Lesson Plan - pronunciation

Objectives: Learn the minimal pair /i:/ and /I/

Group: 1st and 2nd years of High School

Warm-up: 5 minutes
- Greetings
- Filling the attendance sheet
- Writing on the board what is the goal for the lesson
- Asking them about their favorite color until we get to green and pink.

Reading: 10 minutes
● Students are invited to listen to the teacher reading the following text.
Lee is a very nice guy who likes to go to the beach. He enjoys playing with
his green baseball and his little pink racket. When Lee is tired, he sits on a
chair and plays with the sand. He likes eating chips, but sometimes his
mother says he needs to have beans, because they are healthier. He also
likes to have ice-cream, it is cheap and delicious.
● As they are real beginners, the teacher may work with some
translation in order to make understanding easier;

Introduction to minimal pair i: - I - 20 minutes

On the board, using pink and green markers, teacher divides the board in
two columns The green sound and The pink sound. Under the Green
sound column, teacher writes words with the i: sound. And under the Pink
column, the words with I sound.
The green sound The pink sound
Cheap Chip
Sheep Ship
Beat Bit
Feel Fill
Beans Bin
Seat Sit
Eat It
 ● The explanation goes around how similar sounds the words under
each column are, without talking about the pronunciation aspect
itself.
● Teacher does some repetition with the words. There are many ways:
everybody in unissono, then different groups at a time...
● Then, they come back to the text and are asked to color in pink or
green the respective words. There are more words in the text that are
not in the columns. When the correction of the activity takes place,
the teacher can add them on the board.
Game: Pink vs Green sound 10 minutes
Individual.
Each student receives a green and a pink plaque and they have to decide
when the word sounds like green or pink by raising the correct plaque.
When one of them commits a mistake, they lose the plaques and are no
longer able to play. The winner is the one(s) who stays with the plaques in
the end.

Reflection: In my opinion, any of the minimal pairs would make a nice

lesson, with lots of vocabulary to learn. Also, I think that there might be
many interesting ways of working with pronunciation in class, and the
games we have been playing are awesome, but they demand a structure
that I do not have in my school yet. That is why I adapted the game. Also,
as they are real beginners, talking about the theory of the pronunciation
itself, or even calling the sounds as i: or I, is a bit more complicated. I think
that making a reference to the color is both visual and auditory and it might
help a lot with learning it.