Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (29 page)

sank /sæŋk/ and thank /θæŋk/

hat /hæt/ and hut /h t/

When you compare words, isolate the phonemes and repeat them carefully to raise student awareness so that they make more of an effort to pronounce words as a native speaker would.

If you can include whole sessions on pronunciation in your course, it’s worth supplying the students with mirrors so that they can study the shapes they make with their lips, tongues and mouths when pronouncing the phonemes –

modelling their pronunciation on yours, of course. It’s easier for them to copy you this way.

A cross section of the speech organs is also useful so that you can point to areas at the back or the mouth, for example when you teach /k/.

Adding Emphasis to Words and Syllables

In some languages every syllable you say is equal in emphasis (also called stress) and volume so that no one syllable stands out. In other languages the stress always falls in the same place, perhaps on the first or last syllable in a word. This isn’t the case in English. In TEFL you teach which words stand out and which syllables stand out too.

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Impotent or important? Placing emphasis

on syllables

In addition to the individual sounds or phonemes that make up a word, you also need to know how many syllables there are because if there’s more than one syllable, you need to add stress or emphasis. Incorrect placement of the stress can at times change the meaning and definitely hinders communication.

Take the word ‘export’. It’s a two syllable word (ex + port) and can be used as a verb or a noun. Interestingly when it’s a noun, you stress
ex
, but when it is a verb we stress
port
. Figure 12-1 shows the several ways you can show emphasis on the board.

Figure 12-1:
'export (n) and ex'port (v)

Showing export (n) and export (v)

stressed

syllables. export (n) and export (v)

✓

The accent mark is the style often used in dictionaries.

✓

You can write the stressed syllable bigger and bolder than the unstressed one(s).

✓

If you draw a line above the stressed syllable, put it above the vowel, not a consonant.

Make it a habit to mark the stress on new words and use one of these visual methods as a means of correction too. It’s also fun to illustrate the stressed syllable in an audible way while still allowing the students to work it out. For example, you can show the difference between impotent and important by singing DAdada and daDAda.

Emphasising words

In English, you stress particular words in a sentence more than others, saying them a little louder and with more force. The stressed words are usually those that carry more meaning. Examine the following statements.

Where
were
you
at
six o’clock
?

I was at
home
. I
went
to the
club
at
seven
o’clock.

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179

The stress adds meaning but it also makes the speaker sound more interesting than if that person were to use a flat tone throughout.

Stressing words contributes to the distinct rhythm of the English language.

You can teach it by means of poetry recital or rapping.

Take the well-known rhyme ‘This is the house that Jack built’. If you say it out loud you find it necessary to stress certain words and cram the others in, in order to keep the beat going. Students find this challenging and enjoyable.

This is the
house
that
Jack built
!

This is the
malt
that
lay
in the
house
that
Jack built
.

This is the
rat
that
ate
the
malt

That
lay
in the
house
that
Jack built
.

Notice how quickly you need to say some of the unstressed words. As you stress the words that carry the most meaning and force the other words to fit in, the pronunciation of the unstressed words becomes very contracted.

Students complain that native speakers eat their words but there’s actually a reason for this, which they would do well to imitate.

Improving Fluency through

Pronunciation

Practice makes perfect and this almost true of pronunciation. I say ‘almost’

because the aim in teaching this skill should be clear speech instead of a native-like accent. Very few students lose their accents but most can produce the phonemes reasonably well, except for the odd sticky one.

Reading aloud to the whole class isn’t something you encourage EFL students to do often. It can be rather dull. However, reading aloud in pairs is less embarrassing and keeps everyone busy reading, correcting or encouraging.

Students who’ve learnt the phonemes can correct themselves using the dictionary and they should always put on an English (or other native speaker) voice. By doing so they can move beyond individual words and emphasis and start analysing how we connect words.

Once students start focusing on pronunciation they may overdo it by being precise about every single word. In fact, native speakers often allow words to elide.

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Typically, native speakers pronounce consonants and vowels as though they were joined together. So if a word ends with a consonant and the next begins with a vowel, you pronounce them together. Try this for example: teacher and student

vets and animals

Whereas the /r/ at the end of teacher is usually silent, you can pronounce it before ‘and’ as it begins with a vowel. Similarly, in the second example you allow the ‘s’ of ‘vets’ to connect with ‘and’. Then you connect ‘d’ of ‘and’ with

‘animals’.

Sometimes sounds disappear or change.

✓ Good game: At the end of ‘good’ we can’t pronounce the ‘d’ unless we speak extremely slowly and carefully. At the most we say ‘goog’ because of the influence of the following ‘g’ in ‘game’.

✓

What do you do?: Many native speakers would pronounce /wɒʔdiə/

instead of ‘what do you’. The /ʔ/ represents the glottal stop which is the rather unattractive sound most people make when they stop the air at the back of the throat instead of pronouncing ‘t’ at the end of a word.

These examples highlight the value of sometimes repeating whole sentences at normal speed. Realistic features of the language become evident as long you speak normally and clearly. Use your natural accent to do this and point out alternatives if any obvious ones come up.

Watch Your Tone! – Intonation

Intonation
is the method for indicating whether you’re uttering a sentence or question, or whether you’re in a good mood or bad mood without relying on grammar and vocabulary. When you ask a question your tone tends to rise at the end but when you say a sentence your tone falls at the end to show that you’ve finished it. In addition, far more rises and falls occur when emotions are running high. Happy intonation sounds a little closer to singing. It’s very varied and animated, whereas depressive intonation is very flat. Indeed you can tell a lot about someone’s mood and intention from a single word.

Take a fairly versatile word such as ‘nice’. Different intonation can change the meaning according to the situation.

Take an innocuous question and response:

How about cream tea with the neighbours today?

Nice!

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181

Activities to try

Activities to help your students understand pro-

and
hear.
Say the word and see if students

nunciation, stress and intonation may include

can come up with both spellings and mean-

the following:

ings. You’ll be surprised to find that students

✓

often don’t know that certain words are

Use a map of local train stations and streets

supposed to sound the same.

to practise saying place names. You can

swap the names for phonemes and see if

✓ Have your students put on a mini-play.

students recognise them.

Drama is fun and encourages students to

✓

use good intonation.

Play a homophones games.
Homophones

are words which sound exactly the same

✓ Play ‘I spy’ using phonemes instead of let-

but have different meanings, such as
here

ters of the alphabet.

Imagine how this dialogue sounds in the following cases, especially the response ‘nice’:

✓

A mum is talking to her 14 year-old son who is a computer geek and heavy metal fan.

✓

An elderly man is talking to his wife who’s too ill to travel far.

✓

A woman is talking to a man who’s attracted to her. He had hoped to go for a romantic stroll.

Other words that tend to need intonation to indicate the intention are
okay,
oh
and
fine.

When students do listening exercises from a CD or other media they can then use the tape script to role-play the dialogue themselves, copying the intonation. They may need to go through it line by line, repeating after you or the CD, before trying it out. They can also play games where they each have a versatile word and a meaning or mood to convey. They can take it in turns saying their word while the class guesses the meaning or mood from a choice of options.

When you write utterances on the board, you can indicate the intonation pattern by using arrows, such as those in Figure 12-2.

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You are waiting for me, aren’t you?

Figure 12-2:

Showing ris-

ing or falling

intonation.

You are waiting for me, aren’t you?

In this case, the question tag ‘aren’t you’ with falling intonation can indicate that you know what’s going on. It may be rhetorical. Then again, with rising intonation, it sounds as though you really aren’t sure and need an answer.

Chapter 13

Setting Their Tongues Wagging:

Speaking and Discussion

In This Chapter

▶ Starting the ball rolling

▶ Making the conversation last

▶ Sparking civil discussions

▶ Creating a discussion lesson

Speaking is the most important skill in English language teaching. It’s almost impossible to have true mastery of a language without actually speaking it. So in this chapter, I show you how to get your students chatting, arguing and generally wagging those tongues in English.

Getting Students Talking

In general, to encourage speaking in the early stages of a course and with students who are a little timid, give plenty of guidance on what the conversations should be about. You can give students a list of questions to ask each other or specific topics and lots of language input first. So before the activity gets under way make sure that the class knows the necessary grammar and vocabulary with appropriate examples. In this way students don’t have to think about what to say, only how to say things. Set speaking tasks for pair group work as often as possible. The tasks should have clear aims and involve taking turns, so say ‘Find out what your partner thinks about X and make some notes’, rather than just telling them to discuss X. The advantage is that the students are more aware of the need to get the other person’s view instead of talking about themselves the whole time.

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Warming up

Anyone who speaks a foreign language knows that if you don’t use it, you lose it. It’s easy to get rusty. And if your mind is full of other matters such as your job, the bills or your love life, it’s even harder to get your brain in gear.

This is no less true of your students. In between lessons they may forget what they’ve learnt or they may just be distracted by life. This is where the warmer comes in. The
warmer
is a very short activity that gets the students acclimatised after the previous lesson. Most warmers are for speaking.

Some of my favourite warm-up activities are:

✓

Last letter, first letter:
This simple game also tests spelling. It works best if the students are in a circle. Basically, one person starts the game by saying a word and the next person has to come up with another word beginning with the last letter of the previous one.

A chain of words my students recently came up with is: apple, elephant, taxi, interesting, girl, little, eggs, sugar, robot, train.

As the students get better at the game and improve in their vocabulary, they develop strategies for catching their classmates out by including lots of words that end with the same letter or with a difficult letter like ‘x’.

✓

The supermarket game:
This very well-known game involves building up a list of items bought at the supermarket. When it’s your turn you have to remember all the items on the list in the right order and then add one more.

To make it more challenging, you can ask students to attach an adjective to their item, usually starting with the same letter. For example: I went to the supermarket and I bought a crazy camera.

I went to the supermarket and I bought a crazy camera and a

meaty meal.

I went to the supermarket and I bought a crazy camera, a meaty meal and a lovely loaf.

✓

Assemble a sentence:
Sometimes I write a sentence, perhaps with a connection to the lesson for that day, using a different card for each word.

I shuffle the cards and give one or two to each student. Then I ask the students to get together and negotiate the correct word order for the sentence.