Korean Job Discussion Forums

Aelric · Joined: 02 Mar 2009

Well, it's a new semester and one of my goals this time around is to improve my middle school students pronunciation. I figure a few 2 minute drills at the beginning and end of lessons should help, but I wondering if there are any websites that you all know of that have any visual aids for where to put the tongue and such. The kids in the back row can't really see my mouth and I fear they will still think I come from SHE-attle instead of Seattle and have gone to RoRRapaRusa instead of lollapalosa despite my best efforts. Any sites with diagrams of tongue and lip placements that I can put on the screen will help.

Thanks in advance to anybody who helps.

lifeinkorea · Joined: 24 Jan 2009 Location: somewhere in China

I wouldn't worry too much about the L's an R's.

pandapanda · Joined: 22 Sep 2007

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

halfmanhalfbiscuit · Joined: 13 Oct 2007 Location: Seoul

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

I'm glad more and more teachers are becoming aware of this site and getting their students to go there for practice.

You'll get a much better presentation by using this url -
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html

Cheers,

DD
http://eflclassroom.com
http://teachingrecipes.com

seonsengnimble · Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 7:00 pm Post subject:

I also find that using hangul can help a lot with pronunciation. Since English tends to be a lot less phonetic, and there are a lot of bad habits the kids learn from hangulized English. One of the easiest fixes, I've found has been in getting them to say z. Usually, in Hangul, z is written as ㅈ, but this causes problems because there's no easy way to go from J to z. So instead I teach them to start with s or ㅆ/ㅅ. I then write the ㅅ squiggly to show that you just take the s sound and vibrate it. "Ok everyone ssssssssss, ok now same sound plus voice sssssss.....zzzzzzz"

Vowels are easier with hangul too.

I find that mouth diagrams are great, but they have limitations. They're really good for l and r, as well as p and f or v and b.

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

This activity is also a slightly unusual but effective way to do pronunciation activities. Silent speaking.

DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

maingman · Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Location: left Korea

Aelric,

http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/

Chambertin · Joined: 07 Jun 2009 Location: Gunsan

Pictograms.
I'm terribly biased here as I hated learning English as an American. I felt the rules to pronunciation were vague to the least. As shown by the plethora of Romanization rules for Korean. I really think there is no standard to our language.

Now that the rant is over. Break down the words by easy things like objects and names. Remember the object here is not English for masters at Yale, but a way to get them over the gap between sounds.

Experiment = x ' spear ' a ' mint
Draw the spear and mint. (gum candy, leaf, whatever works)
This suddenly takes them from WTF chuck to giggle and good sounds.
Investigation = in ' vest ' a ' gay ' shun
Inside, vest, remember the 20�s version of gay, and teach then shun. Turn your back at them and repeat I shun thee in a nice drama voice. Then when the jerks act up spin around and announce you shun them. The smart kids roll in laughter and the moron feels bad again.

Our job isn�t to be a teacher but to break down the language to what they can deal with. We understand, and convey. (that�s my philosophy)
It is so much easier to teach them per what you learned at their age or less, than to use that fancy teaching book.

Then again I'm not after a rising payscale, just a rewarding few years.
I also teach mainly middle school.

lifeinkorea · Joined: 24 Jan 2009 Location: somewhere in China

cruisemonkey · Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:04 pm Post subject:

Demophobe · Joined: 17 May 2004

Juregen · Joined: 30 May 2006

A mix and match is probably the best way to go around.

Relying on one technique often creates dependency on that technique, rather then giving them the "choice" to use what technique fits them best in certain situation.

So, I do all the above Smile

.

Demophobe · Joined: 17 May 2004

seonsengnimble · Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:12 am Post subject:

Bad idea 90% of the time. In fact, this line of reasoning may be well argued to be the root of pronunciation problems.

Why not just teach them voiced S and leave the Hangul out?[/quote]

I avoid hangul most of the time, but I find three advantages of using it. The first is that Hangul is much closer to a phonetic alphabet than the English alphabet is. Yes, the consonants change depending on their position, but the vowels are pretty much always the same, and it's a useful tool.

The second is that students already know hangul inside and out. They understand it and can both hear and see how words are supposed to be pronounced.

The third reason, which is the biggest one, is that by using hangul, I can fix problems that come from them learning pronunciation from hangul. Words like raison are changed from 라이존 to 레이썬. Yes, using hangul is a big part of the pronunciation problems experienced here, but I find it is pretty effective to go back to the source of the problem.

Most of the pronunciation I teach doesn't use hangul, but it's a handy tool to use in addition to basic pronunciation lessons. I can either teach a_e says "ay" or I can do this, use some example words and reinforce it with hangul.