People charts: Create a family tree, sports team roster, or
organizational chart of workers in an o#ce that includes
names or other words with a particular sound and have
students ask and answer questions about the people. Create
two versions of the chart, each with some names missing, and
have students talk together to discover the missing names.
Maps, floor plans, and diagrams: Find or create a map,
$oor plan, or diagram with labels using the sounds you want
to practice. Pairs of students ask and answer questions about
the map or plan, give each other directions to particular
places, or plan where to add features to the diagram, for
example, where to add furniture on a $oor plan of a house,
or where to “build” a new shopping center, amusement park,
or university on a map of a city.
Journals and diaries: To practice the pronunciation of
past tense -ed endings, students look at a journal or list of
someone’s actions in the past and tell each other about them.
These can be real events in the students’ lives, news stories,
or actions by famous people, real or imaginary. (If it turns
out that some of the verbs students use are irregular and
don’t illustrate the -ed endings, that’s all right. Students need
practice with irregular verbs too.)
Sound scavenger hunt: Ask students to !nd things in
detailed drawings, in pictures cut from a magazine, or in the
real-life classroom that contain a particular sound or sounds.
Pairs can work together to make lists and see who can !nd
the most words.Brainstorming lists of words: Ask students to think of
words in particular categories that contain the sound you’re
practicing. For example, ask them to think of names of
countries, types of food, animals, words related to sports, or
some other category that all begin with /v/. Pairs or groups
can try to see who can think of the most words. They’ll
practice pronunciation as they brainstorm the word lists and
then tell their words to the rest of the class. (This is very
much like the commercially available game “Scattergories.”)Communicative practice
Communicative activities, in which students have freedom to
choose their own words to express their own ideas, can be
useful for pronunciation practice. Because these same types
of activities are also used for speaking practice, adult
students sometimes don’t understand why they’re doing them
in a pronunciation class. It’s important to explain the reason
for using communicative practice in teaching pronunciation:
Sounds don’t exist in isolation—they live in words, stories,
conversations, and other kinds of real language. If learners
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