YOHANNES SEYUM
03/12/11
Teaching Pronunciation
There are many goals to be gained from teaching pronunciation. Some of those goals
are to develop learner ability to understand and be understood and self confidence. According
to Morley (1999) there are four important goals for pronunciation instruction, functional
intelligibility, functional communicability, increase self confidence and speech monitoring
abilities. Furthermore, Morley demonstrated the purpose of intelligibility is known as the
spoken English in which an accent if present is not a distrusting to the listener. In the other
hand communicability is the ability of student to communicate successfully in a communication
situation. This includes real life communication with other individuals inside as well as outside
the class. There are also subdivisions such as prominence, information status, turn taking, social
meaning and roles and degree of involvement. Those are important factors of communication.
There is also other process such as dividing speech in to manageable chunks. This process is
called thought group. Moreover, researchers have also found several melodic line or pitch
patterns known as intonation to help students learn pronunciation. Methods such as linking are
also great way to learn pronunciation. The use of consonant, vowel and word stress are also
helpful to second language learner.
Teaching pronunciation requires a framework such as description and analysis, listening
discrimination, controlled practice, guided practice and communicative practice. Each individual
process is unique and add to the learning experience of the language learner. For instance, in
the case of description and analysis teachers present various rules for students to use them as
strategy to distinguish various sounds. Other activities such as making students read poems,
dialogues help students learn and pronounce various words with confidence. In addition
teachers are also required to create various activities that of interest to students. Those
activities should target pronunciation as a main goal to develop students learning experience.
Finally, debates, interviews, drams that are made by students are great way to enrich student
communication skills.
There are also different techniques used by teachers to help student learn more. Those
techniques are contextualized minimal pair practice, cartoons and drawing, gadgets and props.
Other techniques such as rhymes, poetry and jokes are great way to make students
comfortable with the language in which they are straggling. Lastly recording videos are the
most effective way to monitor students progress in the language skills.