Honing your pronunciation teaching skills (British Council mini-event: Pronunciation in our classrooms )
On March 22nd, the British Council hosted an online mini-event for teachers entitled Pronunciation in our Classrooms. This blog post is a summary of Honing your pronunciation teaching skills, a hands-on session given by Ana Paula Biazon Rocha.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
Ana Paula kicked off her session with the very appropriate question of “What is pronunciation?”. After all, if we are to seriously tackle pronunciation teaching in the classroom, we might as well be able to identify exactly what it is we are addressing as well as how it impacts communication.
"Pronunciation refers to how we produce the sounds that we use to make meaning when we speak." (Yates & Sielinski)
"Pronunciation is the most public face of language." (Levis & McCrocklin)
"Pronunciation is not an optional extra that we add if we have time. It is the very glue that holds the systems of the English language together." (Walker & Archer)
She then went on to share that research shows that most students enjoy working on pronunciation and that it has also shown that pronunciation teaching impacts pronunciation learning positively.
In spite of this, she also mentioned how teachers often struggle with pronunciation teaching because of a number of reasons:
lack of confidence, knowledge and adequate training
curriculum constraints
reduce or limited access to pronunciation teaching resources
believing that pronunciation is learned incidentally or implicitly
lack of planning on pronunciation work during the lesson
being unsure about how to integrate pronunciation into lessons
For the remainder of the session, Ana Paula shared a lot of useful practical tips that teachers can easily integrate into their day-to-day teaching.
PRACTICAL TIPS
#1. Use hands and realia to teach word stress
Ana Paula demonstrated how teachers can use their bodies and everyday objects such as rubber bands and hair ties to show students the physicality of pronunciation (and add a visual element to anchor it in their memory, too -- I'd add).
(And, by the way, there’s an interesting article that Ana Paula got published on IATEFL’s PronSIG’s blog where she addresses that in more detail. Click here to access the article.)
She also highlighted the importance of getting students to keep a written record of word stress every time new language is being introduced. She suggested that there are different ways of doing this (e.g.: imPORtant - important - important) and that teachers should aim for a consistent strategy of indicating stress placement to help their learners.
#2. Exaggerate the articulation of sounds
Ana Paula recommends that teachers exaggerate the articulation of sounds as a way of helping students’ brains process and store L2 sounds, especially those that are not present in their L1 sound inventory. She also gave the very handy tip of having students use mirrors or their smartphone cameras so they can observe themselves articulating whatever sound you’re working on.
#3 Use follow-up activities to extend pronunciation work
This bit from Ana Paula’s session was based on Celce-Murcia et al's communicative framework to teach pronunciation and, if you want to know more about that, I thoroughly recommend reading Teaching Pronunciation: a Course Book and Reference Guide.
Stage 1 | controlled practice + listening discrimination
As a sample task, she suggested using a dictation where students would first listen and write down the sentences they hear. And then students would listen again and underline the stressed words (e.g., This book was written by Angela Davis). Finally, students would listen and repeat.
Stage 2 | guided practice
A follow-up to the previous activity would be to put the sentences in context so that students could practice minidialogues, as in: A: Have you heard of this book? B: Yes, it was written by Angela Davis. Alternatively, you could also have students come up with the minidialogues on their own.
Stage 3 | communicative practice
To help students connect pronunciation work and meaning-making so as to improve their communication skills, a next step would be to have students come up with a story where you would only provide minimal context, e.g.: The suspect of a crime will be released next week. Come up with a background story. Use the following: Olive oil is produced in Italy / This book was written by Angela Davis / A product that has not been tested on animals.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Luckily for us teachers, Ana Paula shared a list of online resources that might come in handy when planning pronunciation work for students:
- Seeing the articulation of sounds: https://tfcs.baruch.cuny.edu/about-tools-to-go/ or https://seeingspeech.ac.uk/
- Online phonemic chart: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/TEphonemic_GreyBlue2.png
- Different varieties of English: https://www.dialectsarchive.com/
- Authentic / real-life examples of pronunciation: https://youglish.com/
- Pronunciation course: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/teachingenglish-how-teach-pronunciation
FINAL REMINDER
As a final reminder, Ana Paula shared the following quote with plenty of food for thought:
"You might never devote an entire lesson to pronunciation, but every lesson is a pronunciation lesson to some extent, because every lesson involves talking (unless it's a writing test, perhaps) -- and nobody can talk without pronouncing." (Marks and Bowen)
PRONUNCIATION IN OUR CLASSROOMS | WEBINAR RECORDINGS & HANDOUTS
If you’d like to watch the recording to Ana Paula’s presentation, download the session handout (or have a look at the other two sessions), be sure to head on over to the following website:
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