Teacher Discussion Forums

[Julia]

Hi,
My students need help - their English does not sound like English - just like translated Chinese . Does anyone have any tried and tested lessons on linking/sentence stress? Or know any good weblinks??? I need some ideas. Cheers !!!

[Lorikeet]

You might want to take a look at these discussion items on this forum:

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=709

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=486

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=421

And for American English, take a look at Clear Speech by Judy Gilbert (Cambridge University Press)

[Julia]

Cheers - there's alot of info there -especially liked the Jazz Chant!

[Echidna]

Ah, linking -- easy enough to understand, but dang hard for my students to smoothly use. For most of us, it's an unconscious thing -- "I turn_don the radio" but for my students, it's somewhat of a nightmare. I too would love to hear any ideas about teaching linking. Lorikeet recommended three excellent previous threads; I found the first thread to be particularly helpful.

I've found that many phrasal verbs are great for practicing linking, since most of these verbs are followed by vowel-beginning prepositions (or more accurately, particles.) That is, the verb usually ends with a consonant sound, followed by a vowel sound from the particle. Also with the added bonus that phrasal verbs are just, well... important (and fun) to know.

Turned on -- turn_don
break up -- brea_kup
turn in -- tur_nin
cut off -- cu_toff
hang up -- hanng_gup
heard about -- her_dabout

Does anyone have any great ideas to further the teaching of LINKING? I know in an earlier thread, someone wrote about teaching "The boy_zar in Mali" which I think is an excellent idea.

thanks in advance for your help!

[tomtoledo]

Echidna wrote recently:

I've found that many phrasal verbs are great for practicing linking

Turned on -- turn_don
break up -- brea_kup
turn in -- tur_nin
cut off -- cu_toff
hang up -- hanng_gup
heard about -- her_dabout (end of quote from Echidna)

If you would like to have your students hear lots of examples of this, you might want them to check out the Phrasal Verbs listening activities at

www.englishzoom.com

It's a content-based grammar / listening practice site. Grammar practice activities are related to a story, which your students can also read and listen to online. Activities include mixers, story boards, filll-in, and multiple choice activities -- all designed to be fun. Students can email you from each page as they do it, so you'll know what they've done.

I've just completed 14 activities featuring phrasal verbs, and I'd love to have people enjoying themselves learning with them. English Zoom also includes practice activities on noun and adjective clauses and gerunds and infinitives

Please give the site a look. Check out the teachers' information page, too.