2. Correcting learners’ pronunciation mistakes

 

I had many students who have obtained an amazing vocabulary and whose grammar is the envy of other students. It is just too bad that no one can understand what they are saying. As an ESL teacher, your first priority is to help your students develop their pronunciation skills. Without proper pronunciation, other aspects of English such as vocabulary and grammar become useless if a student cannot be understood when he uses the language.

While pronunciation is the most important component of any ESL class, it is usually also the least interesting in the eyes of the students. Here are some tips to help you make the most out of teaching pronunciation to your ESL students:

–Never be shy to correct your students’ pronunciation in class. Wait until the student has completed the thought and then ask the class to repeat words that you think were not pronounced properly. Never interrupt a student in mid sentence.

–When you are teaching an ESL class about a particular topic, always spend at least 10 minutes teaching the pronunciation of new vocabulary words to students. As they use the vocabulary words, correct pronunciation as necessary.

–Use fun methods to teach pronunciation. One such method is by using a stick (or some kind of pointer) to point at each word. When you point, the students should repeat the word. If you don’t point, there should be complete silence. There will always be a student or two who will still say the word after you have pointed three or four times and suddenly stop. You can make a competition to see who is paying attention. Divide the classroom into five teams and give each team pictures of the vocabulary words or actual objects if they are available. When you call a word, the team that is responsible for that word should stand up and say the word in unison. As the game progresses, you can try to trick the teams by saying a vocabulary word but pointing at a team that is not responsible for the word. You can grade each team (using stars on the board) based on how every team member reacts, loudness, and togetherness.

–Always focus both on the group and invididuals when practing pronunciation. Having the group repeat after you is helpful, but it is also important to have individual students repeat after you to make sure that bad pronunciation does not get hidden in the group.

–Never allow your students to laugh at one another during pronunciation practice. Being laughed at can seriously damage a student’s inspiration to want to learn English. It is important to promote an environment were students can feel very comfortable with speaking outloud in class.

–If your students are having trouble with a particular word or sound, ask them to watch your mouth as you repeat the word. They can attempt to imitate the shape of your mouth which will help improve their pronunciation. [14,78]

2.1 New ways of correcting spoken errors

1. Collect the errors for later

You can then correct them later in the same class (with a game like a grammar auction or just eliciting corrections from the class) or in a future class (for example writing error dictation pairwork worksheets or using the same techniques as can be used in the same class). Make sure you give positive reinforcement as well, e.g. “Someone said this sentence, and that is really good.” (see Appendix 1)

2. Facial expression

For example, raise an eyebrow, tilt your head to one side or give a slight frown. Most people will do this naturally, but there is a slight chance a teacher’s expression will be too critical or too subtle for your students to pick up on, and you can (amusingly) practice facial expressions in a teaching workshop by participants communicating certain typical classroom messages (“move over there to work with this person”, “work in pairs” etc.) using just their heads and faces, including feedback on spoken errors in that list.

3. Body language

The problems with using body language to show errors could also be that it is taken as very serious criticism or that it is too vague. Possibilities include using your hands (rolling a hand from side to side to mean “so-so attempt”; making a circle by moving your index finger to mean “one more time”; or a cross with fingers, open palms or even forearms to show a very clear “no” or “wrong”- probably only suitable for a team game etc where the responsibility is shared), head (tilted to one side to mean “I’m not sure that sounds correct”), or shoulders (hunched to reinforce “I don’t understand what you are saying”). Again, practising this in a teaching workshop can be useful, as can eliciting other body language teachers could have used after an observation.

4. Point at the correct language

If you have something on the correct form easily accessible on the whiteboard, in the textbook or on a poster, just pointing at it can be a subtle but clear way of prompting students to use the correct language. What you point at could be the name of the tense or word form they are supposed to be using, a verb forms table or the actual correct verb form, a grammatical explanation, or another grammatical hint such as “future”, “prediction” or “polite”.


Информация о работе «Ancient and modern pronunciations»
Раздел: Иностранный язык
Количество знаков с пробелами: 73918
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