSE and DOOR and between DOOR and GONE is the same.
We maintain a
constant beat on the stressed words. To do this, we say the more slowly, and because
he's
more quickly. We change the speed of the small structure words so that the
rhythm of the key
content words stays the same.
Connected
Speech (Linking):
When a person
speaks naturally in English, words seem to join together in connected speech.
The way
a person pronounces the end and beginning of a word depends on the
sounds at the beginning and end
of a word.
Consonant to vowel
linking: This is when a word ends in a consonant and the next word is a vowel,
then the consonant and vowel join together. It's called an intrusion.
For example, 'not at all' becomes
'notatall'
Vowel to vowel
linking: The word ends in a vowel and begins with a vowel. In this situation,
an extra
sound is added to make the words smooth. It's called an intrusion.
For example, 'please do it' sounds
like 'please do wit.'
Sounds disappear:
This is called elision. For example, the word 'interest' becomes 'intrest'. Here, the
syllable containing the
unstressed schwa is often not pronounced. Elision can also be seen in this
example: 'It's no joke' is often pronounced as 'snow joke'
Sounds join
together: With consonants, the sounds /
t / and / d / are commonly elided, especially when
they appear in a consonant
cluster. These words join together. For example: the 'first three' becomes
'firsthree'.
Note that students

need to hear natural, fast, relaxed pronunciation as we speak it every day, not
a
carefully over-articulated overly-pronounced one-word-by-one-word phrasing of
sentences.
Speaking too slowly

and too emphatically is a common characteristic of the inexperienced teacher.
Speaking
unnaturally affects your students for two reasons:
·they
will imitate your speaking style and speak unnaturally too
·they
will not recognise and understand natural rapid speech when they hear it
This doesn't mean

you shouldn't slow your speech down a bit to help your students get some basic
ideas, but it does mean that you should speak naturally most of the time.
It also means that

you need to teach them what natural speech sounds like. There is some evidence
that
says that if students don't speak naturally, they won't recognise normal
speech when they hear it.
Some examples:
My name is Fred sounds something like Mi naeh miz Fred.
How much is it? sounds something like How muh chi zit?
Don't eat apples! sounds something like Don tea tapples!
If you habitually
speak slowly and over-enunciate, your students will listen for How much is it? and
won't understand
when they hear the normal speech sounds of How
muh chi zit?
The effective EFL

teacher instructs her students in these differences, how to pronounce them and
how
to listen for them.
You should
encourage your students at least to attempt to approximate these linking features of
English because they are so
commonly used in normal speech. This, in turn, should raise their
awareness of
the existence of these features and will make the task of listening easier.
Intonation:
Intonation is another important part of pronunciation. It is the

movement of the level of the voice, i.e.,
the tune of a sentence or a group of
words.
We use intonation to express emotions and attitudes, and to emphasise or

make less important
particular things we are saying.
We also use intonation to signal to others the function of what we are

saying, that is, to show we are
starting or stopping speaking, or whether we
are asking a question or making a statement.
Practice: To hear these intonation uses, try saying School's just finished with these meanings:
1.as a
statement of fact
2.with
surprise
3.with
happiness
4.as a
question
5.to
emphasise 'just'
You should hear the

level of your voice rising and falling in different patterns.
Different
intonation patterns can show many different meanings. However, there is no
short and simple
way of describing how the patterns relate to meanings.
Intonation patterns
can also be demonstrated with the use of arrows on the board or hand gestures
to
show the 'musical' pattern. Wherever possible, try to speak in a normal
manner without a distorted
intonation pattern as this will provide the students with
a better model to follow.

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20/07/2022, 19:54 Module 9: Teaching Phonology

Module 9: Teaching Phonology

Module 9: How to teach Phonology?

Site: TEFL Fullcircle

Let's now explore

Unit 1: Lesson Structure

You can use the

Please see the

Please see some

Unit 2: Teaching Phonology

Most of the time

You can also

Drilling or repeat after me

Spelling and phonology

Stressing or emphasising syllables and words

This does not

Let's explore the

Also, please have

When you teach

I went to watch a movie last night. It was

You can rewrite

I went to watch a movie last night. It was won/der/ful.

There are two

You can also drill

Unit 4: Phonemic Chart and how to use it?

Let's have a look

There are a total

You say vowels with

Double vowels are

The Schwa: /ə/

This is the most frequent of all English

Any vowel letter

I see a man. /'mæn/

I see a policeman. /pə'li:smən/

In 'policeman', the syllable 'man' is

In fact, this schwa sound very often

A schwa comes from an unstressed syllable that

You can use the

Unit 5: Spelling and Phonology and Video 24

The best way to

Also, it's a good

Unit 6: Stress and Intonation

You can put a

Let's look at the

'prepare': you could show this as prePARE

The words in bold

Other words in the sentence are unstressed.

Whether you are

Either write the

Word stress and sentence stress rules:

For example, there

1. You will progress a lot with your English

2. He rejected the plan.

3. Everyone was present at the meeting.

Here are some key word stress rules:

1. One word has

Here are some sentence stress rules:

3. The time between

There's the odd

'Yes, she did.'

Will you CLOSE the DOOR because he's GONE to

Note that students

Speaking too slowly