Job Discussion Forums

[themanymoonsofjupiter]

We can look at books describing it, we can do repetition activities, I can bring in stuff from Dave's Idea Cookbook, etc. and my students do fine. they can pronounce /v/ and /ʒ/ in exercises or if i'm specifically grading them on this (and only this). But in everyday speech, the problems are not fixed. My students are pretty advanced, so it's not like I should be happy with the fact that they are speaking at all--most of them can and do speak. I know that this is not easily fixed. But do you have any methods that really do work for eliciting proper pronunciation from the students in all speaking situations?

[Qaaolchoura]

People do not like being corrected, even when they should appreciate it. I corrected a Chinese friend on her pronunciation of "hegemony," and she pointed me to her Chinese-English dictionary which put the stress on the second syllable. I pointed her to Merriam-Webster, but she still argued with me until I found a clip of somebody pronouncing it.

I haven't taught formally yet, but I'll repeat what TESOL teacher told us, since the ILI might have a different approach. Intense drills don't hurt. I can pronounce "orange juice" in French thanks to my TESOL demonstration. Apart from the pronunciation exercises, we should do two things: note what students do and try to work on it, and either echo what they say as a question, or repeat it with correct pronunciation as a statement. (ie. "It's wery good?" or "Yes, it is very good.")

[waxwing]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

My little secret.


When I teach my students oral English, I do it this way:


It is a cat.

When Chinese new learners say it, it comes out like this:

ee-tuh ee-suh a ca-tuh

I write it out like this:

I/ti/sa/cat

And after a few days, they sound DAMN good.

No uh's ....

It works.

[mike w]

[themanymoonsofjupiter]

thanks for the responses so far. i know, i know: continual practice. and i tell them that every time they ask me how to improve oral english. i suppose if i really want them to improve their pronunciation a lot, i'd have to spend a lot more time on pronunciation than my oral english class allows. i just feel like i've done pronunciation a few times, and i really don't see any improvement immediately after we've moved on from that specific topic. sure, i will correct very glaring errors when studes speak, but i generally let them go. maybe if i really care, i would correct most pronunciation errors. i guess i probably still do expect too much progress in one year.

[robotmonkey]

Refer students to:

http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation

It might also help to tell them to perfect any phoneme, it needs to be practised in context at least 30 times.

Also tell them everyone in the world, all us native speakers included, have an accent. It's part of our personalities, and shouldn't be avoided.

Remember, the keys are comprehension and comprehensibility, not sounding exactly like a Brit or American!

[powerrose]

One nice thing to do is to find listening samples from all over the interwebs (one minute english, youtube, BBC English, etc). Its nice for students to repeat with a fresh voice to imitate, and you can repeat along with them and relax a bit.

[modal_particle]

Read up a bit on phonetics, specifically articulatory phonetics. If your students are advanced, they can conceptualize how to make the sounds they're having problems with and be conscious of them.

[sharpe88]

if they are advanced, they should be focusing on stuff like connected speech, reductions, intonation.

I recommend the book American Accent Training