Chapter 12: What Accent? Teaching Pronunciation 179
The stress adds meaning but it also makes the speaker sound more interest-
ing than if that person were to use a flat tone throughout.
Stressing words contributes to the distinct rhythm of the English language.
You can teach it by means of poetry recital or rapping.
Take the well-known rhyme ‘This is the house that Jack built’. If you say it out
loud you find it necessary to stress certain words and cram the others in, in
order to keep the beat going. Students find this challenging and enjoyable.
This is the house that Jack built!
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
Notice how quickly you need to say some of the unstressed words. As you
stress the words that carry the most meaning and force the other words to fit
in, the pronunciation of the unstressed words becomes very contracted.
Students complain that native speakers eat their words but there’s actually a
reason for this, which they would do well to imitate.
Improving Fluency through Pronunciation
Practice makes perfect and this almost true of pronunciation. I say ‘almost’
because the aim in teaching this skill should be clear speech instead of a
native-like accent. Very few students lose their accents but most can produce
the phonemes reasonably well, except for the odd sticky one.
Reading aloud to the whole class isn’t something you encourage EFL students
to do often. It can be rather dull. However, reading aloud in pairs is less
embarrassing and keeps everyone busy reading, correcting or encouraging.
Students who’ve learnt the phonemes can correct themselves using the dic-
tionary and they should always put on an English (or other native speaker)
voice. By doing so they can move beyond individual words and emphasis and
start analysing how we connect words.
Once students start focusing on pronunciation they may overdo it by being
precise about every single word. In fact, native speakers often allow words to
elide.
