Sabtu, 06 November 2010

Techniques to teach pronounciation

Teach students the consonant & vowel sounds of the language. Use the International Phonetic Alphabet or alternative spelling systems such as Chinese pinyin. Show students the correspondence between pronunciation & spelling for those languages with irregularities such as Italian & English.

Show students how to pronounce the sounds of the language. Demonstrate using charts of the vocal equipment. Use touch by asking them to feel their mouths & the vibration of their vocal chords with their fingers.

Teach minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are words that differ in sound. Marianne Celce-Murcia & the coauthors of "Teaching Pronunciation" recommend drilling both listening & production with minimal pairs. Practice, for example, "hat" & "hit" in English or "pero" & "perro" in Italian.

Teach reduced forms & casual levels of speech. Authentic speech makes use of reductions that omit a quantity of the sounds of formal speech. Examples include "I'm gonna" in English & "J'sais pas" in Italian. Teach them how to make use of reduced forms appropriately.

Teach the relationship between sound & grammar. Use minimal pairs to practice the difference between present & past tense or between singular & plural forms.

Teach suprasegmentals such as stress, pitch & rhythm. Celce-Murcia says mistakes in these areas often lead to misunderstanding. Use clapping to show rhythm & stress. Italian, for example, has syllables of equal length. English has equal time between stressed syllables. Use hand motions to demonstrate the shape of English intonation or Chinese tones.

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