How to teach

pronunciation.
Teaching English pronunciation is a challenging task with different
objectives at each level.
 Include more than just “repeat after me.”
Encourage students to use more than one of

basic principles of their senses, which is more effective anyway.

teaching pronunciation: Keep lessons practical.

Include communicative practice whenever
possible.
• Train students to become independent and
autonomous learners.
 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)
The Big 3s for
Consonants, Vowels,
Stress & Intonation
Learn your stuff

The four key topics in pronunciation (consonants,
vowels, stress, intonation) can be taught through a
simple three fork approach as follows:
CONSONANT SOUNDS – Place, Type,
Voicing (a bi-labial, voiceless, plosive is /p/).
VOWEL SOUNDS – Jaw, Lips, Tongue (an
open, spread, front vowel is /æ/)
STRESS – pitch, volume, length (a stressed
syllable is higher, louder and longer)
INTONATION – fall, fall-rise, rise
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.
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.