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I’d rate my level of competence as foundation – I’m not confident teaching pronunciation in any depth.

If introducing new vocabulary I drill word and do a walk-around check to see everyone’s got it.

Sentence stress for emphasis – I get students to write a roleplay with the target language and underline the stressed word.

Question tags – I model the difference between a statement and question.

Minimal pairs – we often have fun with minimal pairs and the meaning difference. I write two sentences on the board and get students in pairs to pronounce them to see if their partner can identify which they’re saying. Then work as a class.

I often do hot correction when/after a student speaks; monitoring students in pairs/groups. Do word stress when introducing new vocabulary.
I pay particular attention to common errors with nationalities e.g Brazilians – ‘th’ and adding and cutting ‘y’ /Vietnamese – strong consonant endings/Japanese – ‘r/l’

Hot correction – in every class. Stress in vocab – two/three times a week.
Minimal pairs – maybe once a week. Emphasis – once a week.

When I’ve been sure what I’m teaching my students have loved it – the feeling that they can make small changes to make themselves better understood gives them a huge confidence boost.

When I’ve felt unsure, they’ve been confused and unsure – like me! For this reason I’ve often avoided doing pronunciation activities.

I’m not at all confident teaching pronunciation. It’s such an important part of a learner’s language acquisition that I feel like I’m short-changing my students at the moment because I lack the confidence.

With this course I want to relish teaching pronunciation and be secure in the knowledge I know exactly what I’m talking about and can answer any query or offer specific tools to help a language learner, rather than having to search for help myself first.

Ali

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Similarly to Ali, I also wanted to participate in the pronunciation PDG to gain confidence in teaching pronunciation and learn about ways of making pronunciation interesting for the students. I would put my level of knowledge in teaching pronunciation as basic, which is a bit frustrating because I'm actually really interested in phonology.

When teaching new vocabulary, I'd drill the word, look at word stress, ask about the pronunciation of certain letters in the word, and occasionally follow the exercises in the book (for example how the word stress might move between the noun and the verb: a DEcrease Vs to deCREASe) and this term with my up-int class I looked at intonation in question tags and reported speech. But I know I'm barely doing any sentence stress exercises in general. I also do hot correction, mostly during paintwork/groupwork speaking activities or open class feedback.

My initial plan improving improve my teaching of pronunciation is to use the Pronunciation Games book and hopefully eventually the secret stash of resources currently hidden in the academic office 😉

/ Eszter

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I teach pronciation in a rather ad hoc manner rather than in a methodical manner. The areas I do focus on are weak forms; syllable and sentence stress; unvoiced versus voiced syllables in -ed ending verbs; linking that occurs in chunks.

I also find drilling is extremey useful in teaching vocabulary. It adds memorization and helps students develop a mouth muscle memory in learning chunks.

However I tend to shy away from using phonemic symbols on the board and when I do refer to the Phonemic Chart, it is used to alert students to tricky phonemes and minimal pairs sounds that trouble them. I need to become more " fluent" at using phonemic symbols but  am not sure what benefit they offer students.

Another area I need to improve on is learning to identify problematic sounds for different language groups.  I only have a general idea of these and need to systematically learn these and apply them more often in class.

Overall, My general attitude to teaching pronunciation is that it should aim at helping students sound more understandable in communication.

I'm looking forward to picking up more tips from Master Billy and becoming a Kung Fu Prounciation Panda in the long term.

Patrick

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Currently  my competence in teaching pronunciation is between a foundation and developing level. I can distinguish between difference vowels, diphthongs, long and short vowels as well as identify problem consonants.

I rarely dedicate much time to pronunciation unless it appears on the course book or mistakes arise ad hoc in a class conversations. Much of my pronunciation teaching may ;develop  from vocabulary with focus on the stressed syllable or long syllables sounds. I'm afraid to say I don't often use diphthong symbols in my class. Preferring to use an spell the sound out by letters eg oooo - costumes, rather than  diphthongs u: - costumes.

I often divide problem words into syllables, break them down with stress underlined; eg Tuesday -  2 syllables,   tues/ day  - (1st syllable is stressed) - pronounced  CHOOOS/ DAY   ......like a train chooo chooo !

Students react well to pronunciation especially when pointed out the need to contract words in order to sound like a native and improve fluency. For example the ability to squish would into 'id,  the world would be better... the world'id be better. I would do drilling on this and ask them to think of examples to repeat and practice the target language... Think of 3 ways to finish the sentence; 'The world'id be better if we were more equal' and so forth.

My goals would be to learn better techniques at drilling problem pronunciation, not just class drilling, but games and mouth exercises. I would especially like to learn techniques for helping Asian students who often struggle with being understood not for lack of knowledge of the word but poor pronunciation.

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In general, I’m actually reasonably confident about my level of competence in teaching pronunciation, though I certainly see room for improvement. On the positive side, and despite the fact that my knowledge about the physiological side of pronunciation is quite limited, I feel that I know enough about weak forms, connected speech, stress and so on, to have a lot to offer my students in the pronunciation component of a lesson. I may seem a little overconfident, but I think it’s important to remember that, as teachers, our level of language awareness is much higher than even a solid advanced or CAE student. Again, of course there’s a lot of room for improvement but I like to focus on the positive.

The amout of pronunciation practice I do in class has increased a great deal recently. In most classes I try to bring attention to some weak forms and features of connected speech. In fact, I’ve even tried focusing on things like “gonna,” “hafta” and some others with my elementary class. They find it a little difficult in freer practice, but they seem to enjoy repeating language, and it seems that it can only be a good thing to be developing students’ language awareness from in the lower levels, before errors become fossilised (I’m sure we’ve all seen this in Upper-intermediate and Advanced students).

So, as I’ve already said, I’m quite confident about teaching pronunciation, but I would really like to have a deeper understanding of the physiological side of pronunciation, and would also like to learn some techniques and drilling exercises that I can use in class. Those are the main things that I’m hoping to get from this course.

Tom

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At the moment my competence in teaching pronunciation is foundation level.

I do a lot of work on pronunciation with lower levels. I focus on stress and intonation in questions; -ed endings and linking in speech. I usually get students to notice sounds, demonstrate the sound and then drill. I also try to spell out sounds (like, /laik/ ) but I’m afraid to use phonetic symbols. When students have difficulty with a specific sound or stress in a word I usually break up the word into syllables and using their fingers as a guide, I get them to repeat each syllable slowly and gradually faster. Then I drill the whole word again.

With higher levels I tend to spend less time on pronunciation. When teaching vocab I will demonstrate pronunciation and quickly drill. When a student has difficulty with a certain sound, again I demonstrate and drill. I do some work on pronunciation and meaning as I find it very interesting and students react well to it. I don’t feel confident though about working with pronunciation on longer texts (eg using a listening for students to notice stress etc.)

With this course I hope to gain more confidence in my knowledge of pronunciation as well as to learn more techniques for identifying and dealing with problem pronunciation, especially for higher levels.

Daphne

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I would also place myself between a Foundation and Developing level of teaching Pronunciation techniques. While, I do incorporate pronunciation into most lessons, I do feel I lack some essential knowledge on more complex technical terms and issues that students face. I am looking to develop and expand my knowledge on stress timed rhythm of English and learn how to aid students in self-study techniques tailored to their specific needs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    In terms of integrating Pronunciation into my lessons, I usually use varying techniques depending on the level. I think that drilling and repetition techniques work well with lower levels, particularly A1 and A2. Drawing attention to tongue position and mouth shape has also proven quite useful. In particular, Isolating specific sounds while explaining how the sound is produced can also be beneficial.  I find that once students understand that their difficulty can actually be reduced to a technical issue (i.e tongue position etc.), they are less likely to make the same mistakes or get demoralised by a sound or letter combination they feel they absolutely cannot say. In terms of resources, English Pronunciation in Use has some useful diagrams and exercises - though these can be a little tedious at times. Pronunciation Games by Mark Hancock has some good sound mazes and other games, which have worked well for me in the classroom. Students have responded well to some of these activities, which allow them to focus on specific individual sounds, word and sentence stress.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       On the other hand, I find incorporating pronunciation into higher level teaching a little tougher. Given that fluency is generally already good at these levels, students can be less aware of their pronunciation difficulties.  Emphasising the subtler aspects of pronunciation, which truly differentiate native speakers from language learners is essential but can be challenging. Here, I think drawing attention to accents, intonation patterns (statements, questions and tags) and tone and pitch changes is crucial. However, it is sometimes hard to teach these in a fun and dynamic way. For this reason I would also like to focus on study techniques and exercises specifically targeting the B2 and C1 levels.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           In a nutshell, my primary goal in this Workshop is to gain more technical knowledge on both phonological and phonemic aspects of Pronunciation in order to acquire and develop teaching tools to aid in the learning process.

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P.S I am struggling with Paragraph spacing :-) Apologies!

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At present, I would rate my current level of competence as developing, based on my varying degrees of confidence in using  familiar and unfamiliar techniques.
For example, I'm confident in my ability to use minimal pairs to highlight to students, particularly when focusing on vowel sounds.
I have also been using mazes and maps in freer practice for voiced and unvoiced consonants, which I may do either weekly or fortnightly.
Quite often, the weekly course program will dictate when and where pronunciation practice occurs but I do like to avail of the early Monday or late Friday GE classes, as well as dedicating at least a third of Plus classes to some aspect of pronunciation.

In any event, once I have taught a particular point, I find it is relatively easy to dip back into it for a flash practice, ie. filling a gap towards the end of the class, and the Ss seem to enjoy a little wake up drilling when moving from one lesson stage to the next.
The students always react well to the drilling in minimal pairs because they seem to feel a good sense of achievement upon completion.

I would like to develop enough to be able to say that I understand and can describe the phonology of English, identify and describe the various aspects of speech, better integrate pronunciation practice into lessons by using a range of techniques.
Identifying and better understanding the various problems, such as L1 interference, is also a goal.
Peace.