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Teaching English Sounds
Congratulation on your great job! Your suggestions are practical and
motivating. Our students will love them!
By Renato Frossard, Marcus Vinícius, Glauce Mendes, Dilza Borges, Beatriz Lessa
After consulting the resources our professor has provided in the course material we have noticed how tricky English sounds can be. In fact, by analyzing the material, we have found that it is easy to get confused and mix sounds up when trying to correctly pronounce certain words in English. For this reason, we think that it is important to teach English sounds to our students since the b eginning of their learning because, b y doing so, we might h elp them recognize and d istinguish different sounds more easily. Developing tasks for teaching English sounds requires creativity and audacity. It requires creativity b ecause we n eed to know how to make interesting for students. In fact, depending on the way we present English sounds to students, it can be very boring and discouraging for them. The websites provided in our course material are a very good example of how to make learning the English sounds more interesting and exciting to students. The audio/visual support as well as the interaction provided by the websites help making the learning process much more dynamic and fun to students. Task: Listen to the song Do Re Mi.
Let's start at the very beginning
Do-re-mi
A very good place to start
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti
When you read you begin with
Oh, let's see if I can make it easier
A-B-C
Doe, a deer, a female deer
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi
Ray, a drop of golden sun
Do-re-mi
Me, a name I call myself
Do-re-mi
Far, a long long way to run
The first three notes just happen to be
Sew, a needle pulling thread
Do-re-mi
La, a note to follow sew
Tea, I drink with jam and bread
That will bring us back to Do
That will bring us back to do
Doe, a deer, a female deer
...oh oh oh
Ray, a drop of golden sun
Doe, a deer, a female deer
Me, a name I call myself
Ray, a drop of golden sun
Far, a long long way to run
Me, a name I call myself
Sew, a needle pulling thread
Far, a long long way to run
La, a note to follow sew
Sew, a needle pulling thread
Tea, I drink with jam and bread
La, a note to follow sew
That will bring us back to do
Tea, I drink with jam and bread
Do re mi fa so la ti do, so do
2A. Have you paid attention to the sounds of the seven music notes? To which
words does the singer match them?
B. Now try to Match each note to one of the pictures below. There will be one
note left.
1. Do
2. Re
3. Mi
4. Fa
5. Sol
6. La
7. Ti
3- What note does not match any of the pictures? Why? Can you create a drawing or
find a picture that would represent that note?
4A. Find words in English that have the same or similar sound, but have
different meaning. Example: heard x herd; kneel x knew
B. Make a list of the words you found and share with a partner. How many
words are both in yours and your friend’s list?
A Short Rationale About the Task
In the activity below we start from a very famous song from the movie “The Sound of Music”. This song plays with the sounds of the music notes, matching them with real words of the English language. We thought this could be a very good exercise for students because they will be working not only with sounds but also with meaning. Besides, they will have the opportunity to listen to a song, which might b e fun for them. Also, in the part of the activity in which they are asked to find other words with same or similar sounds, but different meaning, they will have the opportunity to test and improve their own knowledge of English vocabulary. One n egative p oint of this activity is that students might not know the song, in spite of it being famous, b ecause it is a lso a very old song. By Andréa Melo, Clarissa Azeredo, Karina Araújo, Paloma Freitas, Sara Ferreira
The group of tasks developed to teach English sounds were based on the
flashcards provided on the site below:
http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/
When the teacher goes to this page, he or she will see 2 options of flash cards: 1
perA4 and 4 per A4. In the first one you will have the 1 flashcard per A4 paper,
which means that the picture and the spelling of the word are followed by the
phonetic symbols. On the other option, you will find 4 flash cards per paper, but the
phonetic symbols will be on the back of the flash card.
Either options offer three (3) groups of sounds: Vowels, Consonants and
Diphthongs.
In this present activity, we are going to work with the second option of flashcards, 4
per A4.
In this format, the teacher will have 4 flashcards per sheet, considering that there are
6 sheets covering the consonant sounds, 3 for the vowel sounds and 2 for the
diphthongs. Thus, there are 11 sheets in total and each sheet will be worked as an
individual pronunciation class.
Our schedule for this approach in teaching English sounds involves 13 classes
along the semester; regardless teacher’s classes are from the mainstream
curriculum or from private Language Centers.
In our suggested activity, the English sounds will be taught as extra activities during
the regular classes, either in the beginning or at the end. They should last between
20 to 30 minutes and should be no more than one class per week.
Class 1
The first class should be used to introduce students to the phonetic alphabet.
We suggest the teacher to distribute hand outs of the phonetic alphabet to
students. If for some reason this is not possible, it would be interesting to give
students some websites references for phonetic alphabets.
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm
http://www.google.com.br/imgres?imgurl=http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/grammar/
images/phonetic_alphabet.
http://www.stuff.co.uk/calcul_nd.htm
http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/
This first class may last more than 30 minutes as the teacher should introduce
the symbols and explore them with students. Words there are familiar to
students should be worked in class. In this first class, it is important to raise
students’ awareness to the importance of knowing the phonetic alphabet and
how this
knowledge can
lead to
better
pronunciation
and learning
independence. At this stage, it is important to motivate students to learn and
practice the sounds, as they might seem too difficult or useless to learners in
the first contact.
Classes from 2 to 12
The next 11 classes will follow a pattern. The teacher will prepare the
flashcards in advance, and in appropriate numbers, depending if he/she
decides to work with groups, pairs, or individually.
We suggest to start with the Vowel sounds flashcards, then move on to the
Consonants and to end with the Diphthong ones.
Students will be given a set of flash cards, and the teacher will go through them
practicing pronunciation. Then, each group (pair or single student) should write
down as many words as they can that have the same sound they have in each
flashcard. In this activity they will work in a competition. The group, pairs or
individuals who get the biggest number of correct words win.
We would like to suggest some variations for this activity, one there will be 11
classes using the flashcards.
• Variation 1
Instead of being corrected by the teacher, students will correct their
opponent’s lists, under teacher’s supervision.
• Variation 2
Students will now listen to a recording. It can be conversation, a commercial, a
recorded text or even extracts from movies. It can also be the listening from
student’s book. They will have to listen and identify words with the same
sound as their flashcards.
Class 13
In the last class of teaching English sounds we suggest a game activity to sum
up all the sounds seen in the previous lessons. There is a variety of game
options available online, especially from the website the flashcards were taken
from:
http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/
If computers and the internet are not an available resource for the teacher, the
games below can be an interesting option on the board or in paper.
1 – Hangman
The phonetic symbols of words are given to students. They must guess what is
the word.
2 – Dictation
Students have many flashcards with only the phonetic symbols on it. The
teacher says words aloud and students must write the words down in the
appropriate flashcard.
3 – Bingo
Students get papers with the phonetic symbols in a bingo chart format. The
teacher says words aloud and they must complete their chart.
BY Cleidylaine Damasceno Silva Magalhaes. Ivia Vianna Santana. Luciana Morais
Amaral. Rosilene Moreira da Silva. Viviane Campos
Warm-­‐up/ lead-­‐in: You can start the class with some definitions and have students come up with the words for those definitions.
-­‐
-­‐
-­‐
it’s something you use for seeing soap operas, news, etc: TELEVISION /tel.ɪ.vɪʒ.əәn/
It’s my father’s father= grandfather /grænd .fɑː.ðəәr/
It’s something you take to school and read = a book /bʊk/ After students have discovered these words you ask them to match the real word with the phonetic description of them. Then, you write either on the board or on the computer, the phonetic description of other known words and have students guess, such as FATHER: /fɑː.ðəәr/; SHIRT: /ʃɜːt/; THANKS: /θæŋk/
Have students guess the words and afterwards, by using a computer, show the phonetic sounds and present them for the learners.
PRACTICE 1: Students will have 5 words in which they will transcribe phonetically.
PRACTICE 2: Students will have 5 sounds in which they will come up with the word.
GAME: hangman in the site: http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/; where students can practice more about transcribing the words phonetically. PRODUCTION: Students will try, in groups, to think of some interesting words and write their sounds so that the other group(s) can guess. Give points after each correct word and then a prize for the winners.
BY Janaína
I think it’s very important to teach English sounds for the students because they
can get autonomy in searching/ understanding what they listen to on their own
by them. Furthermore, listening activities are so important to comprehension so
as meaning makes sense.
As
Nicola
Meldrun
(http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/young-
learners-phonemic-chart) wrote, teaching pronunciation is important to Sts. It
can facilitate their autonomous learning with self –study. Students and teachers
could become more confident using the pronunciation chart and it could be
beneficial to them. The author says that students can use dictionaries more
effectively when they are familiar with the standard pronunciation. The teachers
get another instrument to correct the pronunciation. According to her, students
should become aware of the importance of pronunciation and of which sounds
help them to be understood in the English speaking world.
“Make your own wall charts
•
Put the symbols you want to teach on the board and drill them.
•
Then ask students to match flash cards with each symbol. For example, /i:/
can be matched with a picture of cheese.
•
Then ask the children to draw the symbol and the picture on the top of a large
piece of coloured card. These cards are then stuck to the wall for the next
class.
•
Then, the children are put into coloured teams. Each team is given ten words
on cards which they have to stick to the posters. Play some fun music to do
this! Give them a time limit.
•
Then, check how many they got correct. (Try to use words they are familiar
with, or words you want to revise.) The winners are those with the highest
number of correct words.
•
Every few classes you can revise this, repeat it and add to it. So you end up
with a comprehensive and colourful wall display all created by your students.
Much more interesting than a published phonemic chart for young learners.”
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/young-learners-phonemicchart
One of our favorite activities for a change of pace is PRONUNCIATION BINGO!!! To
play pronunciation bingo, first you need to think of a bunch of words that sound
similar (bath, bass, Beth, Bess, bus, but, bat, path, pat, bit, pit, etc, etc). Now, make
up a stack of cards with all your words and bunch of bingo boards (Sharon has a set
of six, and she usually can use them with groups of 20-- it usually doesn't matter if
some students the same board. Because it is rather challenging to distinguish
between similar sounds, we normally don't have more than one winner). For the
really adventurous teacher, he or she can have the bingo winner read out the words
for the next game. Here are a word stress bingo and a final consonant bingo boards
for you to download and print out.”
http://www.soundsofenglish.org/tips.htm#partners
BY Lívia
This is something new for me, I mean, I have taught English sounds very briefly last
semester because one of Fisk’s book has a section in the end of each lesson called
It Sounds Good. There students work a sound per lesson (or they learn the
difference between two similar sounds) and practice repeating the words correctly.
Correct pronunciation is emphasized.
BY Luciane
I found an interesting article about pronunciation which gives some reasons for giving
a special attention to teaching pronunciation. Here it is:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/transform/teachers/specialist-areas/pronunciation.
I have taught English sounds briefly too. This year I adopted Oxford material and
there are sections for teaching sounds for all the levels. It was one of the reasons for
choosing the material, since I needed support to teach them.
I think it is important to work mainly with those sounds that are different than what we
have in Portuguese. I could notice and think more about the importance of the
sounds when I was in Canada and had the chance to study with people whose first
languages were Japanese, Korean and Spanish. Sometimes when we could not
pronounce a sound our communication was affected, therefore I think the sounds are
important because when being able to pronounce them, our communication is more
effective.
BY Thaís:
Pronunciation task
- Every other class we would dedicate the first or final 15 minutes to introduce
a new sound and its correspondent symbol, or a minimal pair (similar sounds).
As there are 44 English sounds, and we teach about 40 weeks a year, this
project could take two semesters (or a year).
- We could create some flashcards (or use some as the ones available at
http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/) and have students attach
the cards to a wall on their classroom, so that they build their own chart by
themselves. It is important to have them helping us.
- We could introduce the sound by drilling it and having students repeating the
sounds, as well as words containing the sound. Teachers can draw students
attention on how we produce the sounds in our vocal tract (pay attention to the
position of our lips, teeth and tongue, if we have to vibrate our vocal chords or
not, etc.)
- To develop the sounds chosen to a specific class, we could do many different
activities, such as:

Using Chinese Whisper technique, students have to say
tongue twisters containing that sounds. E.g. “Roberta ran rings
around the Roman ruins” to deal with the /r/ sound. (For other
examples
of
tongue
twisters,
go
to
http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm)

Students have to stretch a rubber band to mark the differences
between short and long vowel sounds. (as in ship and sheep)

Preparing bingo charts containing IPA symbols, and saying
words for them to play the game.

If teaching young learners, it is possible to do some more
kinesthetic activities, based on TPR. For example, teacher
shows a set of flashcards containing either images or words
and says or shows a symbol. If the word and symbol match,
students have to stand up. If they don’t, they have to sit down.
(Similar to “morto/vivo”) E.g. A flashcard with the image of a
flower, or the word FLOWER. If the teacher says or shows the
sound/symbol /aʊ/, students stand up. If s/he says/shows the
symbol /əәʊ/, they sit down.

Preparing activities based on songs and sounds.

Playing memory games with words/images and sounds.

Taking students to the school computer lab to do some
activities
on
websites
such
as
http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/.
- As a follow up, students could keep a small notebook, or use the last pages
of their notebook, to create a Sound Dictionary, in which they should look up
and write down at least 10 words containing the sound(s) presented on the
lesson. This could be assigned as homework.
BY Cláudia Gomes, Silvana Espeschit and Roney Santos
 In the process of communication, pronunciation is of paramount
importance, since successful communication cannot take place without
correct pronunciation. (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 1996).
Before starting each suggested task, ask for your students working in groups
and brainstorming any reasons why most learners of English as a foreign
language cannot acquire native-like English pronunciation. When they are
ready, discuss about the issue and compare your ideas. Another warm-up
activity could be to work in groups and each one of these would brainstorm
the common problems that Brazilian students experience with English
pronunciation. Then open a circle for discussion debating the possible causes
for these problems and possible solutions.
A brief comment
When a word is not spoken correctly it may cause misunderstanding, so in a
communicative process the correct pronunciation is vital. It is important that
the teacher starts using the phonetic chart, by encouraging students to use
and practise the sounds. The teacher can get the students to repeat the
sounds in chorus, and then he/she can provide activities in which the sounds
are part of a meaningful word, phrase or sentence, not isolated.
Therefore, pronunciation is a very important subject to be taught and should
be practiced daily, as possible.
So, the aim of this lesson is to teach the vowels sounds.
Three classes might be spread out during a week, with duration of fifty
minutes each one, involving all the four abilities of the language. Each
phonetic exercise below will last from five to twenty minutes.
We plan this lesson for intermediate students. The teacher can pass three
videos mentioned at the end of this lesson, as other resources of teaching, for
his /her students, too.
1- Upload your computer to the IPA phonetic chart (access it through the
google), and click in the sound to hear it.
2- Choose the word that does not rhyme with the others:
A) Through B). Sew C). Due D). Do
3- Odd one out:
Mother-bother-brother-another
Hot – knot – taught – what
4 – Draw the double vowel sound with the corresponding word:
Day – Cold – Hair – Tour – Buy – House
5. Choose the job with the stress on the first syllable:
A). Physician B). Secretary C). Photographer D). Psychiatris
Hints: The teacher explains the task. Read aloud the phonetic chart below
and the pronunciation of each vowel taken as an example. Teacher also tells
students that although the consonants are in the phonetic chart, they will not
work with them in this exercise, but in others.
Using the phonetic chart, put the words below into one of these columns,
according to the main vowel sound. Then listen your teacher to check them.
can, says, dark, quite, them, plain, fat, lack, gap, claim, heart, might, give,
week, thing, need, any, guide, love, say, past, each, real, can’t, young, much,
which
day
read
sit
my
men
part
cat
but
Step 1 – Students watch the video below (4 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VuLGMilVqU&feature=related
This video is very interesting. It will be used to present the five
letters and all the fifteen sounds that come from them. The
presenter in this video (the teacher) is called Joe and he is a funny
man, his facial expression calls learner’s attention. He presents the
sounds separately, and gives excellent examples.
Step 2 – Students watch the video below twice (7 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FiHbNx1LY&feature=related
This is the second part also presented by Joe, the teacher. He
takes a look again at all the fifteen vowels sounds, by using
different words.
Step 3 – Students watch the video below (3 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESXa12DNCCs
In this third video called “It sounds like…”, students will also to
watch a presentation of the sounds as well as the phonetic
symbols. And the teacher makes a distinction between long and
short vowels sounds.