You might be following a coursebook or using published materials in your classes. Or you might be expected to produce your own lesson materials. Either way, when you look at the material, how much of it is dedicated to pronunciation? Are there two small exercises out of 12 in a two-page lesson? Or on a powerpoint slide deck, is there only one slide dealing with an aspect of pronunciation? Or maybe there’s nothing about pronunciation at all! It’s all too common that teaching materials provide large amounts of space to grammar and vocabulary, but much less to pronunciation.
It isn’t the aim of this article to explain the reasons for its lack of prominence in materials because this is adequately covered elsewhere. (For example, see my article in English Teaching Professional (40) from 2005 titled ‘English teaching in pronunciation: coursebooks’.) Instead, I’d like to be proactive and consider how we can integrate and supercharge our materials with quick and easy pronunciation techniques.
The title of the book
Many years ago in my first teaching job, I was using the very first edition of the coursebook Headway Elementary (Oxford University Press, 1993). Halfway into the term, I noticed that my students referred to it as ‘the English book’. And when I referred to Headway, they seemed uncertain of what I meant. I realised the problem was that they were unsure of the pronunciation of the title Headway. So, at the beginning the next lesson I drilled it and used it as an opportunity to show how the ‘ea’ spelling sometimes has an /e/ sound. Since then, I’ve never taken it for granted that students know how to say the title of books or the unit titles in books and that any new word offers an opportunity to explore sound-spelling issues.
A routine habit of underlining word stress
Typically, course materials introduce a lot of new vocabulary and focus on its use and meaning. It’s rare that much time is spent on knowing how to say the new words. One advantage of using modern digital course materials is that students can often just click on a word to listen to and repeat it. But it’s still helpful to have them underline the main stress in a word and write how many syllables it contains. So, from a unit in a pre-intermediate book on spending habits which introduced the following words, I would have students mark the words like this:
| luxury (3) | amount (2) | waste (1) | quality (3) | debt (1) |
Exploiting recording and listenings
When extended listenings appear, materials often focus on exercises to test comprehension only. However, these types of recordings also offer lots of chances to explore aspects of pronunciation. For example, you can isolate a couple of sentences and play them again. Students can write out in full what they hear as a dictation, then compare their writing with a partner. They can also link any words together that they think are connected speech.
On the same subject, recordings with online digital materials also have a feature which allows you to play the recording, but you can adjust the speed. So if part of the recording is too fast for students, you can isolate the problematic stretch of speech and play it back more slowly. It’s a great feature that allows you to really explore what is happening, especially when the recording is of a real, authentic speaker.
Reading materials
We normally associate pronunciation with speaking and listening, but if you have a reading text in your coursebook, you can also exploit it for pronunciation work. For example, after students have read the text and answered the comprehension questions, ask them to circle any words in the text that they don’t know how to say. Afterwards, they can ask a partner and then finally check with you.
Another task is to say a word that students know well and ask them to underline any words in the text which rhyme with it. A variation on this is to turn a text you have used into a gap-fill exercise. Remove any words with the sound /ea/ such as: there; rare; and hair. Then, give students the gap fill and explain which types of words are missing.
Phrases for speaking
When lesson material is working towards a speaking activity, it often introduces a series of phrases for students to use in the fluency activity. Unfortunately, most students won’t make much use of these phrases unless they have had time to practise using them in a controlled way beforehand. So, imagine if I had a set of phrases like this to use in a discussion where students express their opinion:
In my opinion, I think that . . .
What do you think about that?
I completely agree.
I don’t think I agree.
There are a number of ways to work on the pronunciation of these phrases if the material fails to do this. First of all, have students cover up the phrases. Then say each rapidly and ask students to say how many words they hear. For example:
In my opinion, I think that (= 6 words),
I don’t think I agree. (=5 words).
Then put students in pairs and they each take turns to say the expression and their partner says how many words they hear.
Video materials
Finally, if your material includes video with real speakers, use the opportunity to listen for examples of real-world pronunciation. You could ask the students to listen and speculate about the speakers’ accents; for example are they from the UK, Australia, France or China. If you are using video where the speakers are very emotional in some way (e.g. very happy; very angry), play the video with the sound off. Ask students to speculate how the speakers feel in the scene and how this might affect their intonation. Then play it again with the sound on and have everyone notice how the intonation patterns match the emotions.
To sum up, if you wish you were using materials with more pronunciation, think about how you – the teacher – can supercharge your existing lessons.
- Explore the pronunciation of any new words.
- Use any pronunciation features as an opportunity for learning.
- Exploit extracts of listening and reading texts.
- Preview phrases for a speaking fluency task with pronunciation work.
- Study the emotions and intonation of speakers in videos.
A resource from ETpedia Pronunciation can be downloaded from Resources online at: https://www.modernenglishteacher.com/media/43713/etpediapronunciation_unit-351-hrp.pdf
