英语教学法3.课件整理

Unit 6 Teaching Pronunciation

1. The role of pronunciation in language learning.

2. The goal of teaching pronunciation.

3.The aspects of pronunciation we need to teach.

4. The ways to help student to improve pronunciation.

6.1 The role of pronunciation

Why do learners make pronunciation errors?

The importance of pronunciation

What should be taught to the beginners, pronunciation or phonetic?

When should we teach phonetic?

1. Why do learners make pronunciation errors?

A particular sound may not exist in the mother tongue, so that the learners are not used to forming it and therefore tends to substitute the nearest equivalent he or she knows.

A sound does exist in the mother tongue, but not as a separate phoneme---the learner does not perceive it as a distinct sound that makes a difference to meaning.(sheep/ship)

The learners have the actual sounds right, but have not learnt the stress patterns of the word or group of words, or they are using an intonation from their mother tongue which is inappropriate to the target language.

What should be taught to the beginners, pronunciation or phonetic?

Pronunciation is more important than phonetic. Stress and intonation are as important as the sounds themselves and should be taught from the very beginning.

Whether pronunciation needs special attention or focus in language teaching depends on many factors especially learner factors.

Learners whose native language has similar sounds to English are less likely to have problems with pronunciation.

Learners who have more exposure to English need less focus on pronunciation.

Adult learners need more focus on pronunciation because they are more likely to substitute English sounds with sounds from their native language.

Beginning Chinese learners of English should focus on pronunciation and their ability to identify and produce English sounds themselves, because phonetic transcripts are more abstract and less meaningful.

3. When should we teach phonetic?

Phonetic rules regarding what sounds a letter or a cluster of letters should be pronounced are helpful for students to develop the ability to cope with English pronunciation and they should be introduced at a suitable stage. Beginners of English, specially young learners, should be avoided to teach phonetic.

Stress and intonation are as important as the sounds themselves and should be taught from the very beginning.

In the example below, different intonations for “Sorry” indicate different meanings. A neutral tone would indicate a normal apology. However, a sharp falling tone or a rising tone would mean the opposite.

6.2 The goal of teaching pronunciation

What’s considered as a good pronunciation?

Why most learners of English as a foreign language cannot acquire native-like English pronunciation?

Critical period hypothesis

The realistic goal of teaching Pronunciation.

1. What’s considered as a good pronunciation?

A good pronunciation means:

1) to pronounce correctly all the speech sounds of the language and all the combinations in their proper order not only isolated words, but also in sentences;

2) to pronounce sentences fluently at the speed required by the situation with correct stresses, linking of sounds, rhythm, pauses and intonation.

As a matter of fact, most Chinese learners of English do not have enough exposure to English to acquire native-like pronunciation.

2. Why most learners of English as a foreign language cannot acquire native-like English pronunciation?

Critical period hypothesis

The amount of exposure to English

Individual ability.

Critical Period Hypothesis

According to Chomsky’s theory, if humans do not learn a foreign language before a

certain age, then due to changes such as maturation of the brain and speech organs, it becomes impossible to learn the foreign language like a native speaker.

2) The amount of exposure to English

It is another factor that determines if the students can acquire native-like English pronunciation. At the present time, most Chinese learners of English do not have enough exposure to English to acquire native-like pronunciation.

6.3 Aspects of Pronunciation

Pronunciation

Sounds

Stressed /unstressed

syllables

Intonation

Stress

Task 2 Mark the stress for the following words.

important complain medicine interpretation

thirteen advertisement import record

1. Single Stress i.e. important , complain, medicine

2. Main stress and secondary stress i.e. interpretation

3. Double stress i.e. thir teen, Chi nese

4. Varieties of English i.e. advertisement (Br. E)

advertisement(Am. E)

5. Stress shifts i.e. import (n.), import (v.)

record (n.), record (v.)

6. Stress for emphasis i.e. I’m a teacher because I like people.

7. Sentence stress: content words vs. structural words

Intonation

1. Falling intonation

(statements, special questions, exclamation, commands)

2. Rising intonation

(general questions, requests, remarks of concern and

apology, partings)

3. Combined intonation

(tag questions, compound sentences)

Read the following sentences:

You haven’t finished, / have you?

Where there is a will, / there is a way.

She can speak fairly well,/ but by no means perfect.

6.4 Practising sounds

Perception practice

Using minimal pairs

Which order?

Same or different?

Odd man out

Completion

Production practice

Listen and repeat

Fill in the blanks

Make up sentences

Use meaningful context

Use pictures

Use tongue twisters

Perception practice

Perception practice is aimed at developing the students’ ability to identify and distinguish between different sounds. Correct perception of sounds is vital for listening comprehension. Below are some examples of perception practice of English sounds.

Using minimal pairs.

Minimal pairs are two words which have only one different sound. The teacher reads either word of each pair and asks the students to tell which word is read. Here are some examples of

2. Which order?

The teacher reads each group of words in different order and the students mark the words with 1, 2, 3 .

The teacher can read the words several times in different order.

Here is an example:

pit pet bet bear tear ear

1 3

2

3 1 2

beard beer bear

2 1 3

3. Same or different

The teacher reads pairs of words and asks the students to tell if the pairs of words are the same or different.

The words should not be written out.

Here is an example(D for “different” and S for “same”):

met meet (D)

well well (S)

well will (D)

4. Odd one out

The teacher reads a group of words a time and the students identify the different word or sound. The words are not written out.

Below are some examples:

bit bit bit pit (No.4 is different.)

lid led lid lid (No. 2 is different.)

bag bag back bag (No. 3 is different.)

5. Completion

The teacher reads a series of words which have only one different sound. The students complete the words they hear.

Here is an example:

_ate _ate _ate _ate _ate _ate _ate _ate

For the words:

gate late mate fate date hate rate and Kate

Production practice

Production practice is aimed at developing students’ ability to produce sou nds. Producing distinct and understandable sounds is very important for effective communication.

Here are some types of production practice activities:

Listen and repeat

Fill in the blanks

Make up sentences

Use meaningful context

Use pictures

Use tongue twisters

Listen and repeat

The students repeat what the teacher says, the content with taps or the English songs.

This activity can practice individual sounds, words, and sentences.

Fill in the blanks

The students fill in the blanks in sentences with words which contain certain sound.

Here is an example:

a. Children love to ____ games.

b. Black and white make ____.

c. After April comes ____.

d. Hurry up. Don’t be ____for school.

e. We study in the same class.

We are _________.

Make up sentences

The students are given a group of words containing the same sound or similar sounds.

They should make up sentences as many from the given words as possible.

The sentences do not have to be realistically meaningful and logical.

Humourous sentences are preferred.

Use meaningful context

The sounds to focus on are embedded in a meaningful context and students perform meaning tasks.

Students can role play the dialogue:

A: What’s wrong with you, Ann?

B: I hate this horrible job.

A: What job?

B: Washing socks.

A: What do you want to do?

B: I want a holiday.

Use pictures

The students produce meaningful language based on pictures.

This is old Jack.

He has a black cat.

Its name is Pat.

It is very fat.

…

Use tongue twisters

Tongue twisters are fun and motivating, and the relaxing atmosphere halps students overcome inhibition.

Give students a few minutes to practice by themselves, then ask them to perform in front of the whole class.

Examples of tongue twisters

She sells sea shells on the seashore.

Five wives drank five bottles of fine wine.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where is the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?

6.5 Practising stress and intonation

Practising stress

Practising intonation

Practising stress

Word-level stress: stress the proper syllable in multi- syllabic words

Phrase-level stress

The most important thing in practising stress is making the students be aware of where to stress the word or phrase. Below are three ways to show the stress pattern of words, phrases and sentences.

Use gestures. The teacher can indicate the stress by clapping hands or using arm movements as if conducting music.

Use the voice. The teacher can raise the voice to indicate stress. This can be done with some exaggeration sometimes.

Use the blackboard. The teacher can highlight the stress by underlining them or writing them with colored chalks or in different size.

Practising intonation

Intonation can greatly affect the invention of the speaker’s message. Intonation is used by native speakers to express meanings in many subtle ways such as surprise, complaint, sarcasm, friendliness, threats, etc. This is perhaps one of the last areas of language that foreign language learners can master and is very difficult to teach.

Ways to indicate change of intonation:

Use rising or falling arrows, such as and .

Mark change of intonation is to draw lines as shown below.

Did you get some tic kets for the con cert?