LANGUAGE SERVICES

Pronunciation
 Why is pronunciation important?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkZxS1g3tj4

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 Typical issues for Spanish speakers
Discussion:

What are the main sounds that Spanish speakers struggle

with in English?
• Long / short vowels
• Consonants /ʤ/ or /j/ /ν/ or /b/ h r
• Consonant clusters (‘breakfast’ becomes ‘brefas’)
• Spanish is syllable timed – English is stress timed

Are there any particular activities you would do in class to help

your students with pronunciation?

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Forming sounds

• “Breaking the muscular habit of L1 is the only way to

find the new sounds of the second language. And to
break the habit, teachers and learners need to sense
what their muscles are doing so that they can require
their muscles to do something different.”
• Adrian Underhill

Adrian's Blog: http://adrianpronchart.wordpress.com

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How would your students say these
sentences?

• The bear had a berry in his bag. /b/

• The violet was very vivid. /v/
• The idiot has a little tin of things. Short/ i/
• He leaves the street every week to see his team play.
long /i/
I have a huge house /h/
Roger has a right handed reptile /r/

Focus on where the sound is made in the mouth – how would

you show your students how to make these sounds?

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 Example: /v/ and /b/ sound
“Veronica ate a very big berry”

Identify where
the sounds are made

What’s different?

v = teeth on lip
b = lips together

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 v and b – minimal pairs

v b
vote boat
very berry
vest best
volt bolt
vet bet
vow bow
Viking biking
van ban
jive jibe
rove robe

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 Example: long and short vowels
What do we say when someone takes our photo? Why?

To make the /i:/ sound in cheese

we need to…

A lot of students have difficulty

distinguishing between

/ɪ/ and /i:/

Use the ‘clap technique’:

Clap once to demonstrate the length of /i/
Students pronounce /i/, which is the length of one clap
Clap twice to demonstrate the length of /i:/
Students use their Spanish pronunuciation of /I/ because it’s
slightly longer

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 /ɪ/ and /i:/ minimal pairs

ɪ i:
hit heat
bit beat
ship sheep
live leave
chip cheap
fill feel
sit seat
bin bean
his he’s
is ease

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Your students can..
• Have columns of sounds and write words under theme.g.
• V – very, vowel
• Sh – machine, ship
• K - mechanic

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Tongue Twisters – Just Google them!

• Harry Hunt hunts heavy hairy hares.

•
Does Harry Hunt hunt heavy hairy hares?
•
If Harry Hunt hunts heavy hairy hares,
•
Where are the heavy hairy hares Harry Hunt hunts?

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Sound-spelling patterns

Short Long

Hat hate
Them theme
Bit bite
Not note
Tub tube

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Running Dictations
• Instructions
• 1 writer, 2 runners
• Runners run to a sentence on the wall, read, remember and
dictate.
• Pre-teach punctuation and review the vowel sounds. Get
students to write the vowels in their book so they can point to
them during the activity to clarify sounds
• Give them a time limit – but be aware this activity will take
longer than you think!
• If it’s a pronunciation running dictation, give students time to
practice the dialogue together, while you monitor their use of
a particular sound.
• If it’s a correction or completion activity, give them time to
correct and complete, but again, this takes time, plus the
feedback stage.
•
• Ship or Sheep? , Cambridge University Press has a lot of
dialogues in the book that you can copy if you want to
practice pronunciation or do a running dictation.

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Running Dictations
• You can use this activity for a number of linguistic purposes, not just pronunciation.
• Variation on a dialogue for pronunciation – have a number of sentences around the room
and each group has to put the sentences in the correct order to make a dialogue
•
• For these non-pronunciation activities, I tell them to ‘collect and correct’. Have a number
of separate, non-related sentences on the wall around the room.
• Once they have collected all the sentences, each group sits down and corrects or
completes each sentence.
• Opposites: write on each piece of paper – the opposite of hot is ________.
• Correct the mistakes: Review some grammar, e.g. I don’t have many money this week / I
have been to the cinema last night.
• Review previous vocab definitions – the thing in the living room that you sit on is called
___________
• Poem – have a line of the poem on each card, e.g, In a dark, dark forest / there was a
dark, dark house/in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room (you can find this
online – great for Halloween)
• Piece together a paragraph: Write a paragraph of an essay/reading comprehension etc
on different pieces of paper and students make a paragraph.
• Tongue twisters
• Discussion questions
• Half-sentences or questions – students piece them together
•

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 The ‘music’ of English
Pronunciation is not just about the individual sound of
consonants and vowels.

We also need to pay attention to:

• Word stress
• Sentence stress
• Intonation

Why is this important?

What information can be encoded with stress and intonation?

https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/sentence-
stress.htm

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 Avoid sounding like a…

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 Word Stress
Teach word stress as part of pronunciation of new words
Categorise words by stress patterns when revising
Play games / do activities that highlight this.
Incorporate it into any time they are writing or doing an exercise,
e.g ‘Okay, let’s say it like we’re angry’ or ‘Okay, let’s say this
again focussing on the stressed words’

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 Hello

to your boss
to a friend
to a close friend you haven’t seen in years
to an attractive man/woman at the hotel bar
to a six-month old baby
to a friend you had an argument with last week

How does the way you speak change?

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Intonation Game

Topic Emotion

1. family 1. bored
2. hobbies 2. interested
3. school 3. sad
4. friends 4. excited
5. the weather 5. friendly
6. food 6. formal

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 Intonation for emphasis and meaning

Say this sentence four times, each time stressing a different word.
Discuss the difference in meaning.

“Put your bag under your chair”

This is an example of contrastive stress

Try it with these sentences.

• Now, Maria go in the orange team and Juan go in the blue team
• You have to do the next exercise
• Only get up when you’ve finished
• Use crayons, not pencils
• Fact-checking: Teacher: You bake it for 20 mins.
Students: No, FORTY MINUTES.

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 Running Dictation

Get into pairs – A and B

A find a sentence, read and memorise it.

Run back to B and dictate your sentence.
B writes down what he/she hears.
Now it’s your turn B!

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Let's Brainstorm

• Situation:
• - you're doing homework feedback. It's a standard
grammar worksheet. How can you incorporate some
pronunciation into this?
• focus on linking vowel to consonant i.e. it's a great idea
• focus on contractions - very important for spoken English
• use the 'esl movie clips' series on Youtube. Find a
corresponding clip to the grammar you're doing and pause
and repeat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee_N3g4ORLk
• Situation:
• your students constantly forget the 3rd person and plural
's'. How can you prompt them to remember?

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Teaching Pronunciation: when & how?

Can pronunciation be the whole focus

of the lesson?
• Short pronunciation ‘slots’
• in between other class activities

• Integrated into a lesson

• while working on listening

comprehension, when learning new

vocab or practising speaking
• Opportunistic teaching
• as it comes up during the course of a

lesson

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 Resources
Practice your pronunciation:
Watch this video!! Excellent step by step advice on how to
avoid typical Spanish speaker issues with English sounds:
https://theaccentsway.com/spanish-accent/
Also here, with audio examples:
https://pronunciationstudio.com/spanish-speakers-english-
pronunciation-errors/

Resources for your class:

www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-pronunciation-
activities/#

Pronunciation Games, Hancock, Cambridge, 1995

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