ELİF KALINTAŞ
AYŞEGÜL DÖNMEZ
CONTENTS
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What is pronunciation?
What is pronunciation teaching?
Why to teach pronunciation?
What to know to teach?
Pronunciation issues
Perfection versus intelligibility
Problems that can students encounter
--What students can hear
--The intonation problem
When to teach pronunciation?
Different materials and some teaching techniques
How to teach pronunciation?
Steps for teaching pronunciation.
What is pronunciation?
 The Production of Significant Sound.
 Significant because
 it is used as part of a code of a particular language
 it is used to achieve meaning in contexts of use.
 Auditory Phonetics = The perception of the sound.
 Articulatory Phonetics = The production of the
sound.
What is pronunciation teaching?
 Pronunciation teaching not only makes students aware
of different sounds and sound features
 can also improve their speaking immeasurably
 Showing where they are made in the mouth ,making
students aware of where words should be stressed.
Why teach?
4 major reasons to teach pronunciation
( Morley, 1999)
 functional intelligibility
 functional communicability
 increased self-confidence
 speech monitoring abilities
Teach pronunciation to build on…
Functional intelligibility: Spoken English in which an
accent is not distracting to the listener.
Functional communicability: learner’ s ability to function
successfully within the specific communicative situations.
Self-confidence: Dependent on the ones mentioned above.
Speech monitoring abilities: Good learners listen to the
input and try to imitate it.
Problems that students can
encounter
 It is very overlooked by teachers,
 It is overlooked in a lot of coursebooks – included in very
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small chunks, so teachers don’t see it as important.
Difficult to teach in multilingual classes
If it’s not tested, it’s not important.
Some teachers think it iseasy, but it actually needs a lot of
work.
It’s often left until later
Realism is required: perfection is unnecessary and largely
unobtainable.
Students may believe there’s no system to English
pronunciation
What to teach?
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Individual sounds (perhaps using the IPA – see below)
Sound linking
Connected speech (perhaps through songs)
Weak forms (schwa)
Voice – get them to imitate English speakers mispronouncing their L1 –
gives them a feel for sounds / rhythm
Syllable stress - highlight length, pitch, loudness, & vowel clarity
Intonation
Minimal pairs
Chunking
Pausing
Rhythm
Awareness of varieties of English.
Awareness and recognition – production will come later
When to teach prounciation
Harmer (2000) suggests 4 alternatives
• Whole lessons (prep needed)
• Discreet slots (prep needed)
• Short, separated bits of pron. Work
• Integrated phases (prep needed)
• In any lesson (liistning, grammaring, writng etc. ) esp. When you
dealwith forms, you may draw sts.’ attentiton to pron.
• Opportunistic teaching
• Esp. during grammar, voc. Teaching it seems natural to allocate
time to pron. teaching
Pronunciation issues
 Teachers give more importance to study grammar
and vocabulary
 Teachers get students to study listening and
reading
 Teachers see that pronunciation teaching will only
make things worse
 Teachers ignore benefits of pronunciation
teaching
Actually;Pronunciation teaching(a)
 makes students aware of different sounds and their
features
 improves their speaking immeasurably
 allows students to get over serious intelligibility
problems
 concentrates on sounds ,showing where they are made
in the mouth ,making studens aware of where words
should be stressed
So;
 Receognizing all these things give them extra
information about spoken English and help them
achieve the goal of improved comprehension and
intelligibility
 Being made aware of pronunciation issues will be
immense benefit not only to their own production but
also to their own understanding of spoken English.
Perfection versus intelligibility
 Perfection depends very much on sts attitude to how
they speak and how well they hear.
 many cultural factors for perfection
 for these cultural factors ; language teachers consider
intelligiblity as the prime goal of pronunciation
teaching..
So what is intelligibility in teaching
pronunciation?
 The students should be able to use pronunciation
which is good enough for them to be always
understood.
 When being intelligibility a goal ;
 it suggest that some pronunciation features are more
important than others; some sounds ,stressing words
and phrases and intonation.
 ‘Realism is required: perfection is unnecessary and
largely unobtainable.’
What students can hear?
While learning English, if students have similar
sounds in their mother tongue, they may be confused
and misleaded.
The intonation
problem
Intonation is a
problem or not?
Many people and teachers;
 find intonation difficult to hear 'tunes' or identify the
rising and falling tones.
 --giving opportunuties by using tape
 --or through the way we ourselves model them.
 The key to successful pronunciation teaching,not
much getting students produce correct sounds,but
listen and notice how english is spoken.
 --Noticing is so important for pronunciation teaching.
The use of different
materials and some
teaching techniques
Why we use the phoenemic alphabet ?
 Aware of the different phoenemes
 Dictionaries
 For pronunciation games and tasks
 But you should not forget that you r students’
proficiency level is important when deciding to use of
phoenemic alphabet.
How can we use vocal organ
chart?
 ıt is used for showing how we can produce sounds
 So; students understand better
 Help to noticing
Minimal pairs;
 What are minimal pairs?
 pairs of words that have one phonemic change
between them.
 How can we use them in our lessons?
Let’s look at the example;
Ship and chip
Contrasting two sounds is
very popular way of getting
students to concentrate on
specific aspects of
pronunciation
Sounds/∫/ and /t∫/
Some Teaching Techniques
<<Contextualized minimal pairs:
Sounds:
This pen leaks.
This pan leaks.
Then, don’ t write with it.
Then, don’ t cook with it.
Stress:
Is it a lemon tree?
Is it elementary?
No, an orange tree.
No, it’ s advanced.
c. Cartoons and Drawings
d. Gadgets and Props
Rubber band, dices, kazoos, cuisenaire rods
e. Rhymes, poetry, jokes
Jazzchants etc
f. Drama
g. Hands and body
Clapping etc.
Moving
Imitating the body movements, gestures and facial expressions of another
person
(face-to-face, or on video)
How to teach pronunciation?
 Integrate it into your lessons as much as possible
 Start with little steps, and build from there.
 Model the shape of the mouth, and ask them to think
about their tongues and lips!
 Combine it with listening.
 Record your students’ voice and use it to focus on
pronunciation issues.
 Use games.
 Mouth exercises – SS think it’s fun to laugh at the
teacher
 Use different coloured pens, dots, connections,
arrows…
 Exaggerate pronunciation
 Listen to the radio and imitate the accent
 Exaggerate sounds – it’s fun, and SS can feel the
difference between them
 Cuisenaire rods fabulous for teaching word/sentence
stress, intonation etc
The steps for teaching
pronunciation(a)
 Planning stage
 Teaching stage
Planning stage (a)
 3 questions that you should ask;
 Is it important? If yes;
 Collect the information about the feature you want to
teach
 Spot the potential problems of Turkish learners
Teaching stage; €
 Description/analysis/ contrast
 Listening discrimination
 Controlled practice (Teacher centered ,accuracy)
 Semi-controlled(Guided practice)
 Free practice (Communicative practice)
Description/ analysis/contrast
Description
 T. presents a feature showing
where and how it occurs (sounds)
how it occurs (stress and intonation)
 T. might use charts, vocal organ diagram, gadgets,
hands etc.
 T. might use inductive or deductive rule
presentation.
Analysis
 Sounds
◦ Spelling
◦ Symbol:Phonemic symbols
◦ Examples
 Intonation
◦ Falling-rising intonation
◦ Symbol: Arrows
◦ Examples
 Stress
◦ Syllable,
◦ Symbol: Emphasis
◦ Examples
Contrast
 T. introduces the confusing sound,
stress/intonation pattern
 Draw sts’s attention to spelling/pronun
differences
 More examples are provided
Listening discrimination
 Minimal pair discrimination exercises
# same /different
# circle the one that you hear
# circle the odd one out
# sentence and find the one t.
pronounces
 Other discrimination activs.
# count the words that contain the
specific feature etc.
Controlled practice
 Sts.’ focus is almost completely on form
# whole-class and T-SS and more pair-work
activities
# choral reading
# poems, skits, rhymes, dialogues, dramatic
monologues
# tracking
Semi-controlled (Guided) practice
 Sts.’ focus is not only on form but also
meaning, grammar, communication
 More pair-work
Freer practice (communicative )
 T. should give a clear goal like “ While doing this
drama scene pay special attention to
contractions)
# Role-plays, debates, interviews,
simulations,
drama scenes etc.