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Topic: Teaching Pronunciation

Most teachers know the basics of the English sound system and can describe how to produce individual sounds to students. The challenge comes in taking students deeper into the features of English pronunciation – what happens when two sounds occur next to each other, stress and unstress, and intonation. We explore these deeper details of English pronunciation in our pronunciation courses.

Yes, There ARE Patterns in English Spelling

Students and teachers alike often complain about the challenges of English spelling, given the myriad rules which seem to break other rules, which break other rules. There does not seem to be much consistency between how words are pronounced and how they are spelled. One sound can be spelled three, four or five different ways. In this informative session, we will establish that there are actually patterns in English spelling, many of which are rooted in the history of the language. We will then examine these patterns in detail as a foundation for helping to understand the rules of English spelling. Finally, we will look at various teaching strategies and activities that you can use in order to effectively teach spelling to your students.

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Using Drama Activities to Teach Pronunciation

There are many drama activities that actors use to warm up their voices and improve their projection, enunciation and overall vocal delivery. Many of these activities can be used with English language learners to help them improve different features of their English pronunciation, such as phoneme articulation, intonation, word stress, sentence stress, volume and pacing. They can also help our students learn how to express emotions and ideas correctly and accurately. In this session we take you through a variety of fun and effective voice activities for you to use with your students.

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Teaching Students ‘Unstress’

In this session, we look at the importance of stress in determining the intelligibility of student pronunciation. One of four main components of the suprasegmental features of pronunciation, stress is often overlooked in our teaching of pronunciation. Because English is a stress-timed language, however, stress plays an important role in English pronunciation. Interestingly, the main student challenge is not putting stress on syllables or words, but unstressing those syllables or words that should NOT be stressed, hence the concept of ‘unstress’ that we explore.

This session was developed and first presented by Silvia Rossi of Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta.

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