Category Archives: • Pronunciation

Pronunciation Class? Really?

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Earlier in my career, I was assigned a pronunciation course with 12 students representing five distinct language groups: Arabic, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The program administrator had provided a standard pronunciation textbook, and my first challenge was deciding where to begin.

The textbook followed a traditional linear path, starting with 75 pages (nearly 30% of the book) dedicated to vowel sounds—beginning with the high-front vowels in words like eat versus it. However, before allowing the syllabus to be dictated by the authors, I researched which sounds these specific 12 students actually needed to master to avoid communication breakdown. This is what I found:

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• Most Confusing ESL Pronunciation Mistake (Includes Interactive Exercises)

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Cover pron shot

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

There has been a consensus among the many professionals that I have asked that dropping the final consonants on words causes the most communication breakdowns. I’ve had to decipher things like:

“I cou-n do my homewo cu I fe si.” (I couldn’T do my homeworK because I felT sicK.)

“Do you wan ah to chew a new topi?” (Do you wanT uS to chooSE a new topiC?)

If we just respond by asking, “What did you say?”, the speaker will merely repeat what s/he had said, perhaps a bit louder.

I developed a set of exercises that have proven to be effective in developing students’ self-awareness in the cause of some of their communication breakdowns. So now, if we ask “What did you say?”, the speaker will have a sense of the cause of the breakdown and of a way to adjust what they had said.

What you’ll find in the downloadable exercises

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• Don’t Give Grades For These In Conversation Class. Do This Instead.

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Cover shot don't grade pron

A former ESL student of mine, Teddy, came to my office for a chat. I asked him how his classes were going, and he showed me the mid-term exam grade from his intermediate-level speaking class that his teacher had just given him. First Bad eval form  I asked him how he felt about it. He said that he was feeling discouraged because he really tries to be active in conversation, not only telling his ideas and opinions but also responding to and including other. So he felt that he deserved a much better score than a 72%, which was a failing grade.

Then I asked him, from looking at this grade form, what he thinks he’ll need to do to improve his grade.

Grade three techniques

He felt confident that he could ask more questions and try to respond to others more with rejoinders.

But about the pronunciation and grammar grades, he said that he wasn’t sure.

Revised Grade just pron gram

He imagined that he might have some problems with “L” and “R” sounds.  And he thought that the grammar score was low because he always makes mistakes with prepositions. So he planned to think more carefully about those when talking.

The problem and the fix

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• Pronunciation practice: Easy and Effective One-on-One Technique

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smartphone-recording

Recording on a smartphone

This technique requires minimal preparation, but it will help you zero in on the words/ sounds that a student is struggling with.  And it will enable you to help him/her improve their pronunciation in a non-threatening way.

To watch a more detailed description of this technique, see my YouTube video Most Effective Approach to Helping Students Improve Their Pronunciation (Time Efficient)

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