Nizhny Tagil, Russia TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This unit was the most difficult for me thus far. I found learning about the rules for stress and intonation to be helpful, as these types of pronunciation feel natural to me, but not necessarily to my students. For example, when teaching my students how to read, I had to explain to them that we usually use rise/fall patterns, but our voices change and go higher (fall/rise) when we ask questions. This helps students to read with expression. It’s important that students know how to change their volume and pitch when speaking to enhance communication. Teaching students these skills can be accomplished through nonsense words, gesturing, humming, and singing. When teaching stress, one word has one stress and we always stress syllables. Stressing words can be taught through gesturing (clapping), choral work, and stress marks. Native speakers also link their speech and this is important to teach students. For instance, I once had to explain to students why we say “gonna,” but write “going to.” Teaching students these differences allow their speech to sound more natural. The final part of this unit focuses on phonology, and this is the area in which I found to be most difficult. The phonemic alphabet was created to help learners understand the pronunciation of sounds within a word. Sounds can be voiced (/g/) or unvoiced (/t/), but are also articulated by the use of various organs. This knowledge can be useful when modeling how to make specific sounds. For example, I teach in Poland and in the Polish alphabet there is no /th/ sound. This sound is a dental sound, and I model to my students my tongue going between my teeth. Pronunciation can be an area in which native speakers take for granted, but it is essential that pronunciation and articulation are taught, modeled, and explained in an age-appropriate manner, as needed.