Arsénio Ilídio Paulo
Crimildo Hilário Manjate
Dércio Elias Zambuo
Dulcília Benedito Manguele
Fenias Daniel Shiwissa Júnior
Licenciatura em ensino de Língua Inglesa-3º ano, pós-laboral
Tema: Teaching pronunciation
Universidade Pedagógica de Maputo
Maputo, Maio de 2025
Arsénio Ilídio Paulo
Crimildo Hilário Manjate
Dércio Elias Zambuo
Dulcília Benedito Manguele
Fenias Daniel Shiwissa Júnior
Licenciatura em ensino de Língua Inglesa-3º ano, pós-laboral
Tema: Teaching pronunciation
Trabalho de Didáctica de Língua Inglesa
II a ser entregue à Faculdade de
Ciências de Comunição e Artes da
Universidade Pedagógica de Maputo
para efeitos de avaliação sob a orientação
do Dr. Carlos Rafael.
Universidade Pedagógica de Maputo
Maputo, Maio de 2025
Table of contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
1.What is pronunciation...................................................................................................................5
1.1.What is teaching pronunciation.................................................................................................5
1.2. Why do we need to teach pronunciation...................................................................................5
1.3.How to teach pronunciation.......................................................................................................5
2. Activities for teaching pronunciation..........................................................................................6
3. Role of the teacher in teaching pronunciation.............................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................9
4
Introduction
The present work is referent to the subject of English Didactics II, in wich, we will discuss how
to teach pronunciation.
According to Harmer (2001:183) many English language teachers get the students to study
grammar and vocabulary practicing functional dialogues and some of these same teachers make
a little attempt to teach pronunciation and only give attention to it in passing. That might be
because they feel nervous of dealing with sounds. So, in this work we are going to discuss and
share some strategies that can be useful in teaching pronunciation.
The objective of this work is to discuss how we can teach pronunciation.
5
1.What is pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or language is spoken. It refers to how we say the
sound of the word correctly.
1.1.What is teaching pronunciation
According to Harmer (2001:183), teaching pronunciation is to help students achieve the goal of
improved comprehension and intelligibility by making them aware of different sounds features
and what they mean, concentrating on sounds, showing where they are made in the mouth,
making students aware of where words should be stressed.
1.2. Why do we need to teach pronunciation
Harmer (200:183) says that, teaching pronunciation helps students to get over serious
intelligibility problems.
1.3. How to teach pronunciation
Harmer (2001:187) says that teaching pronunciation, firstly, teachers need to draw students'
attention including sounds they are having difficulties with, word and phrase or sentence stress
and intonation.
The teacher then, needs to help the students with connected speech for fluency and
correspondence between sounds and spelling. For that, teachers will have to:
Work with sounds
Hutchinson cited by Harmer (2001: 187) says that, the teacher can ask students to focus on one
particular sound, this will allow him or her to demonstrate to the students how it is made and
how it can be spelt.
The teacher can also contrast two sounds which are very similar and often confusing (for
example, ship and chip, shoes and choose) is popular way of getting students to concentrate on
specific aspects of pronunciation.
Work with stress
Harmer (2001:191) says that, teachers can show students where the weak vowel sounds occur in
words (rather than focusing on the stressed syllables themselves). For example, the teacher can
choose some short phrases which the students are familiar with and write on the board. The
teacher then reads them out loud while drawing a big circle under each stressed syllable and
small circles under the unstressed syllables.
6
Work with intonation
The teacher needs to draw the students' attention to the way we use changes in pitch to convey
mood. Teachers can do that by simply showing how many different meanings can be squeezed
out just one word. Teachers can get students to ask them any "yes/no" questions and answer ‘yes’
in a neutral way. Then they get to ask the question again. This time, through changing the
intonation.
The teachers use ‘yes’ for something different ,for example, I am not sure or how wonderful of
you to ask that question or how dare you ask that question. Students can be asked to identify
what the teachers mean each time by using words for emotions or matching their intonation to
pictures of faces with different expressions.
There are other ways of teaching intonation. Some teachers like to get their students to make
dialogues without words humming the ‘tune’ of what they want to say in such a way that other
students can understand them.
Work with sounds and spelling
Harmer(2001:196) suggests that students should be asked to listen to a tape and see how many
different pronunciation they can find for the “ou” spelling in words like the following: could,
sound, rough ,though, house, thought.
Teachers can also help students by giving them typical spellings for sounds every time they
work on them. For example, /ʃ/ ALL sh- Shop, wish, and /tʃ/- chin, rich, ALL tch- match,
butcher, kitchen, ALL t + ure- future, picture, nature.
Teachers can also bring two lists of words for students to read aloud, for example words with
letter “c”, when they have agreed that the letter “c’ can be pronounced in two different ways,
teachers can ask them if they can see what is the rule which decides the pronunciation to be used.
Teachers might have to prompt them to look at letter that follows the “c”.
This kind of discovery approach to sound and spelling rules allows students to become aware of
English spelling is not quite so random as they might think.
2. Activities for teaching pronunciation
Stage 1-comparing
Harmer (2001:197) suggests that, teachers can start by showing students sentences and phrases
and having them pronounce the words correctly in isolation, e.g. I am going to see him
tomorrow. Teachers then play them a tape of someone saying the sentences in normal connected
7
speech or the teachers say themselves. Then teachers ask the students what differences they can
hear.
Stage 2- identifying
Harmer ( 2001:197) also says that, in this stage, students should be listening to recordings tapes
of connected speech or the teachers say the phrases themselves and students should write out a
full grammatical equivalent of what they heard.
Stage 3- production
In modelling and teaching of phrases and sentences , Harmer(2001:198) suggests that, teachers
should give students the connected version, including contractions where necessary rather than
the spelling of the phrases or sentences and get them to say the phrases and sentences in this
way.
Harmer adds that fluency is helped by having students saying the phrases and sentences, starting
slowly and speeding up. Getting students to perform dialogues and play extracts. Making them
aware of speaking customs and improve their overall fluency.
3. Role of the teacher in teaching pronunciation
Stage 1
The teacher acts as guider and model, helping students become aware of how a word should
sound and how they are currently pronouncing it, finding the differences between two words.
Stage 2
In this stage, the teacher is a facilitator who leads students to focus on and pick out some
particular pronunciation features when they hear them.
The teacher has the responsibility to draw students’ attention to the target feature, give the
students focused listening activities, ask guided questions, use visual cues and check
comprehension and give feedback.
Stage 3
In this stage, the teacher plays a role of coach and model, with the responsibility to correct the
students’ pronunciation by saying the sound or phrase clearly for students to imitate. Design and
read pronunciation practice, correct errors constructively, use visual aids, encouraging self-
monitoring and peer correction.
8
Conclusion
After the approach taken, the group concluded that teaching pronunciation is not an easy task,
teachers need to be prepared to deal with sounds, how they are produced, word stress, where to
put stress on the syllables, intonation, to convey different meanings through the way we say the
words or sentences and spelling, how the word is written so that they can help students achieve a
good level of fluency, and so that the students can be understood when they speak.
9
Bibliography
Harmer, Jeremy. The practice of English Language Teaching. Longman. 3rd ed. 2001.
