Have been thinking a lot about pronunciation teaching of late (probably due to the fact that I'm currently studying it as part of my Master's course).
In my experience, most of the pronunciation teaching I've done has been fairly incidental - i.e. coping with issues as they arise. And while I believe this is fine for dealing with most of the segmental issues that arise in student speech (e.g. /I/ - /i:/ confusion), it has never successfully dealt with those suprasegmental issues such as tone, stress, rhythm, intonation...
As such, I've decided to embark on some active teaching of these language features and see if active instruction can have much of an effect. I doubt I'll see much improvement in the near future, but judging the students' attitudes to the teaching could be an effective indicator.
Curt Reese's presentation from the Boston 2010 TESOL convention gave some good ideas to start with and I appreciate him posting his presentation slides on the website (see links). As such, I've decided to use the "Annoying Orange" (see youtube) as a source of material. I'll let everyone know how it goes and will post materials l8er.
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My coworker is actually using "The Annoying Orange" and she has written out the script for two of the episodes. She will have the students mark the stress and she'll talk about the word reductions in both episodes. I'll ask her how things go with her lessons. I think you made a good choice to use "The Annoying Orange" **THUMBS UP**
ReplyDeleteCheers feistykat,
ReplyDeleteI've actually transcribed the 3rd episode as well :)