Job Discussion Forums

[Marmalade]

Yipee, I am almost at the end of the 1st week of my CELTA course, and all is going well

I have an assignment due for mon, and was wanting to ask if anyone could give a little help?

I have an upper intermediate Thai women, who has a very good understanding of English and can speak it well.

She does however have a fair amount of difficulty with her pronunciation.

I'm to suggest activities/ways/etc etc to help her improve on this area.

Does anyone know of any good websites/resources or anything that might throw up some good ideas.

All help is appreciated.

Cheers

M

[spidey]

I don't know of any websites but I may have a suggestion for you...

Learning to formulate sounds by using your mouth and tongue are equal to learning any given sport or physical activity.

Let's use tennis as an example:

When you first start to learn tennis the ball is constantly being hit in every direction. Your intention is to hit it within the lines but your muscles haven't yet learned how to do that. Once you learn the basic strokes, then you can start to get the feel of the ball. Once your muscles have become accustomed to the new forms being taught, it's just a matter of time before you can start to refine your technics.

The muscles around the mouth are like any old muscles. They must first learn how to move before they can expect to perform a technic correctly.
With my adult students, I give them homework to do in front of the mirror. I teach them the proper shape of the mouth and location of the tongue when doing any given phonetic sound. I ask them to practice at home using the mirror. I also say that in the next class we will be reviewing the same sounds. I know if the have been practicing simply by seeing if they have improved on their pronunciation and formulation of the sounds. Surprisingly, most of the students do practice and they are very happy to be making progress in an area that is so difficult.

Once you explain the concept of teaching the mouth what to do, the students respond well and understand the validity of the practice.

good luck

S

[Marmalade]

Class idea!

Thankyou

M

[struelle]

If you're trying to dig for answers on your upcoming assignment #1 which is due on Mon, then sorry I can't help you. Websites are good, but every learner of English has their own unique situation. Why not interview the woman specifically about the pronunciation difficulties she has and the strategies she's tried to overcome them? If she is upper-intermediate, then she no doubt has the 'meta-cognitive skills' (self-awareness of language learning) needed to analyze her own learning and can express how she deals with the problems.

From what she says, you can cross-reference it to the language she produces. Thus, if there's a problem with /th/ and /t/, it may come across if you hear, "I tink ...' or 'Tank you'

/t/ vs. /th/ is one common difficulty, another is /r/ vs /l/. The /v/ sound isn't always easy to produce either. But not all Thais struggle with that, as I said it depends on the person.

As for suggestions, one idea is to prepare an activity (controlled practice is best) that emphasizes some distinct motor difference between the two problem sounds. Where do you place your tongue when you say /th/? What about /t/? How can you design an activity so the student notices the difference? What feedback can you give the student?

Steve