Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (28 page)

Repeating first

The natural order for learning language skills is listening first, then speaking, followed by reading and finally writing. With this in mind, when you introduce a new word students should repeat it after you several times before focusing on the spelling.

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Spelling in English is so irregular that if students don’t sort out the right pronunciation first they’re likely to come up with a letter-by-letter version of how the word sounds. So get them speaking before they read and write.

Whenever students are speaking, pay attention to their pronunciation. You don’t have to stop them every time they say something incorrectly, but you can make notes and include repetition of problem words in your feedback sessions. You can also collect data for a whole lesson on pronunciation in which you can address recurring errors.

For example, you may notice that words with ‘th’ are routinely pronounced with ‘d’ instead and this may lead to a lesson on analysing the sound, how it’s made and a collection of tongue twisters to practise it.

Repeating as a class and individually

The easiest way to get repetition is to ask for it. Just say ‘Repeat!’ and use gestures to add emphasis. Use your arms like a conductor in front of an orchestra or use your hand to cup behind your ear, indicating that you’re listening to them. Students soon get the hang of it and come to expect it.

All together now

When the whole class repeats together this is called
choral drilling
. Students feel more at ease when they work as a team because embarrassment is reduced. However, just as in a musical ensemble, you need to listen very carefully for anyone who’s ‘out of tune’.

If you hear one poor speaker on the left of the room, ask the students on the right to take a break for a few seconds. Those on the left now work a bit harder because they think that you’re starting to home in on them.

Going solo

Individual drilling
is another option. This means that one student repeats alone. You can run through the students one after the other and diplomatically ask better speakers to correct the errors of weaker ones by modelling the right pronunciation.

Teacher gestures: Weak! Repeat please, weak!

Whole class: Weak!

Teacher: Rashid, weak!

Rashid: Weak!

Teacher (gestures to the next student): Weak!

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Soraya: Wik!

Teacher: Rashid weak!

Rashid: Weak!

Teacher: Soraya?

Soraya: Weak!

Teacher: Good! Sanjay weak . . .

For a sentence, or a word with many syllables, you can use
backchaining.

This means that students repeat the last bit first and then go backwards until they’ve done the whole thing. Take the question ‘What would you like to drink?’

Teacher: Drink!

Class: Drink!

Teacher: Like to drink!

Class: Like to drink!

Teacher: You like to drink!

Class: You like to drink!

Teacher: What would you like to drink?

Using Phonology: Sound and Spelling

The problem with English is that the spelling is rather misleading. Words such as
recipe
and
receipt, tough
and
though
and place names such as Leicester and Southwark are hopelessly illogical for students to pronounce. So, to combat this problem, you use a whole range of symbols, or
phonemes(pronounced ‘foe-neemz’,
which in the symbols I mention is
/

fəυnimz/), to represent every individual sound in this language. They provide a great tool in teaching pronunciation and even in reading the dictionary as most include a phonological transcription. As with many tools, you can get the job done without phonemes and you may find them difficult to use at first, but they do help in the long run. After all, you won’t be around your students forever to correct their pronunciation and if they devise their own system of writing pronunciation you can’t check it for them.

You teach individual phonemes by drawing the symbol on the board, saying the sound many times and asking the students to repeat it. It helps to tell the students which parts of the mouth, neck or other speech organs (perhaps the nasal cavity, which is the space inside and beyond your nostrils) you use to 174
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make the sound and what you do with them. For example, you can tell students to put the tip of their tongue just behind the top of the upper teeth to say /l/. Actually, you can point to the both parts of mouth to make the point.

Getting to know the 44

key sounds of English

Forty-four individual, recognised sounds make up the English language. These are broken down into single vowels, double vowels and consonants. The vowels allow the air to come straight out unobstructed by speech organs –

lips and teeth.

All the phonemes that include two marks like this
are long sounds. For example, compare ‘it’ /it/ and ‘eat’/it/. There’s a long sound in the second word.

The next sections cover the complete list of phonemes with examples.

Focusing on single vowel sounds

A vowel is a sound that comes out of the mouth without any of the speech organs blocking the way. In other words you say them with an open mouth.

Single vowel sounds aren’t joined to any other vowel. In the next section I focus on double vowel sounds.

Phoneme Examples

/i/

tr
ee
,
ea
sy, pl
ea
se

/i/

tr
i
p,
i
s, s
y
nchronise

/u/

f
oo
d, s
ui
t, m
oo
dy

/υ/

p
u
t, w
oo
d, c
oo
k, l
oo
k

/e/

e
xtra, w
e
dding, s
ai
d

//

ea
rly, w
or
d, f
ur
tive

/ə/

aft
er
, import
a
nt,
a
round

/ɔ/

m
ore
, w
a
r,
aw
ful, fl
oor

/ɑ/

m
a
sk, c
ar
,
a
fterwards and

//

m
a
t, pl
ai
t,
a
nimal, w
a
x

/ /

u
nder, c
u
p, s
o
n, th
u
d

/ɒ/ wh
a
t, n
o
t,
o
ctopus, al
o
ng

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175

The phoneme
/
ə
/
is called the
schwa.
It represents the sound that causes the most confusion as it can be represented by so many vowels. However, it only occurs in a syllable that carries no
stress
, or strong emphasis. Some words may include the schwa when the word is not stressed but change the pronunciation when it is stressed. Consider ‘can’ in these two statements, for example:

Can we talk?

Yes we can.

You probably stressed ‘talk’ in the first statement, if you said it at normal speed, and said ‘can’ very quickly using the schwa. In the second statement

‘can’ is stressed a lot more so the schwa changes to /æ/.

Doing double vowel sounds

Double vowel sounds are literally two vowels combined to make one sound.

You have to move your jaw bone to say them and students find them strange so they often exchange a double vowel for a single one. They may pronounce train /tren/ instead of /trein/ However, good use of double vowels really helps in creating a more native sounding accent.

Phoneme Examples

/iə/

e
ar
, b
eer
, m
ere
ly, car
eer

/ei/

m
a
te, w
eigh
t, d
ay
time,
a
ce

/υə/

p
ure
, s
ewer
, cr
ue
l, f
ue
l

/ɔi/

destr
oy
,
oi
ntment, b
oi
ling, b
uoy

/əi/

oh
, ph
o
t
o
, m
o
tor, l
oa
n

/eə/

r
are
, b
ear
, mal
a
ria, h
eir

/ai/

m
y
, w
i
der, st
y
le, p
i
le

/aυ/ l
ou
d, c
ow
, pl
ough
,
ou
ch

Saying consonants

Many of the consonant phonemes look exactly like the alphabet but you need to check, as a significant number may be new to you or misleading. So look at the example words to make sure that the sound matches your expectations.

Take /j/ for example. It’s pronounced like
y
in yacht not
j
in jump.

Different versions of the phonemic chart exist. They always show the same phonemes but in different orders. Say the phonemes out loud in the order I show them here and you notice that they’re grouped according to the speech organs you use to make them. For example /p/ and /b/ both use the upper and lower lips.

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Phoneme Examples

/p/

p
olitics, ha
pp
y, u
p

/b/

b
u
bb
le,
b
urn, ca
b

/t/

dou
bt
, thea
t
re,
t
igh
t

/d/

d
i
d
, woo
d
en, mu
d

/tʃ/

ch
eese, ri
ch
,
ch
eap

/d/

j
u
dg
e, pa
g
e,
g
eneral

/k/

c
oo
k
,
ch
emistry, bi
k
e

//

g
ood, wi
gg
le, bi
g

/v/

v
isit, sto
v
e,
v
oice

/f/

ph
oto, o
ff
, wi
f
e

/θ/

th
umb,
th
irst, ba
th

/ð/

th
is, ei
th
er, fa
th
er

/s/

ps
ychology, ni
c
e,
sc
ent

/z/

wi
s
e, ja
zz
, pha
s
e

/ʃ/

s
ugar,
sh
oot, ma
ch
ine

// mea
s
ure, vi
s
ual, deci
s
ion

Many of the consonant phonemes are paired – voiced and unvoiced. If you were lip reading you’d probably have trouble distinguishing /p/ and /b/, for example, because they both involve the same speech organs (upper and lower lips). However when you put your hand on your larynx (where the adam’s apple is on a man’s neck) and say them aloud, you can feel that voiced /b/

makes it vibrate a lot, whereas unvoiced /p/ does not. So a voiced consonant is a sound that makes the vocal chords vibrate when you say it, whereas there’s no vibration of the vocal chords when you say an unvoiced consonant.

Phoneme Examples

/m/

nu
mb
,
m
ystery, mi
m
e, autu
mn

/n/

n
ow, vai
n
,
gn
ome,
kn
ees

/ŋ/ thi
n
k, la
n
guage, si
n
ger, wri
n
kle

/h/

h
ospital,
h
airstyle,
h
ello,
h
amster

/l/

l
essons, whee
l
,
l
eaf, subt
l
e

/r/

r
omance, bea
r
er,
r
obin,
wr
ong

/w/

w
atch, fe
w
er,
w
eed,
w
asp

/j/

y
ellow,
l
ayer,
y
esterday,
y
am

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Using phonemes in class

If you have a nice, big phonemic chart up in your classroom and you write the phonemic transcription on the board whenever you write a word with potentially problematic pronunciation, your students can pick up sounds as they go along. So you write the word, the part of speech (noun, adjective and so on) and the phonemic transcription:

bomb (n) /bɒm/

to search (v) /stʃ/

You can simply point to phonemes and get the class to repeat the sound after you. This is particularly useful when you use
minimal pairs
. This term refers to the comparison of two words with almost the same pronunciation, except for one sound. Students may not hear the difference unless you demonstrate that there is one, perhaps because that sound isn’t used in their own language.