Universidad Latina Graduate Studies Eric Contreras Some Tips to Teach Pronunciation for Teachers According to Wikipedia, pronunciation

refers to the ability to use the correct stress, rhythm, and intonation of a word in a spoken language. Pronunciation is very important because it helps people to avoid misunderstandings. Also it is the first thing that native speakers of any language notice in a conversation, and if you make any grammatical mistake, and you pronounce words well; native speakers will understand you despite you have made a grammatical mistake. Therefore, pronunciation is very important for successful language communication. My perspective to teach pronunciation is a combination of the audio-lingual approach and the communicative approach by taking into account some principles such as are having a suitable curriculum, being student-centered, helping learners become self-reliant, giving opportunities to practice and assessing pronunciation by having a diagnostic evaluation, a self-feedback, a teachers feedback, a peer feedback, classroom achievement tests. ID: 8-801-1241

My perspective to teach pronunciation is a combination of the audio-lingual approach and the communicative approach. In the audio-lingual approach, pronunciation is taught from beginning. The teacher is the model for the sounds and the students imitate or repeat. Furthermore, the teacher uses phonetic symbols to represent sounds and charts that show the articulation of the sounds. In this approach, teachers employ techniques such as the minimal pair drill, listening discrimination and reading. In the minimal pair drill, words that are distinguished by a single sound in the same position are used. For instance, the minimal pairs /iy/ and /I/ in the words beat and bit, bin and been and others. In the listening discrimination, students listen to a recording about minimal pairs or the teacher, and they are asked to say if the words are the same or not. Afterwards, students have a guided oral production in which they read the minimal pairs individually. On the other hand, in the communicative approach, using the language to communicate is the vital thing of this method, and achieving an intelligible pronunciation. Besides, there are several techniques to be used in this approach such as listen and imitate, phonetic training, contextualized minimal pairs, visual aids, tongue twisters, developmental approximation drills, practice of vowels

Universidad Latina Graduate Studies Eric Contreras ID: 8-801-1241

shifts and stress shift related by affixation, reading aloud/recitation, and recording of learning production. In listening and imitating, students listen to the teacher and imitate what he says and also have the opportunity to listen to CDs, tapes or watch videos. In the phonetic training, students study how to articulate sounds by looking at diagrams. In minimal pairs drills, students are given a set of words which have difficult sounds, and they should listen and discriminate sounds. In contextualized minimal pairs, the teacher sets a situation and shows the vocabulary so that students select the word that they listen to. Visual aids help the students to distinguish sounds in charts, and identify the words by looking at the pictures. In developmental approximation skills, students are taught on how to acquire sounds step by step as children do. In practicing vowel shifts and stress shifts related by affixation, teachers show students the difference between words that are closely related by etymology in the stress. In reading aloud/recitation, students read passages and scripts loudly by emphasizing on stress, timing and intonation. In the recordings of learners production, students voices are recorded to be checked by the teacher and peers, and then they provide feedback on the recordings. Some principles to be considered when teaching pronunciation are having a suitable curriculum, being student-centered, helping learners become self-reliant, giving opportunities to practice. Having a suitable curriculum is very important for teaching pronunciation, so we start from the basic concepts and then we develop complex concepts. Therefore, the curriculum is based on the needs of the people who are going to listen to the learners. We should have the following order for teaching pronunciation: word and sentence stress syllable structure (final consonants, consonant clusters), vowel length distinctions, major consonant distinctions (those with a high functional load, eg. S/sh, f/p), vowel quality distinctions, minor consonant distinctions (those with a low functional load, eg. Th, v/w) Teachers should be student-centered by not only giving the true information but also to re-conceptualize speech. Teachers should know how to convey the information to learners in order that they can employ and act upon, and they ought to provide relevant and meaningful information to their students; consequently, from the beginning the teacher should use phrases, words and sentences that learners can use outside the classroom and teachers should use guidelines to detect students problems. Teachers should help learners to become self-reliant by telling them that

Universidad Latina Graduate Studies Eric Contreras ID: 8-801-1241

pronunciation comprises thinking and doing, understanding the help that their listeners need such as speaking slowly, pronouncing sounds well and speaking loudly enough in order that their listeners can process the information well. Furthermore, giving opportunities to practice in the pronunciation class is vital for our students, and encouraging them even if they feel ashamed with their pronunciation. There are many ways on how to assess pronunciation which are having a diagnostic evaluation, a self-feedback, a teachers feedback, a peer feedback, and classroom achievement tests. Diagnostic evaluation is very essential for any pronunciation course to have the right direction. In this kind of evaluation, you determine the learners level of proficiency by making your students record themselves, then listening to each recording and detect mistakes and weaknesses in the pronunciation of your students. In self-feedback, students indicate their own mistakes on pronunciation in a silent way by using gestures, pronunciation correction signs and charts. Also, their speeches can be recorded by using audio or video formats and then checked by the students with the help of a self-analysis sheet. It is useful to use peers as both monitors and givers of feedback. One way to do this is to have students work in groups of three or four so that two or three listeners are available to determine if the speaker has pronounced the utterance correctly. Using group members as listeners involves more students as speakers allowing the teacher to freely monitor different groups. It also lets students practice both pronunciation and listening discrimination skills. Teacher feedback during classroom activities is helpful for the teacher to keep notes of the errors made for later correction. The teachers principal role is to call attention to errors as unobtrusively as possible, thus giving learners the opportunity to begin applying the rules of pronunciation they are learning in order to monitor their own speech more effectively. Classroom achievement tests focus on the material taught and are used to indicate student progress and achievement. The scope of a classroom test is usually much narrower than that of a diagnostic test, since the areas to be tested are determined by what has been emphasized in class. Classroom tests occur at different times during the course and often measure achievement in a limited area. Pronunciation can be evaluated by using the following tools: rubrics, checklists and charts and discrimination tests.

Universidad Latina Graduate Studies Eric Contreras ID: 8-801-1241

Finally, pronunciation is the most important skill to teach because it allows you to articulate sounds in words and sentences in a correct manner to achieve your listeners understanding although you make a grammatical mistake, a good pronunciation will allow listeners to understand you. The best approaches to teach pronunciation are the audio-lingual approach and the communicative approach because they have a lot of strategies to teach pronunciation and the last approach is the modern trend. When teaching pronunciation, it is very essential to have diagnostic tests in order to determine what our students need and write a curriculum by including word and sentence stress syllable structure, vowel length distinctions, major consonant distinctions, vowel quality distinctions, minor consonant distinctions and going from basic things on pronunciation to the complex ones. We can use several tools such as rubrics, discrimination tests, checklists and charts to assess our students pronunciation in the classroom.

Bibliography Celce-Murcia M. Donna M. and Goodwin J. (1996) Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge University Press, United States. Celce-Murcia M. (2001) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Heinle & Heinle, United States. Lane, L. (2000) Focus on Pronunciation. Addison Wesley Publishing Company, Reading. Massachusetts, United States. Fraser H. (2001) Teaching Pronunciation: A Handbook for Teachers and Trainers. Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs of Australia, Australia.

Webliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation

Universidad Latina Graduate Studies Eric Contreras ID: 8-801-1241