Learning English pronunciations can be very challenging and time. And can you guess what more challenging – teaching it. The teaching process has got different objectives at each level. With this blog, you would be able to teach pronunciation by discussing different words at each level.
You can easily plan out your resources and activities which would help your students to improve their communication skills. One of the best ways would be to encourage them to converse in English. You need to introduce the complete idea that while they are doing their homework by reading aloud all the words.
Here are some techniques which would help you to teach English pronunciation to the beginners and help them build a strong pronunciation foundation.
1. Initially Listen & Repeat
You might think that this is one of the common methods of teaching pronunciation in English. You will need to first pronounce the word yourself and then ask your students to repeat it in a similar way. If in case, you are working with a long word that has multiple syllables then you can always start with the final word. Working backward will help children to pronounce the word easily.
2. Isolation Of The Words
If you are about to teach some difficult words, then you need to pronounce the word repeatedly. This will help to engrain the sound pattern into the minds of the kids. This technique is helpful when you have a number of students who might be struggling with specific sound delineation.
3. Using Minimal Pairs
It can be considered as one of a great way to keep the focus on the pronunciation of the words (or just one sound). Most of the time students are not very familiar with linguistics – a minimal pair is a pair of words that differ only in one specific sound. For instance, you can check the words ‘rat’ and ‘rate’. They can be considered as minimal pairs. It is because there is only one vowel sound which makes the pronunciation of the words different. It will also help students to expand their vocabulary.
Read More: List of Minimal Pairs for Speech Therapy
4. Every Student Must Record The Sound And Replay
Sometimes students feel that they are pronouncing the words correctly. But only a listener can understand whether it is correct or not. But we have a solution here. Students can easily record the words by actually saying it. Then you might have this empirical data to playback and listen to it carefully. You can encourage students to listen to what they are actually saying. Sometimes listening to the native speakers can also serve the purpose. With this technique, the students would have a more objective understanding of the words and proper pronunciation.
5. Make Use Of Phonetics
If students are struggling to pronounce the entire word, then you can always make use of phonetic symbols which help to produce sound. In addition to that, you can make use of phonetics to introduce new vocabulary. You can read our blog (Englishbix phonetic sounds) to help students understand the sound produce by vowels.
6. Application Of Fun Tongue Twisters
We already know that tongue twisters are very popular among kids. They can be useful in consonant pronunciation and considered as a valuable resource. These twisters would pose a test to check the pronunciation abilities of a child. The tongue twisters have a fun element that would help you to make your class interactive.
7. Using Language Specific Sounds
Sometimes the native people pronounce the words in a completely different way or pattern. These are called as the language-specific pronunciation patterns. These will help students to know how some words can have different pronunciation in different regions of the country. For example, there is a good amount of difference between words spoken in British English and American English.
8. Always Speak Slow and Try To Exaggerate The Sound
Sometimes students feel that speaking fast English will make them look professional. But actual trick is to speak slowly. If you are speaking fast then it will tend to slur your speech and it might reinforce some bad habits. You can also exaggerate the sound while pronunciation. It is a good exercise and will help you in improving your pronunciation.
9. Observe The Movements Of Words While Pronunciation
While you are learning a foreign language, you are using your speech organ in a very different way. All the organs of the mouth like lips, tongue, throat would be utilized to make the appropriate sound while the pronunciation of the words.
10. Listening To Podcasts
In the learning process, you can listen to the podcasts that are completely focused on teaching better pronunciation. You can find various podcasts through online platforms. Sometimes you can get hold of some good videos as well.
11. Practice By Speaking Tongue Twisters
It won’t be surprising to say that tongue twisters are some of the time-tested methods of improving pronunciation. These phrases are very difficult to pronounce and are made up of words that sound similar.
12. Never Look For the English sounding equivalents in your native language
People nowadays learn the pronunciation of English in their own way which might not be the correct method. Hence its consequences will be that you end up making the wrong pronunciation of the words. In most language textbooks, you would look up for pronunciation and the sounds of various words are also explained through some audio.
This method might feel a bit convenient while you are learning some alphabets but it won’t be very helpful in developing good pronunciation in learning words in English.
In this way, all the letters will be in accordance with some phonological which would be from the other language and it will come with all of its peculiarities. For instance, there is a difference between how a Russian learns to pronounce ‘T’ and how it will be done by an American.
13. Learn To Expand Your Inventory
With this method, the students or adults whosoever are learning the pronunciation will always make it challenging to bring out distinct sounds and it will be perceived as the native language of every person. For instance, you could see how the Spanish bring out the pronunciation of ‘B’ and ‘V’ and how an American will do the same.
So the students who have different dialects face a certain level of the problem coming up with the correct pronunciation of the words. They will hear the right words but bring using it in the conversation is making it difficult o sound correct. You need to study the acoustic properties of each word or some pair of words.
14. Use Technology Software – Learn In A Simple Way:
The advantage of using the software is that you could usually use some form of text, audio or visual advertisement that would aim to make your learning process. With different brands, you can you what are our strengths and weakness.
It can be done when you work on practice worksheets and various exercises. It will also be done by giving out tests and knowing the score, and will give you a generalized idea of all the things – words, sentences, and also grammar.
15. Leave Your Fear and Keep Working
You can sit at home in your comfort zone and then think that you would conquer the world of English then it is not gonna happen. You need to go out by overcoming your fear of speaking in English in front of others. When you meet new people, you could know the pronunciation of various words.
It will also help you to learn some new words and how people from different dialects make different pronunciation.
16. Finally — More And More Practice
If you feel that you are not giving enough time to your work or your practice. Then make a schedule and try to work the amount you have fixed for it.
Let us now look at some key points which you need to consider while learning word pronunciation. Following are some important word pronunciation tips for different types of English Learners:
Basic Level English Learners
- Work On Syllable Stress: Every student learning word pronunciation must have a basic understanding of the multi-syllabic words and that they require proper syllable stress.
- Learning Voiced & Voiceless Consonants: Students need to know the difference between the voiced and voiceless consonants. While pronunciation. Students touch the throat to notice the difference of word pronunciation such as ‘z’ and ‘s’; ‘f’ and ‘v’.
- Using Silent Letter: Every student must be able to point out different examples of the words which become silent in certain words. For instance, the letter ‘b’ becomes silent in ‘comb’ and ‘ed’ becomes silent in the past tense of the regular verbs.
- Use Of Silent ‘Final E’: Students must be aware of the letter ‘e’ which is used in words and makes the vowel sound long.
Intermediate English Learners
1. Making Use Of Minimal Pairs: It will help students to understand the difference in the pronunciation between the words that appear to be similar.
2. Word Stress Pattern: With this students can improve the pronunciation by focusing on various short sentences and standard word stress patterns.
3. Introducing Stress And Intonation: This will help students to pay attention to the music of English through the use of stress and intonation.
Advance English Learners
1. Working With New Things and Understand The Refining Of Stress And Intonation: In this case, students need to stress on changing word meaning by putting stress upon them.
2. Pronunciation In Formal And Informal Situations: You can help children to introduce ideas by making changes to the pronunciations in formal and informal situations.
These were the three different levels of learning English word pronunciation. Students can easily go through these important points and keep learning.
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