Chapter 12: What Accent? Teaching Pronunciation 177
Using phonemes in class
If you have a nice, big phonemic chart up in your classroom and you write
the phonemic transcription on the board whenever you write a word with
potentially problematic pronunciation, your students can pick up sounds as
they go along. So you write the word, the part of speech (noun, adjective and
so on) and the phonemic transcription:
bomb (n) /bɒm/
to search (v) /stʃ/
You can simply point to phonemes and get the class to repeat the sound after
you. This is particularly useful when you use minimal pairs. This term refers to
the comparison of two words with almost the same pronunciation, except for
one sound. Students may not hear the difference unless you demonstrate that
there is one, perhaps because that sound isn’t used in their own language.
sank /sæŋk/ and thank /θæŋk/
hat /hæt/ and hut /h t/
When you compare words, isolate the phonemes and repeat them carefully
to raise student awareness so that they make more of an effort to pronounce
words as a native speaker would.
If you can include whole sessions on pronunciation in your course, it’s worth
supplying the students with mirrors so that they can study the shapes they
make with their lips, tongues and mouths when pronouncing the phonemes –
modelling their pronunciation on yours, of course. It’s easier for them to
copy you this way.
A cross section of the speech organs is also useful so that you can point to
areas at the back or the mouth, for example when you teach /k/.
Adding Emphasis to Words and Syllables
In some languages every syllable you say is equal in emphasis (also called
stress) and volume so that no one syllable stands out. In other languages the
stress always falls in the same place, perhaps on the first or last syllable in a
word. This isn’t the case in English. In TEFL you teach which words stand out
and which syllables stand out too.
