"On the road to sounding better" TESOL Conference 2012

Yvonne M. Mooree-mails yvonne.moore@britishcouncil.es

ivonmaggiemoore@hotmail.com

Abstract

Young learners enjoy playing with language, perhaps because they do not feel uncomfortable in front of their peers. This session will look at how we can get young learners on the road to pronouncing lexical items well, and going on to show how we as teachers can look at our students sounding more natural, through work on intonation and connected speech.

Bio-data

Yvonne is an experienced primary teacher, who is interested in the way young learners learn and are motivated by different approaches. She is now a Trinity Young Learner and Diploma Tutor and YL Speaking Examiner

Why start teaching pronunciation to young learners?

Students are less self-conscious than older learners Love to have little conversations, sing songs and learn short phrases Respond strongly to music and rhythm

Where to start?

We have to realise that before students can consistently produce a given phoneme they must be able to hear it

What to be aware of?

When teaching at the phoneme level we are struggling to expand physical and neurological limitations. We are taking irrelevant noises, and making them significant to our students and at the same time teaching them a greater range of articulation with their mouths, tongues and lips.

Conclusion

Pronunciation needs to be taught from the start because;-

Students need to understand how sounds are produced Students need to be able to communicate efficiently and effectively as soon as

possible

The United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. A registered charity: 209131 (England and Wales) SC037733 (Scotland).

Purpose of Activities

Activity 1 (Bingo)

Learner-centred activity, whereby students firstly choose their 6 letters and then a student calls out the letters

If the students do not understand they can ask for clarification The students need to focus on listening for the correct letter sound

Activity 2 (Chant “What’s your favourite?)

To teach stress patterns and rhythm For the students to get used to the sound, without having to worry about how to

formulate what they want to say

Activity 3 (Differentiating the Sound)

Recognising the sound and responding correctly with a visual clue of where the tongue is placed in the mouth when saying the sound “TH”

Being able to produce the sound

Activity 4 (Hear and Say)

Recognising the sound of the word and responding correctly with the next word in the sequence

A self-correcting activity, as if the words are said correctly the game will end with a student saying the word “FINISH

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