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What I learned about teaching pronunciation and phonology
Pronunciation is a major concern for many non-native English students and therefore should be addressed. Teaching and improving students’ pronunciation may serve to develop their confidence in speaking English.
Since intonation carries the messages and emotions of the speaker (e.g. questioning, agreeing, happiness, etc.), it is therefore important to teach students about intonation, so that they can listen for subtle messages reflected in the way one speaks.
Teaching pronunciation involves the teaching of stress, rhythm and intonation.
Techniques for indicating and teaching intonation:
The teacher may teach nonsense words to reflect and point out the differences in attitude such as warmth, pride and interest.
The teacher may use hand gestures to indicate the general direction or pitch of the voice.
Humming and singing out sentences is useful for hearing for stress and intonation.
When writing words or sentences on the board, the teacher may make use of marks (e.g straight/angled arrows) to emphasize the direction of the intonation.
Teaching for indicating and teaching stress
Contrastive stress – teach words with a contrastive stress so that students are able to hear the difference when comparing a voiced word with a non-voiced word.
Using gestures such as clapping and clicking fingers may be useful when teaching stress in words to students.
Choral work – chanting and singing certain rhythms in English may help students develop their pronunciation skills.
Underlining words on the board or using stress marks to indicate stress may be helpful to the students when learning about pronunciation.
Teaching the phonemic alphabet to students provides them with the skills to pronounce words on their own.
Teaching techniques for the pronunciation of individual sounds.
The teacher may make use of peer dictation activities where students read or speak words for a partner to write down.
The teacher can over-emphasize parts of the words so that students may see closely what the mouth is doing.
The teacher may make use of visuals to help students understand the movements of the mouth and breath.
