Here are some helpful tips we've compliled about teaching. We hope they prove useful. If you have any other suggestions of comments, please contact us.
Combining vocabulary revision with pronunciation
One way to ensure students can identify and recognise a particular sound is to play this game based on individual sounds or phonemic symbols.
Get the students standing in a circle or a series of circles. They are then given a sound, for example the 'ee' from sheep. They are also given a semantic field, for example, Parts of the Body, and they must throw a ball to each other whilst giving a word with the that particular sound, for example, cheek. The person who catches the ball then throws it to someone else in the group and gives another part of the body with that particular sound, for example, knee. If someone says the word chin, for example, they have to sit down. The winner is last one standing. They are also practising vocabulary, of course.
Homophone story
Homophones, as we all know, are two or more words which have a different spelling but the same pronunciation, for example, son and sun. One way to make the presentations of homophones more interesting is their inclusion in an amusing or interesting story. Students read the story and have to identify and correct the homophones. Here is a brief example :
Eye woke up this morning and went too have breakfast. As usual, I had to eggs and sum bacon. I looked out of the window to see what the whether was like. The son was shining, witch was amazing, because it had been raining all knight etc etc etc
Okay, so this story was neither amusing nor interesting, but it should give you an idea of how to do it!
Phonetic dominoes
Are
your students bored with boring pronunciation exercises? Try this as a possible
solution. We all know the game dominoes. Well, this is a phonetic equivalent,
where, instead of having to find a six to go with a six, students groupings of,
say, three or four, find a word of one particular sound to go next to another
of the same sound. They will need to pronounce the words to each other
in
order to check their suitability. The correct solution sees the pieces of paper
forming a ring.
home yellow
young cup
love three
think
out
house
caught
horse
flower
flour
put
good
then
that food
rude cheap
feet could
wood hair
tear
sick
lip
noun
doubt
third
word
phone
own
rely
rubber length
Practising sentemnce stress and intonation
Write the following sentences on the board :
1. I think Oxford is so boring!
2. I don't believe it!
3. I'm feeling a bit depressed today.
4. My father doesn't like my new boyfriend.
5. I think you're lying.
Now what you do is hum one of the sentences. Students must identify the sentence that you are humming by listening to the sentence stress and the intonation and matching it to one of the sentences above. You try it. You'll find that you actually say the words in your head, trying to match the intonation. When you get the right one, you know it instantly. This makes students more aware iof the importance of sentence stress and intonation in spoken English. It can be made more difficult by making the sentences oif a similar length, for example:
1. My father, who died last week, left me ?1 million!
2. My brother went down the pub; he was very depressed
3. The farmer who lost all his sheep has sold his business.
Shortened sentences
To sensitize students to the idea that meaning can be judged largely by intonation can be illustrated by this conversation, which you can record on tape, and get the students to guess what the situation is, then get them to practise and expand what?s there. Here is an example :
"Hi."
"Hi."
"New."
"Yes. You?"
"No."
"Good school?"
"Very."
"City?"
"Okay."
"Night."
"Cool."
"Discos?"
"Yes."
