Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Russia? Are you interested in teaching English in Elista, Russia? Check out our opportunities in Elista, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
As I mentioned previously, I was originally a speech-language pathology major in college, so this was a nice review for me. I remembered the different parts of the mouth and throat, as well as the difference between a voiced and unvoiced consonant: vibration of the vocal chords. I also remembered the place of the mouth/lips/throat in which many of the sounds are made, as well as the manner in which they are articulated. For example, bilabial sounds use both lips, while labio-dental sounds involve one lip and the teeth, and dental sounds require the teeth. The only glottal sound is h and it comes from the glottis. However, I had forgotten some of the symbols so it was nice to review and practice them again. I remembered learning in school that good ways to teach phonetics are to use a diagram of a mouth and show your own mouth, but the chapter also mentioned tongue twisters which I think is a fun and child-centered approach I would definitely use in the future! I also really liked the section on stress. As a native speaker of English, I don't think much about the stress on words, but it is really easy to hear when the stress is wrong! I liked learning about the different places stress can be in a word (i.e. on the first, second, penultimate syllables). Perhaps my favorite section of this unit was the sound joining section. It was so fascinating to see how native speakers naturally speak by changing sounds, dropping sounds, linking words, and sometimes even adding additional letters. I spent a while reading the examples and coming up with some of my own! I think linking speech is something that is important to teach in lessons, because native English speakers rarely leave speech unconnected, especially in informal social settings. We are always saying things such as "I dunno," and it is important to teach the living, informal way of speaking, not only the formal version. Overall, the chapter was challenging but a good review since it has been a couple years since I learned about this at my university! I also was able to learn some new techniques and things to focus on (for example, linking words when speaking) in my future lessons.
