Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 @Lake School
Email:enquiries@englishinoxford.com
2 @Lake School
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A Pronunciation Journey
Aim of the activity To practise minimal pair phonemes which your students find hard to distinguish Preparation Suitable minimal pairs (words with a single phoneme difference). For instance, for Italians the pairs could be /i:/ and /I/: sheep/ship cheap/chip beat/bit Look in Ship or Sheep? By Ann Baker for inspiration. Copy The Pronunciation Journey handout (given in the session) for each student. Procedure Present the two phonemes to be identified. For the first phoneme the students must move to the left and for the second phoneme they must move to the right. As you say one word from a minimal pair, the students must move to the left or right of the journey depending on the phoneme. There are 4 junctions. At each junction you say another word and the students move their fingers accordingly. At the end, all of the students should be on holiday in the same country as you. Students can also play this game in pairs, one as the teacher and one as the student. Variations To quickly check that students can identify the different phonemes ask them to put their thumbs up if it is the first phoneme or down if it is the second. Students stand up and jump to the right if it is the first phoneme or to the left if it is the second phoneme.
Phoneme poems
Aim of the activity To practise difficult phonemes by chanting Preparation Pictures of the phonemes you would like to practise. Procedure Hold up the picture. Identify everything in the picture and then say the rhyme asking the students to repeat it as a whole group and then in smaller groups and then individually. For instance: 3 @Lake School Email:enquiries@englishinoxford.com
Its a cat, sitting on a mat, looking at a rat, wearing a hat. Ask the students to draw their own pictures and put them up on the wall.
Four in a row
Aim of the activity To practise regular past simple endings - /t/ /d/ /id/ Preparation Draw a five by five grid on the board and ask students to give you 25 regular verbs that you then write in each square in the bare infinitive. You will also need some dice. (Or use the handout from the session). Procedure Split the class into two groups, X and 0. Give each group a dice. If they throw a 1 or a 2 they must identify a verb with a /t/ ending. If they throw a 3 or a 4 they must identify a /d/ ending and if they throw a 5 or a 6 they must identify an /id/ ending. They then say an appropriate verb and get either an X or 0 in that box. If they make a mistake they miss a turn. The winner is the group that gets 4 Xs or 0s in a row. The row can be vertical, horizontal or diagonal. Alternative The same activity can be adapted to practise plural noun/3rd person s endings: /s/,/z/, /z/.
4 @Lake School
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Acting stress
Aim of the activity To make students aware of the importance of word stress by using Total Physical Response. It is also a good team game. Preparation You need a variety of nouns with different word stress patterns. 5 @Lake School Email:enquiries@englishinoxford.com
Procedure Put the class into groups of 4 or 5 and give them a word. The students then have to stand in a suitable stress formation from left to right, which depicts this word. For instance, for the word photography four of the students would have to stand up in a line with the first, third and last person crouching down and the second person standing up straight. The person standing up represents the main stress of the word. The teacher puts one word on the board and the groups have to stand in the correct formation and say the word with the correct stress. The first team to do so gets a point. A variation on this game is to extend the activity into sentence stress where each student is a word not a syllable. As an extension to this, students can link arms if they think their words are linked to each other.
Preparation You need clear diagrams of different stress patterns put up on the wall. One effective way to represent stress is by using circles: a big circle for the main stress and little circles for the weak stresses. Procedure Split the class into two teams and ask a member of each team to stand up. Write a word on the board and the students have to run and touch the correct stress pattern diagram. The first student to touch the correct pattern wins a point for their team. This game can be adapted to include word stress patterns.
patterns are more difficult than others, so to keep the game moving, dont give a piece of paper to every student in the circle (maybe just 5 out of 7, for example). This helps avoid gridlock!
Intonation
A notoriously difficult area of phonology to teach, intonation is often ignored in course books. However, it is crucial to try to strengthen our students understanding of this area. Even if they struggle to reproduce the appropriate tone at first, it is their listening skills that will benefit initially. It often makes sense to teach intonation with sentence stress. English has a falling tone, generally, but we also raise and snake our tone too. Get students to mimic your tone, or that of a recording. Repetition will help. Get students to identify the rise and fall, or snake of a tone, by drawing the appropriate arrow on the key tone in a sentence. Get students to record themselves. This is a really effective way of helping them improve their tone. They could write or copy dialogues before identifying stressed syllables, weak sounds, link and tone. You could use the Night at the Park End Club dialogue that we used in the session, or write your own.
Some language areas to introduce intonation: Question tags Short answers Showing interest Contradicting Sarcastic remarks
Cashier: Put all the what into the bag? Robber: Put all the MONEY into the bag! Cashier: Put all of my money in to the back? Robber: No, put all the money into the BAG! Cashier: Where should I put it? Robber: Into the BAG! Cashier: Now, where should I put the bag? Robber: Give it to me! Cashier: Im sorry, I dont think I can do that! Procedure Ask the students to read the dialogue in pairs and get a sense of the meaning. Ask them how the robber feels (increasingly frustrated!) and what is the attitude of the cashier (playing stupid!). In pairs, ask them to identify which words will be stressed and whether the tone will rise, fall or snake. Check their answers on the board, then ask them to practise before inviting a few pairs to perform in front of the class.
Sound bites
Aim of the activity To practise producing the appropriate tone Preparation Copy the following table of prompts for each student. TONE annoyed bored excited mildly interested very happy sarcastic annoyed anticipating bored annoyed please continue bored thinking aloud creating suspense impatient what happened next? shocked annoyed EXCLAMATION Really
a) b) c) d) a) b) c) a) b) c) a) b) c) d) a) b) c) d)
Brilliant So And
Well
9 @Lake School
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Procedure Say each exclamation to the class in one of the tones and ask them to identify which one you were using. N.B. This is not easy, so try it out with your colleagues first! Get the students to write the exclamation next to the tone they think you used. For further practice, invite a student to say one of the exclamations in a chosen tone and see if the rest of the class agree. Continue this process in pairs, whilst monitoring. N.B. There are some really good intonation activities in some of the books in the bibliography at the end of this section. Look in Mark Hancocks books: Pronunciation Games (particularly exercises C7, C8, C9 & C10) and English Pronunciation in Use (especially Unit 54).
Linking
Understanding and recreating links between words in English, improves fluency and listening skills. As with the other areas of phonology above, get in the habit of indicating the links on new chunks of language.
Link Maze
Aim of the activity To practise identifying intrusive sounds
10 @Lake School
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Preparation Copy the Link Maze handout from the session for each student (taken from Pronunciation Games by Mark Hancock, CUP; exercise C1). You may like to make an extra copy to show on an OHP or scan it, so you can project it from your computer. This helps with the set-up of the activity and when checking the answers. Procedure Elicit the meaning of a maze and explain that the students have to escape from this link maze using the correct exit (exit O). Explain that the students have to identify the intrusive sound that links the words in each grid square. This will determine the direction they take next. For example, /j/ (or /y/ as the book writes confusingly) = turn left, /w/ = go straight on and /r/ = turn right. It is very important to note that these directions are relative to the side that you enter the square from! So, for example, if you are heading east and turn right, then you will be heading south. Hand out a maze to each student; however, they might like to work in pairs as this activity is quite challenging. Monitor closely and check that theyve understood the direction rules. Set a time limit of 20 minutes. Check the final solution with the whole class. For further practice, you could create your own maze with phrases from your course in a blank version of the handout. N.B. Once again, there are some useful linking activities in some of the books in the bibliography at the end of this section. Look in English Pronunciation in Use (especially Units 38 and 39).
Interactive phonemic chart: www.onestopenglish.com/upload/public/attachments/37/osephonemicchart.s wf British Council pronunciation lesson ideas: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/pronunciation
12 @Lake School
Email:enquiries@englishinoxford.com