How to Teach Pronunciation in EFL

Methods for Teaching Pronunciation

Teaching Pronunciation in the EFL Classroom:

Part One

Pronunciation is an area of great difficulty for the untrained EFL teacher. But, with a little training and practice you can facilitate the improvement of your student’s pronunciation almost as well as the seasoned professional.

For our purposes here, “Pronunciation” will include the instruction of Stress, Rhythm and Intonation.

Everyone is familiar with the old jokes about Asian students ordering “Flied Lice” and, in fact, such pronunciation problems persist today.

To a large extent, EFL students have problems with pronunciation and stress primarily due to that fact that their native tongues may not have particular sounds and the absence in many languages of “consonant clusters” (strings of consonants).

Use a Respelling System

When studying and teaching pronunciation you will need to learn to use a respelling system to help students get the feel of the language.

Some people advocate the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), but a problem with that system is that few students know it and you will spend an inordinate amount of time teaching it to them only to have them move on to another teacher – who doesn’t use it.

Additionally, there are at least ten other major phonetic systems that appear in dictionaries and pronunciation and listening books. Nothing is universally used.

A simple system is used in the listening book Sound Advice and in the pronunciation book Sound Advantage – both authored by Stacy A. Hagen.

You will see this system used below and in some of the downloads further at the end of today’s post and also at the end of Part Two on Pronunciation.

A simple system that is intuitive and easy to use is critical to your success in helping your students succeed in speaking in a comprehensible way.

EFL teachers are all too familiar with students that approach them and speak clear complete sentences of something that is not even remotely understandable.

A student may well have a good understanding of English and an excellent vocabulary, but if their pronunciation is so poor that they can not communicate – all is lost. That is, until you come on the scene!

Speak Normally to your Students

Students NEED to hear natural fast relaxed pronunciation as we speak it every day, not a carefully over-articulated overly-pronounced one-word-by-one-word phrasing of sentences.

Speaking too slowly and too emphatically is a common characteristic of the untrained teacher.

Speaking unnaturally hurts your students for two reasons.

One, they will imitate your speaking style and speak unnaturally, and two, they will not recognize and understand natural rapid speech when they hear it.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t slow your speech down a bit to help your students get some basic ideas – but it does mean that you should speak naturally most of the time.

It also means that you need to TEACH them what natural speech sounds like. There is some evidence that says if students don’t speak naturally, they won’t recognize normal speech when they hear it.

Linking in Pronunciation

Consider the following:

My name is Fred really sounds like Mi naeh miz Fred.

How much is it? really sounds like How muh chi zit?

The idea of the end of one word connecting to the beginning of the next word is called “Linking” and there is some information about it at the bottom of this article.

If you habitually speak slowly and over-enunciate your students will listen for How much is it? and won’t understand when they hear the normal speech sounds of How muh chi zit?

The skilled EFL teacher instructs her students in these differences, how to pronounce them and how to listen for them.

Consider:

Sue wants to get a better water heater - say it quickly in normal speech and see what it really sounds like. Repeat it quickly several times and listen.

It will sound more like:
Sue wuhnstuh gettuh bedder wadder heeder.

The idea of words sticking together and some sounds becoming smaller is called “Reduction” and there is more information about reductions at the end of this article.

There is, of course, some variation by country and region in how we speak. Learn to use respelling to help your students get it right.

It is important that you get this concept. Untrained teachers will say, “I don’t speak like that!” But they do – you do – all English speakers do.

Respelling?

Should you memorize and use the International Phonetic Alphabet?

No, your students won’t usually know it.

Look in a variety of books and adopt a simple method similar to the one used above.

Will your students confuse “respelling” with the correct spelling of words? No, not if you just tell them, “It sounds like this” while pointing at the respelling. Students intuitively “get it.”

Must you respell something absolutely correctly? No, but be as accurate as you can. The way you respell will be different from someone else as we all have some minor variations in our pronunciation.

Good resources related to today’s posting:

Linking – a Word document

Pronunciation Notes – a Word document

Good Basics from English Club on Linking

An excellent How to Teach Pronunciation eBook

TED’s Tips™ #1: Stop and take some time to listen to how you and other people speak. NOT how you think they speak – but how they actually speak. You will be very surprised. That is what teaching pronunciation is all about – the reality of what things really sound like.

TED’s Tips™ #2: Learn and master your own respelling system. Spend some time working on it before testing it on your students. Again, you will be surprised how much it will help your students.