Understanding and Teaching the Pronunciation of English.pdf

“Find the difference” pictures

Here’s an example conversation about the two pictures on the

left, with prominent syllables in capital letters:

A: I see a SAILboat in my picture.

B: Oh! I see TWO sailboats in my picture. Do you see a

BIRD standing on a SAND castle?

A: No, I see a SAND castle, but there’s no BIRD on it.

There are many sources of these pictures in books and on the

Internet; search for “!nd the di"erence pictures.” You can

also draw or make your own pictures. The pictures shown

here were made with a free iPad app called Doodle Buddy. It

includes several backgrounds to choose from and a selection

of small pictures to add.

Predicting prominence: After students have had a chance

to practice a lot and have a good feel for the places where

prominence falls, you can ask them to predict where they

think prominence will occur. Give them a dialog or story,

with or without punctuation, and ask them to mark probable

thought groups and prominence. Discussing their choices

with a partner can help clarify their reasons.

It’s important to realize that predicting prominence may be

di#cult for students if the examples are complicated, so start

with simple sentences that obviously !t the patterns they’ve

learned. When you check students’ predictions, allow for the

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Picture A

Picture B