Job Discussion Forums

[Guy Courchesne]

Well, tongue twisters for me offer a bit of relief in the class for one. Second, I'll agree with other posters that can be used to isolate and practice difficult pronunciation patterns.

Since I stage my classes as such: Introduction, Practice, Communicative Activity - tongue twisters would only be used in the controlled practice stage, and not necessarily for communicative output. Since much of English pronunciation boils down to simple physical exercise of the shaping of the mouth, tongue, teeth, etc, etc, tongue twisters are like warm up stretching, to get the student physcially familiar with how the sounds and words 'feel'.

[moonraven]

Why not practice those elements which are difficult to pronounce in a natural context?

If the goal is to communicate, that makes a whole lot more sense to me.

Language learning is not an exercise in fragmentation--but one of integration (putting it all together, not taking it all apart.)

[Guy Courchesne]

I fully agree, when we are talking about cognitive abilities. Pronunciation I see as a different beast though.

When I stage a class...introduction brings up context, shows grammar and vocabulary in natural context, aims to prep the students for the skills to be worked on and anticipates the output expected.

During the course of introduction, which is often a receptive activity, I the teacher will locate areas of grammar and vocab that I would like to run through the course of the whole, ideally targetted just above the students abilities.

During practice, I'd like to anticipate expected communicative output, so, we work in chunks on info gap activities, q & a practice, debate, whatever the theme runs around, incorporating the target grammar and vocab. It is here in practice that pronunciation difficulties can arise. As I would like to model some good pronunciation for the students, I need a method to treat it outside of the cognitive or conceptual output goals for later in the class. The idea for me is not to have the students too concerned about pronunciation during communicative activities, nor ignoring it completely.

I've found that fear of pronouncing words incorrectly is one of the most common blocks to communication when a Spanish-speaking student is communicating with a native-speaker (teacher or otherwise). Building confidence in good pronunciation activities helps me get the students comfortable with speaking freely.

Since I treat it as a physical activity, the students can separate their pronunciation and communicative output comfortably. I've had lots of success with it, though there may be other ways to work on it.

How do/would you work on pronunciation?

[leeroy]

[moonraven]

Guy,

I don't "work on" anything. My classes are student-centered. They do the work.

I let other students correct faulty pronunciation when it interferes with communication--or as a very last resort will elicit corrections.

The only time I have even offered extended pronunciation activities is when I have been preparing students for the listening sectionof the TOEFL--and I combine those activities with physical coordination activities to reinforce learning and keep folks (and me) from falling off our chairs into a coma.

[Guy Courchesne]

Fair enough.

I've tried student-student pronunciation correction, with little success. Someone has to provide a proper model as one student error will be reinforced to the second student this way, in my experience. and I HATE tapes/CDs.

I'm the kind of language learner that does fairly well auto-didactically in pronunciation...often through trial and error, but many students do struggle greatly with it. I can see how TOEFL listening would be a good place to bring pronunciation practice/communication into the flow.

[merlin]

moonraven -
you're assuming that just because you don't like toungue twisters your students won't. Well maybe they won't. Maybe they will.

But some people and many students like them - at least for a short time, not a whole 60 minutes, of course.

There's a certain joy to rolling various sounds around in the mouth, and a humor to saying something naughty whlie vainly attempting to say another thing.

Moreover, there can be a linguistic goal that is more pleasant to practice than tedious pronunciation drills.

TOEFL is irrelevant in much of the world.

Of course you're free to have your differing opinion. I'm just explaining mine. I rarely do tongue-twisters, but on occaasion they can be fun and useful.

[Glenski]

[moonraven]

Glenski,

It's a simple matter of showing respect for your students to elicit corrections from them.

[shmooj]

[moonraven]

Shmooj: It's not a question of panaceas, in my opinion. I feel very strongly that all classes should be student-centered.

The other option is teacher-centered. I have observed some of those classes where the teacher was the authority figure and the star, and I saw very little learning taking place.

Merlin wrote:

"TOEFL is irrelevant in much of the world."

It is VERY relevant in the hemisphere in which I teach. It is required here in Mexico for admission to a number of high schools and universities (especially the TEC de Monterrey system). It is also required for foreign students for admission to US universities.

It is also not very different from other English language tests required in the UK, Europe, etc.

As a test, merlin, it may be irrelevant where you are--BUT the skills that are being tested by it are NOT irrelevant.

[moonraven]

XXX

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Thank you.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

It is my opinion that students cannot correct someone's when they themselves don't know what's correct. Here in India, my students have been speaking their form English for a good part of their lives, so they have no idea what's "wrong" with how something is being said.

[Glenski]