Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Indiana? Are you interested in teaching English in Avon, Indiana? Check out our opportunities in Avon, 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!
In spoken English, pronunciation is the language aspect that readily identifies as non-native. When talking about pronunciation in language learning, we mean the production and perception of the significant sounds of a particular language in order to achieve meaning in contexts of language use. This comprises the production and perception of segmental sounds, of stressed and unstressed syllables, and of the ‘speech melody’ or intonation. Pronunciation plays a central role in both our personal and our social lives: as individuals, we project our identity through the way we speak and also indicate our membership of particular communities.
A consideration of learners’ pronunciation errors and of how these can inhibit successful communication is a useful basis on which to assess why it is important to deal with pronunciation in the classroom. A learner who consistently mispronounces ranges of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand.
Phonology is the study of the sounds of a language. When spoken, English can sound like an unbroken string of sounds, but it is actually made up of many smaller sound units, called phonemes. These small pieces of sound are the “building blocks of words.” For literacy development, phonemic awareness is the important process where children learn to hear and break down words into the individual sounds, blend sounds, and manipulate sounds to make new words.
Intonation is a huge part of natural communication. The way we use pitch, stress, and emphasis on specific words can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Every scenario has a different type of emotion that can be expressed through intonation. When teaching intonation, it’s best to use activities that are fun and engaging. Stress and emphasis aren’t things that most people can learn from studying through computer programs and textbooks.
There are several techniques for indicating and teaching intonation and stress. By using nonsense words, by a gesture, by humming or singing, by making marks on the board, contrastive stress, choral works, and stress marks are numbers of ways to help students learn the intonation and stress patterns.
Our overall goal as teachers is to make sure that students can produce clear speech that can be understood by others, for successful communication. Mispronunciation, due to phonological rules or differences from a native language or variant of English, may alter or hinder a message, having an effect on the greater meaning of their message. As teachers, we must prioritize and focus on pronunciation skills as needed, to best support the student so they are understood and comprehended.
