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Download and print a PronPack Sound Chart Poster for your classroom. Simply with pronpack.com, or login (below) to download the PronPack Sound Charts and other teacher resources.

There are six versions below, select the PronPack Sound Chart to suit your students requirements. The posters are A3 size ( 29.7 x 42.0cm, 11.69 x 16.53 inches) .

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Download and print a PronPack Sound Chart Poster for your classroom. Simply with pronpack.com, or login (below) to download the PronPack Sound Charts and other teacher resources. There are six versions below, select the PronPack Sound Chart to suit your students requirements. The posters are A3 size ( 29.7 x 42.0cm, 11.69 x 16.53 inches) .

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Phonetic transcription

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Online converter of English texts to IPA phonetic transcription

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Play these fun pronunciation games online. Mobile-friendly. Play on mobile, tablet or PC. Educational games for English learners.

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ESL pronunciation activities to help with teaching pronunciation.

Our goal in teaching pronunciation is not to rid learners of their own accents and distinctive ways of speaking. However, clarity in communication is the most important goal and learners' accents can sometimes be an obstacle to comprehension.

Pit Pat Putt
This is a fun pronunciation activity to help students recognise vowel sounds.

Minimal pairs word match
An activity for correcting pronunciation problems with minimal pairs.

Test students' knowledge of word stress with these printable puzzles.

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ESL pronunciation activities to help with teaching pronunciation. Our goal in teaching pronunciation is not to rid learners of their own accents and distinctive ways of speaking. However, clarity in communication is the most important goal and learners' accents can sometimes be an obstacle to comprehension.

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Better English Pronunciation - 27 Experts Share Their Top Tip Clark and Miller

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In this lesson, you're going to learn how to improve your English pronunciation. Also check out 4 Simple Changes to Make You Sound More Fluent in English. Recently, a lot of people have asked me about

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Tongue twisters

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by Claudia Pesce 926,283 views

Although most don't make any sense at all, they can certainly help your students improve their pronunciation skills.

Besides, they're a lot of fun! So, to spice things up a bit and inject a dose of silliness in the classroom, try using some of these classic tongue twisters combined with our useful suggestions for teaching them below:

Classic Tongue Twisters

1. Woodchuck
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Easy Tongue Twisters

2. I Saw Susie
I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.

Medium Tongue Twisters

3. Two witches, two watches
If two witches would watch two watches, which witch would watch which watch?

Difficult Tongue Twisters

4. Betty Botter
Betty Botter had some butter, "But," she said, "this butter's bitter. If I bake this bitter butter, it would make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter - that would make my batter better."
So she bought a bit of butter, better than her bitter butter, and she baked it in her batter, and the batter was not bitter. So 'twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

Tongue Twisters Teaching Tips

The first thing you'll need to consider is your students' ages and level. Tongue twisters are typically not very easy, but even very young ESL learners can learn to say, "I scream for ice cream!" Some of the tongue twisters that are longer can be cut down to a smaller bite size; most often only the first question in "Woodchuck" is used. You know your students better than anyone else, so choose the right tongue twisters for your class.

Choose a tongue twister with teaching potential. For example, "Peter Piper" is a great tongue twister if you want your students to practice the pronunciation of -ed endings (past form of regular verbs). "Betty Botter" has lots of great consonant sounds like the "b" sound. "I have got a date" is filled with words with the same vowel sound.

How To Proceed

1. Hand out copies of the tongue twister to your students and have them read it to themselves.

2. Discuss any words they may not be familiar with, like " batter" in Betty Botter. Make sure they understand what the tongue twister is trying to say; there's usually a logic to what initially seems to be a random jumble of words.

3. Ask a student to read it out loud, but don't make any corrections. Make a note of the problem areas. Do the same with the rest of the students in the class. Have them take turns reading the tongue twister, and you'll see which have greater difficulties.

4. Read each line or section, one at a time, and ask students to repeat after you. You may wish to do this with one student only, small groups, or the entire class, but this is a great opportunity to work especially with students who have pronunciation difficulties.

5. Focus on specific consonant or vowel sounds. This is a great time to practice sounds like the " t" sound in " better", " batter", and " bitter ".

6. For extended practice, ask students to come up with more examples of homophones, like " which" and " witch"; or more words that sound like " date", other than the ones included in the tongue twister; you may also choose to focus on the different pronunciations of the past form of regular verbs.

And don't forget to have fun with them!

Try to read the tongue twister as fast as you can. Your students will be pleased to know that even YOU may get tongue tied! Or they may be very impressed as you roll one off your tongue perfectly. But remember that tongue twisters are not only fun. There are plenty of pronunciation lessons held within each and every one.

What do you think about our top ten tongue twisters? If you're looking for even more good ones to use in class be sure to check out our Tongue Twisters Worksheets, where you'll find plenty to choose from. What's your personal favorite?

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Top 10 Tongue Twisters: True Teacher's Treasure?

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by Claudia Pesce 926,283 views Although most don't make any sense at all, they can certainly help your students improve their pronunciation skills. Besides, they're a lot of fun!

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Pronunciation activities

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Integrating pronunciation into classroom activities

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In my work as a teacher trainer I have been surprised at how often experienced teachers are reluctant to tackle pronunciation issues in class. I can think of at least two reasons why pronunciation tends to be neglected: firstly, the lack of clear guidelines and rules available in course books, and secondly the fact that isolated exercises once a month do not seem to have much of an effect. This is not surprising, however; like all other areas of language teaching, pronunciation needs constant attention for it to have a lasting effect on students, which means integrating it into daily classroom procedures. I find that addressing issues regularly during the language feedback or group correction stage of a lesson helps to focus learners' attention on its importance and leads to more positive experiences.

Using student talk to teach pronunciation

Using student talk to teach pronunciation
Pronunciation work can be kept simple and employ exercises which are both accessible and enjoyable for students, whatever their level. Whenever students do a freer speaking activity, the main aim is usually for them
to develop their spoken fluency in the language. However, the activity also serves to work on students' accuracy through the feedback we give them on their use of language.

When my students do such a group or pair work activity at any level I listen in and take notes which are divided into three areas of language: pronunciation, grammar and lexis. Within the latter, as well as unknown lexis I will also include areas such as register, function, set phrases...and within the former I will include notes on any area of pronunciation that leads to miscommunication. This includes diphthongs, vowel sounds (including weak forms), consonant sounds, word stress and sentence stress. All of these areas can be dealt with quickly and efficiently by having some simple exercises ready which require nothing more than the board and a basic knowledge of the phonemic chart.

If learners are introduced to the phonemic chart one phoneme at a time, it can be introduced from beginner level and students are quick to appreciate its value. A rule for when 'ea' is pronounced /e/ (head) and when it is pronounced /i:/ (bead) will not necessarily aid production, whereas the activities I propose here will. Once your students get used to the exercises, pronunciation work becomes even more efficient and, dare I say it, effective.

I hear a pre-intermediate learner say: 'I suppose (pronounced with stress on first syllable) I will see her tonight'. The listener doesn't understand because of the mispronunciation and asks the other student to repeat until finally they write it down and we see what the word was.

After the activity, on the board I put a column with two bubbles to represent word stress, the first small, the second much larger. I write 'suppose' under the bubbles and drill it before asking students to think of other two-syllable words with second-syllable stress.

After the activity, on the board I draw a column with the heading /e/. In this column I write the word 'dead' and have students repeat it. I then ask for examples of words which rhyme with this, which students find easy ('red', 'bed', etc.).

I do not write these, however. I then ask for words which rhyme and have the same vowel spelling, i.e. 'ea'. I put students in pairs or groups to think of words, giving myself some thinking time, too. In this case, depending on the level I will get 'head', 'bread', 'read', 'lead',... and we end up with an extendable list of words with the same spelling and sound.

I make a column with /ai/, drill 'find' and my students give me 'fight', 'bike', 'buy', 'eye','my', etc. for the sound.

I accept these without writing them and then encourage students to think of other words spelt like 'find'. I get 'mind' and 'kind'.

I make a column with a schwa, and drill 'vegetable', marking the word stress.

With an elementary class there is a case for simply teaching this point rather than eliciting known words, so I point out the number of syllables and the stress on the beginning of the word, explaining that this makes the final syllable weak and not pronounced as the word 'table'.

The activity is simply a choral drill, but of the whole sentence and maintaining an English rhythm. 'He me I have a holiday'.

The trick here is not to over-exaggerate on the stressed words, but keep the stress and rhythm natural. Think in terms of modelling a rhythm, rather than a stress pattern. Using gesture like the conductor of an orchestra or tapping on the board to show the rhythm is especially helpful for students who cannot hear it easily.

I add to the list 'comfortable' and 'presentable' as further examples, but avoid adding more so as not to overwhelm students at this level.

For the second example I point out that the stress is on the second syllable. I can think of objections teachers have made to my suggesting this, such as students' confusion at the lack of a steadfast rule or the non-uniformity of the examples, for example, but to cater to this merely serves to reinforce students' belief that a language always obeys a strict set of rules. In my experience this approach is not a useful one. The only way to learn these fundamental pronunciation points is to notice them, note them down and practise them regularly.

There may be only one or two for any given pattern. If I have thought of any other words myself I add them to the column, ensuring that they are not obscure words or too high for this particular level (in this case I might choose to introduce 'bind' and 'grind', but probably not 'rind' or 'hind').

It is the cognitive work of trying to think of similar words, writing them down and their organisation into columns that helps learners retain sounds and spellings, rather than their simply revising the lists. This is why all students should be encouraged to copy the list into their notebooks.

If the classroom allows it, it's also a great idea to have students pin posters with sound columns up on the wall and add to them whenever a new item comes up for that sound, particularly if it is a strange or different spelling.

I get 'outside', 'today', 'below' and 'behind', which I accept as correct before asking for verbs only. I then get 'accept', 'believe', 'forget'....and these go in the same column.

If a student asks for rules during this exercise, in this case 'Do all 2-syllable verbs have this stress pattern?', for example, I either ask them to think of examples that contradict their rule to give myself time to consider it or I tell them we will look at rules for this the following lesson. As a general rule I find that this procedure encourages learner autonomy by having learners form their own hypotheses which are then confirmed or disproved by the teacher in the following lesson.

Word stress
Here is a simple exercise I repeat regularly for work on word stress and individual sounds.

Vowel sounds
I hear a pre-intermediate learner say: 'Not now because he is did (dead)'.

Diphthongs
I hear an intermediate learner say: 'I didn't find (pronounced / f i: n d /) it anywhere'.

Weak forms
I hear an elementary learner say: 'I will buy vegetables (pronouncing 'table' at the end)'. I note that this is also an opportunity to work on word stress.

Sentence stress
I use fluency drills to work on sentence stress. I hear an intermediate learner say: 'He told me I couldn't have
a holiday' ( bold words are stressed). This causes confusion due to the stress being placed on the wrong words
in the sentence, i.e. the pronouns, or grammar words, as opposed to the content words.

Admittedly, this latter exercise on sentence stress does seem to take longer to have an effect, but if highlighted early on and practised relatively often, students do seem to internalise how English stress differs from their own language and helps overcome what in later stages of learning becomes a fossilised way of speaking. Sentence stress causes more communication problems for a fluent speaker than any number of grammatical errors.

Conclusion
One of the beauties of using student speech for pronunciation work is that it directly addresses students' problems. I have attempted to provide a couple of very simple exercises here to help teachers integrate pronunciation into their classes on a regular basis. Regular work in this area helps learners to develop their own hypotheses and gut-feeling for English pronunciation, something experts and researchers have long emphasised as an essential skill of a good language learner.

Barney Griffiths, Teacher trainer, Teacher, Materials writer, Spain

This article was first published in 2004

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In my work as a teacher trainer I have been surprised at how often experienced teachers are reluctant to tackle pronunciation issues in class. I can think of at least two reasons why pronunciation tends to be neglected: firstly, the lack of clear guidelines and rules available in course books, and secondly the fact that isolated exercises once a month do not seem to have much of an effect.

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Pronunciation for ESL learners

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Pronunciation | Learn English | EnglishClub

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Learn to pronounce English with audio, video, tests and basic rules. EnglishClub helps ESL learners study pronunciation to improve speaking and listening.

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Taylor Swift connected speech

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Pronunciation + Listening Practice | Ep. 5 | Taylor Swift’s Blank Space “Starbucks Lovers”

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Tongue twisters

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You load a wrong way to get here?

...come again?

Ahh, you rode a long way to get here. Gotcha.
Having a hard time understanding your students?
If you, the teacher, can't understand their ESL pronunciation, you can assume that many others won't be able to, either.

How do you remedy this problem? With tongue twisters!

These fun phrases can trip up even the most fluent speakers with alliteration and confusing combinations of words. Students of all ages love learning with these phrases, and they can add a whole new level of learning to your class.

The first step to pronunciation mastery? Identify the issues!

Common Troubles with ESL Pronunciation

The first language a student speaks is the one that will set the tone for their English pronunciation. So you'll want to watch for languages that don't have all the same sounds as in English. For example, in Spanish, "b" and "v" sound the same, though both letters technically exist. Likewise, Koreans and Chinese tend to have difficulty with "l" and "r." Understanding your students' native language will help you select the areas they need to work on. The trick is to identify the problems caused by the first language, and then you can choose the best tongue twisters to work with.

Some of the more common issues for English students include:

Aspiration: In English, we use a small expulsion of air to enunciate some letters. Try saying "P" or "Ch" or "K" to test this. You'll notice a puff of air leaves your lips.

Mouth Shape and Tongue Position: Many foreign languages require very different mouth shapes for words. This results in difficulties for those learning English. Make sure your students know where their tongue needs to be and how to shape their mouth.

Throat Vibrations: In English, certain sounds make the throat vibrate. Try saying "g" to feel this for yourself. Now try saying "k." While your mouth is exactly the same for each of these, they sound different. This can be difficult for students to differentiate.

Introducing Tongue Twisters to Your Class

Are you ready for the good fun of everyone tangling their tongues up in knots? These activities can result in rambunctious laughter, so be prepared! They'll have a blast and so will you. But first...how are you going to set them up?

Listening or Reading?

Whether you're working on listening skills or reading ability, you can always find tongue twisters to match the weaknesses of your students. However, keep in mind that a combination of both listening and reading practice is necessary for beginners to keep their level balanced. Their understanding of pronunciation will benefit greatly from being able to read the words as they hear them, particularly when there are words that they may not recognize. You might try this by writing a phrase on the board and then asking your students to let you know what they think it says.

While there's no real reason not to work on the meaning of each word, keep in mind that a lot of these twisters are just for fun and most don't make a lot of sense. They're just good practice!

Tip: It's good idea to practice any tongue twisters yourself before presenting them to the class so you won't stumble over them. Embarrassing!

Implementing Your Tongue Twisters

Whether you decide to simply say the tongue twister or write it out, there are a ton of great methods for making use of all the the fun.

Try using a tongue twister in a game of Telephone, where each student whispers the phrase to the next. It will become delightfully tangled and you may end up with a whole new twister to use in class.

Create your own worksheets so students can dissect the phrases and figure out what they mean. This is great practice for learning that sometimes, words are just for fun.

Another good idea is to take some time to examine the letter sounds in the twists you use. Have students repeat the difficult sounds (v or b, l or r, etc.) a few times before attempting the whole thing.

Why not hold competitions to see who can fire off a twisted sentence without tripping up? The student with the fewest mistakes wins!

Tips for Pronunciation Success

The majority of the twists shown here are for specific sound types. You'll want to make sure your students understand how to pronounce each sound, so take a minute before you start to go over the letter sounds you think they'll find difficult.

For letters that require aspiration, try having students hold something light like a tissue or streamer in front of their face. When they say the letter properly, the item should move as they let out the burst of air.

A mirror can also be very helpful in allowing students to shape their mouths correctly and to see that their tongue is in the correct position. You may also want to draw the correct positions on the board and make sure you form your letter sounds very precisely so students can copy you effectively.

If a twister is less than five words, it's usually a good idea to have students repeat it three times. This will tend to trip your students up. Start slowly, by pronouncing each word carefully and having them say it after you, then speed things up as they get the hang of it.

While tongue twisters in general are excellent for pronunciation, you can use specific ones to work on specific weaknesses. If your students tend to have problems with consonant blends, for example, you'll want to use twists that encourage the correct pronunciation of those.
I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen A big black bug snoozed on a big black rug
Get your quiet students talking with a few of these beauties!

Consonant Blends
Red lorry, yellow lorry Truly rural I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream Rolling red wagons Red blood, bad blood
Two consonants that form a blended sound can be hard for new English speakers. Build up their confidence with these:

L vs. R
Blue blurry vines blind Betty loves the velvet vest best Barber baby bubbles and a bumblebee Burnt base, vicious vase Vivacious Val vacuumed Violet's very vivid vehicle
Some of your students may have difficulty saying L and R. Asian language speakers often confuse the two letter sounds, so these tongue twisters are perfect practice.

B vs. V

Spanish speakers frequently pronounce these two letters the same way, making it very hard to hear the difference. These rhymes will get your students speaking clearer.

Vowels
Printed papers under pressure make pens prickle The poor boar pours batter over his putter Six sticky skeletons Thunder sunders thick sticks
The correct pronunciation of vowels is essential if your students are going to be fluent in their new language. These tongue twisters will give them plenty of practice with enunciating their vowels.

Bonus Twists

These ones can be a good way to fill a little extra time between classes or simply to break the tension in a classroom. Better yet, ask your students to share tongue twisters in their native language, too. Nothing is more entertaining than seeing the teacher attempt a funny twist in another language!

If you find success with this pronunciation practice, make sure you always keep an eye out for more twisters to help your class speak as accurately and accessibly as possible.

Everyone loves a good jumble...you can even make your own!

Oh, and One More Thing...

If you're excited to teach with these tongue twisters, you'll love FluentU! FluentU takes real-world videos-like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more-and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students.

It's got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking world actually watch on the regular.

There are tons of great choices there when you're looking for songs for in-class activities. You'll find music videos, musical numbers from cinema and theater, kids' singalongs, commercial jingles and much, much more.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

For example, if a student taps on the word "brought," they'll see this:
Bring English immersion to your classroom!
Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like "fill in the blank."

It's perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to mention, it's guaranteed to get your students excited about English!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.

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28 Tongue Twisters that Will Improve Your Students' ESL Pronunciation

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You load a wrong way to get here?...come again?Ahh, you rode a long way to get here. Gotcha.Having a hard time understanding your students?If you, the teacher, can't understand their ESL pronunciation, you can assume that many others won't be able to, either.How do you remedy thi

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Developing pronunciation through songs

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Songs provide examples of authentic, memorable and rhythmic language. They can be motivating for students keen to repeatedly listen to and imitate their musical heroes. Here, we look at some aspects of pronunciation that can be focused on through songs.

Using songs to focus on sounds

Using songs to focus on words

Using songs to focus on connected speech

Using songs to focus on sounds
Sounds are the smallest unit from which words are formed and can be categorised as vowels and consonants.

Why are they difficult?

As languages differ in their range of sounds, students have to learn to 'physically' produce certain sounds previously unknown to them.

Learners can find sounds difficult to pick out, and may not see the point in focusing on them.

However, incorrectly pronounced sounds strain communication, sometimes even changing a phrase's meaning.

How songs can help

Songs are authentic and easily accessible examples of spoken English. The rhymes in songs provide listeners with repetition of similar sounds.

Students often choose to listen to songs time and again, indirectly exposing them to these sounds.

What we do
To focus learners on particular sounds, we create activities based on songs' rhymes.

Activity 1
We replace some of the rhymes in the song, with a gap. Students listen and fill the gaps, using the song to guide them. More analytically minded students can then categorise the words according to sounds. (From 'An Englishman in New York,' by Sting)

talk

New York

walk

day
say

one
sun
run

Alternatively, we highlight differences between sounds, using the lyrics to show how changing one sound can alter meaning (minimal pairs).

We write the pairs separately on cards and give out one set per group of four or five students. The students then match the pairs. They then listen to the song and 'grab' the correct one. Choices are then checked against the lyrics.

Using songs to focus on words
Words are combinations of sounds which form together to give meaning. A word is uttered in syllables, usually one emphasised syllable (the stress) and the rest weak (unstressed).

Why are they difficult?

Even when the same words exist in both languages, the number of syllables is not always identical.

Each English word has its own stress pattern, with very complex 'rules' to guide learners.

Weak syllables are central to English, though students often find this hard to believe. Moreover, focusing on these can result in over-emphasis (not weakening) of these syllables.

How songs can help

Words in songs fit the music, helping learners associate the number of syllables / stress in these words, with memorable rhythms.

The relaxed atmosphere songs create can expose students to this difficult pronunciation area, without their realizing.

Songs contain endless examples of weak syllables, helping to convince learners of the way English is pronounced.

What we do
To raise learners' awareness of the number of syllables / word stress, our activities target specific words, especially those where the music makes the stress patterns clearer.

Activity 3
We give out the lyrics, with certain words for students to guess the number of syllables, leaving a space by each word to write the number in. Students then listen, checking their predictions.

At higher levels, we repeat the activity, with students underlining the stressed syllable whilst listening. We then drill these words and sing or chant the whole song through.

Using songs to focus on connected speech
Connected speech is the natural way we speak, linking together and emphasising certain words, rather than each word standing alone. Contractions (two words forming one) are an extreme example of the way we connect speech, to the extent that the written form too is affected.

Why is it difficult?

Students normally learn words individually and, especially at lower levels, tend to pronounce each word separately.

Students frequently misconceive contractions as being 'incorrect', only used in 'slang'.

Not all words within a phrase carry the same weight.

How songs can help

Songs, and especially the chorus, provide real and 'catchy' examples of how whole phrases are pronounced often to the extent that students find it difficult to pick out individual words. The music further emphasises the 'flow' of the words.

Songs, like other spoken texts, are full of contractions.

Students can be keen to reproduce this, in order to sing the song as they hear it.

What we do
We use songs that have numerous contracted words to convince learners that contractions are natural in English.

Activity 4
We rewrite the lyrics with the contractions in full form

'I am wondering why'

'I cannot see'

Students listen, identifying the contracted words. On a second listening, they rewrite the words with the contractions

This works even with the lowest level classes.

To help learners hear how words flow in phrases, we choose catchy tunes for learners to fit words to.

Activity 5
We play each line of the chorus, for learners to hum back until they get the rhythm.

In groups, students then order the lines of the song on strips of paper by remembering the tune.

Other activities can focus on highlighting the strong words in phrases, and singing only these, replacing the rest with 'mmm'. Finally, students can practise and present their singing, for example for a 'song contest'.

Alternatively, more creative groups could write their own words to fit the tune.

Conclusion
There are no 'standard' songs for teaching pronunciation. Any song can be an example of different pronunciation aspects. However, we try to choose songs that are clear (use quality recordings where possible), not too fast, memorable, likely to appeal to our learners (possibly songs they already know) and easy to create activities for, depending on the area of pronunciation we are focusing on.

Finally, a word of warning: songs are creative works, so be ready to justify the occasional 'mis-pronunciation' to your students!

Further reading
Sound Foundations by Adrian Underhill
Pronunciation by Dalton and Seidlholfer
How to Teach Pronunciation by Gerald Kelly
Teaching English Pronunciation by Joanne Kenworthy

Balbina Ebong & Marta J. Sabbadini, British Council, Cameroon

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Songs provide examples of authentic, memorable and rhythmic language. They can be motivating for students keen to repeatedly listen to and imitate their musical heroes. Here, we look at some aspects of pronunciation that can be focused on through songs.

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The sounds of English

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Teaching Speaking unit 4: stress and intonation

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Teaching Speaking unit 4: stress and intonation

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The interactive and downloadable material asks you or your trainees to think about specific pronunciation problems with stress, rhythm and intonation. You will need to match techniques to improve stress rhythm and intonation to specific pronunciation problems and try out some pronunciation activities.

The videos in this series express the view that "English language teaching has the same challenges the world over", but that the solutions to these problems depend very much on the local context, and for this reason the approach taken focuses on tasks that enable the participants to relate the video to their own specific practice and experience.

Interactive tasks and video
Watch the video below. It shows Montakarn, Pathumporn, Sumalee and Supote talking about how they help students be more aware of the stress, rhythm and intonation of English. John Kay, the teacher trainer, provides commentary and advice.

Task 1: Intonation, rhythm and stress ideas. This task asks you to recall the ideas used in the video to help students with intonation, stress and rhythm

Task 2: Identifying techniques. This task asks you to suggest the techniques that are useful for different problems

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Teaching speaking - Unit 4: stress and intonation

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The interactive and downloadable material asks you or your trainees to think about specific pronunciation problems with stress, rhythm and intonation. You will need to match techniques to improve stress rhythm and intonation to specific pronunciation problems and try out some pronunciation activities.

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ELF Pronunciation videos

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Pronunciation game for -ed

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Linking sounds board game

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I love resource books with photocopiable activities; they provide fun and engaging activities to practise a language focus or skill. You can take a break from the course book and get the learners talking, moving and thinking. There are so many available on the market for grammar, vocabulary, speaking and role plays. But, there aren't that many for pronunciation. Mark Hancock's Pronunciation Games is probably the one that is in most teachers' rooms and most well known. To fill this gap, we need to develop our own resources that we can keep and use again and again. It can be time consuming, but it's worth it in the long run.

Although in recent posts I've been promoting including little snippets of pronunciation during vocabulary and grammar lessons, I do believe there is room for longer practise activities. Kelly (2001) mentions that there are three types of pronunciation teaching:
1) integrated
2) remedial
3) practice

In this post, I'm sharing a board game that I've put together to practise linking sounds in connected speech. It is aimed at C1 level learners and focuses on giving opinions and having discussions. I would recommend using the game as a way to revise linking sounds. So, you will need to have introduced the idea of linking /j/, /w/, /r/, and consonant to vowels in previous lessons.

Click below to download the game:

Board game and instructions
Question cards

If you try out the game with your learners, I would appreciate any feedback on improvements that could be made or on whether or not it was successful.

Kelly, G. (2001) How To Teach Pronunciation. Pearson﻿

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I love resource books with photocopiable activities; they provide fun and engaging activities to practise a language focus or skill. You can take a break from the course book and get the learners talking, moving and thinking. There are so many available on the market for grammar, vocabulary, speaking and role plays.

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Home " ELT Materials " Pronunciation materials

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This seminar explores practical ideas for teaching pronunciation and listening based on Katy and Laura's classroom experiences in Dubai and London, respectively. With almost 200 nationalities, Dubai is a true melting pot, and London is "widely recognised as the most multilingual city in the world" (Graddol, 2006:28). One of the main implications for the classroom is with regards to pronunciation (the priority is not to assimilate, but to be intelligible), and listening (the challenge of dealing with a myriad of unfamiliar accents).

In this seminar the presenters make practical suggestions for:

prioritising areas for pronunciation work in a multilingual class

adapting pronunciation activities from standard coursebooks for ELF purposes

exploiting authentic materials

raising students' awareness of the responsibilities of the listener

dealing with students' misconceptions/negative perceptions of ELF

About the speakers

Katy Davies teaches full-time at the British Council in Dubai and recently completed her MA in English Language. She is particularly interested in the use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the UAE, and designing materials to support teachers whose students need to communicate in an ELF context.

Laura Patsko works at St. George International in London as a senior teacher and teacher trainer on the Trinity CertTESOL and DipTESOL courses. She completed her MA in ELT & Applied Linguistics in September 2013. She is particularly interested in teaching pronunciation and investigating the practical applications of linguistic research.

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Practical ideas for teaching pronunciation and listening in an English as a lingua franca (ELF) context

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This seminar explores practical ideas for teaching pronunciation and listening based on Katy and Laura's classroom experiences in Dubai and London, respectively. With almost 200 nationalities, Dubai is a true melting pot, and London is "widely recognised as the most multilingual city in the world" (Graddol, 2006:28).

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The most-complete, fun, free phonetics resource on the web! Brought to you by Cambridge English Online Ltd.

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Lesson 10a - INTONATION - English Pronunciation

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PART ONE of a lesson in FOUR parts. Topic: Falling and Rising Intonation. Part ONE explains what intonation is in general and presents the first intonation pattern: falling intonation. Levels: intermediate to advanced.

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Minimal pairs

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Phonemic scriptwriter: click and drag