Beyond “Repeat after Me”: More Ways to Practice Pronunciation
Marla Yoshida
Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against “repeat after me” per se. It’s a valid
and useful way to practice pronunciation, and we need to do it. But it’s not all there is,
and if you do it for too long, it loses its effectiveness and puts your students to sleep.
Here are some ideas for other ways to practice pronunciation.
Question time. Ask students to bring in the words or phrases that they’ve had trouble
pronouncing or understanding, such as names of streets (“Harvard” vs. “Harbor”), cities
(“Irvine,” “Las Vegas”), or even beverages at Starbucks. They might appreciate help in
pronouncing their own address, phone number, etc. Set aside a question time now and
then and spend some time practicing what the students feel a need for. This can really
make a difference in their lives.
Minimal pairs.
 Choose a minimal pair with the sounds you’re practicing, for example, “rock” and
“lock.” (Stick to words students are likely to know. Uncommon words like “roam”
and “loam” aren’t the best choices.)
 Have students practice both words. Point out differences in how the sounds are
pronounced. Use demonstrations, mirrors, or giant teeth.
 Mark the words “1” and “2.” Say one of the words and have students tell you
which word you’ve said, holding up one or two fingers. Keep this up until they
can identify the sounds pretty well.
 Have students do the “1 or 2” practice with a partner for a few minutes while
you go around and check their pronunciation.
Whisper. Try doing minimal pair practice again, whispering softly or saying the words
without making any sound, and have students decide which word you’re saying. This
pushes them to pay attention to lip rounding, tongue movement, etc. This also makes
good pair practice.
Sentences. Make up or have students make up sentences using words with the sounds
you’re practicing. Try to include the students’ names or something about the class now
and then. Don’t make the sentences too difficult. Have students practice these
sentences, as a group or with a partner. Students often enjoy sentences they’ve made
up themselves more than ones from a book.
Dialogs and drama. Short dialogs are also useful. Just make sure they make sense and
sound as realistic and plausible as possible. Encourage students to say the lines with
feeling as they practice with a partner. Then it’s only a short step to using drama—short
skits or impromptu role plays—that encourage students to use what they’ve been
practicing.
Mirrors. Mirrors are absolutely necessary in teaching pronunciation. It’s not always easy
for students to feel whether their lips are rounded, whether their tongue is touching
their teeth, etc., but with a mirror they can see what’s happening.
Video clips for shadowing practice. Shadowing is a technique in which learners listen to
and imitate the speakers in a short video clip. Then they try to speak the lines of the
dialog with or slightly after the characters in the clip. Here’s one way to do it:
1. Find a short film clip (less than two minutes) with a natural-sounding, selfcontained conversation. Find or write a script for the clip. (Try YouTube or
EnglishCentral.com for suitable clips. EnglishCentral has transcriptions!)
2. In class, give the students some background about what’s happening in the
scene. They need to understand what’s going on.
3. Play the clip. First, the students just watch and get the general idea of the
characters and situation.
4. Hand out the script. Go over any unfamiliar words and expressions. Make sure
the students understand the dialog.
5. Watch the clip again. This time, give students something specific to listen for—
pauses, intonation, linking, etc.—and have them mark it on their script. If you
want, play the clip again.
6. Have the students compare their markings with a partner, then talk together as a
class about what they found and why it happened that way. (E.g., the speaker’s
intonation on a certain WH- question went up instead of down because she was
asking the question for the second time. She didn’t hear the man’s answer the
first time.)
7. Have students practice reading the conversation with a partner. Encourage them
to try to do it just the way the characters in the movie did—with the same
pauses, intonation, emotions, etc.
8. Play the clip again. Ask the students to try to read the dialog along with the
characters in the film. (This will work best if the characters are speaking fairly
slowly.) Repeat if there’s time.
9. Review the conversation in a later class by practicing it again.
Pictures. There are lots of possibilities. For example…
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Have students find things in a picture that contain a particular sound.
Have students find things in a picture with a certain number of syllables or a
certain stress pattern.
Practice intonation by having students ask and answer questions about a picture.
Use the picture as the basis for a dialog or story containing the sounds, stress
patterns, or intonation patterns you’ve been practicing.
Pronunciation scavenger hunt. Ask students to look for words with a particular sound,
number of syllables, or stress pattern, either using real objects in the classroom or
nearby or objects in pictures.
Visual aids and gadgets. Giant teeth, sagittal section diagrams, etc. can help students
see and understand how to pronounce sounds. Gadgets like straws, rubber bands, and
feathers can help them improve their pronunciation. (See the handout “Toys for
Pronunciation.”)
Phonemic symbols and other visual representations for sounds. Some teachers and
students like to use phonemic symbols to represent sounds (usually some version of
IPA); others hate it. Phonemic symbols can provide a “hook” to connect a sound to and
keep all those weird new sounds from seeming like an amorphous, confusing mass, and
are especially helpful for visual learners. Other students are just confused by the
symbols, especially if they’re just learning the English alphabet. Used judiciously,
phonemic symbols can be helpful, especially for sounds that don’t have a consistent
spelling in English.
You can also represent sounds visually in other way, by linking them to a color, shape, or
image. Some teachers use gestures to represent sounds and remind students of how
they’re pronounced. (There’s an interesting book called Pronouncercizing by Millicent
Alexander that introduces body movements to represent phonemes. It’s available from
New Readers Press: http://www.newreaderspress.com/Items.aspx?hierId=0450.)
Several websites have short videos giving explanations of how to produce sounds.
Check the quality of the video contents carefully before you use it in class. Some look
good at first glance, but are actually inaccurate or misleading. Links to some of these
websites are on http://teachingpronunciation.pbworks.com  Resources for Teaching
Pronunciation.
Communicative activities. Many of the activities you use for speaking practice can also
provide good pronunciation practice if you choose topics and vocabulary carefully. Just
sprinkle them with words that require students to produce the sounds or other aspects
of pronunciation that you’re practicing. For example, you can use:
 Info gaps
 Role plays
 Describing or telling stories about pictures
 Describing or working with maps, menus, diagrams, tables, or other information
New vocabulary. When you teach new vocabulary words, make sure students can
pronounce them. Have them repeat after you a few times. Ask students to listen and tell
you how many syllables the word has, where the stress is, what letters in the spelling
are silent, etc.
Teacher dictations. Prepare several short sentences using the pronunciation points
you’re practicing. Dictate them in a natural way of speaking and have students write
what they hear. Check together. Then ask students which words or sounds caused them
trouble (or have them tell a partner). Go over the problem words, discussing why they
were hard to hear or why they might have sounded like different words. (Why did “I saw
them” sound like “I saw him”? Why did someone write “50 dollars” instead of “15
dollars”?) This can be a good starting point for pronunciation discussions because it
shows students the gaps in their hearing or understanding.
Partner dictations. Prepare two sets of three or four sentences using the pronunciation
points you’re practicing. Label them A and B. With students in pairs, give the A
sentences to one partner and the B sentences to the other. Students take turns dictating
their sentences to their partner and writing the sentences their partner dictates. You
can also have students write their own sentences for dictation.
Sorting activities. Make a list of words for students to sort in some way: By initial sound,
vowel sound, way of pronouncing –s or –ed endings, etc. Include boxes on the handouts
for students to write words from different groups.
Tongue twisters. These are lots of fun, but use them sensibly. Avoid sentences that
contain obscure vocabulary or ones that don’t make sense. Students should be able to
understand what they’re saying. And don’t make the tongue twisters too difficult! Even
you would have trouble saying “The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick,” so how can you
expect your students to say it? A challenge is fun; something that’s impossibly difficult is
not.
Jokes and riddles. Have students practice reading jokes aloud and telling them to each
other. Emphasize pausing and intonation to make the jokes effective. (The hardest part
here is finding jokes that will make sense to students. Sometimes humor in another
language just doesn’t make sense, so choose carefully.)
Poems, children’s rhymes, or limericks can be good for practicing sounds, rhythm, and
intonation. Choose something that fits your students’ interests and level. If Jazz Chants
fit your style, they can be good practice too.
Songs are great for pronunciation practice if your students like to sing. Choose a song
that they’ll enjoy singing. YouTube has videos of lots of popular songs with lyrics.
Games. Common games like Bingo, dominoes, or tic-tac-toe, or card games like Go Fish
can be adapted for pronunciation practice. I’ve also got a pronunciation review board
game that’s been fun. Try these sources:
 15 Top Fun Pronunciation Games:
http://edition.tefl.net/ideas/pronunciation/top-fun-pronunciation-games/
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Pronunciation Games by Mark Hancock, Cambridge University Press. (I’ve got a
copy.)
Primary Pronunciation Box by Caroline Nixon and Michael Tomlinson, Cambridge
University Press. (I’ve got this one too.)
Pronunciation improvement strategies. Talk to your students about ways they can
practice pronunciation on their own. For example:
 Choose a model to imitate. Think of someone whose voice you’d like to have—
an actor, singer, news announcer, etc. It can help to think specifically (“I want to
sound like Mr. Spock”) instead of generally (“I want to sound like a native
speaker”).
 Intensive listening. Choose a short video clip from YouTube or a scene from a
favorite movie or TV program on DVD. Listen to the same clip over and over,
trying to say the dialog along with the characters (like shadowing). Listening to
the same clip many times will help the sound of the language become ingrained
in your mind.
 Extensive listening. Listen to English all the time. Surround yourself with the
sounds of English, even if you don’t understand everything. Listen to NPR on the
radio or other news and talk sources on your computer. The more exposure you
have to the sounds of English, the more they’ll feel natural.
 Choose a small target first. Decide which sound or pair of sounds is causing the
most trouble, and concentrate on improving that first. When that one seems
more comfortable, expand to another sound. This might work better than trying
to improve everything at once.
 Record your voice, then listen and try to self-monitor. Try to figure out which
sounds aren’t quite right. Play your recording for someone else to get their
opinion. Practice again, concentrating on those challenging sounds. Transcribing
the recording can also be helpful.
 Use websites for pronunciation practice. Again, choose the good ones.
If you think of other ideas, let me know. I’ll add them to the list!
Marla