Video transcriptLet me guess, pronunciation tends to take a back seat in your classes for these two reasons:
- You’re not sure how to go about it, and
- If English isn’t your first language, you might be worried that your own pronunciation isn’t good enough to teach other people.
If these sound familiar- keep watching…
Hi, I’m Jo Gakonga, I’ve been an English teacher and teacher educator (CELTA, MA TESOL on screen) ) for over 30 years and I’ve got a website at ELT-Training.com where I make video based material for teachers at all stages of their careers. Check it out and don’t forget to like and subscribe if you want to see more of my stuff!
Teaching pronunciation isn't about achieving a "perfect" accent. It's about communication. Clear pronunciation will improve intelligibility, build confidence, and it’ll empower your learners to use English effectively in the real world. So it IS worth some time and effort in class.
Here are three easy things you can do to help:
- Make sure you know which sounds are difficult for YOUR learners, especially if you’re working in a monolingual group. Japanese learners are going to struggle with l/r for example, and everyone has trouble with /ð/ and /θ/. Focus on these sounds.
- Make sure you know about connected speech issues- when words run together- and highlight them for your learners. Not ‘a bottle of milk’ but a / bɒdl lə mɪlk /. Not ‘where are you going?’ But / weə rəjə ˈɡəʊɪŋ /. Practice the weak sounds and the linkings.
- Word stress and sentence stress are important. When you teach new vocabulary make sure you highlight the stress and try some chants to highlight sentence stress.
If you want more information on this, I’ve got free videos on my site that will help- just follow the link in the description!
