Session 2: Skills Pronunciation

1
Session 2 Skills ? Pronunciation
These are my notes to remind you of the
pronunciation ideas from the session1. Teach
the soundsStudents will learn better and faster
in their language lessons if their learning
begins with a phonics programme to teach them
the essential sounds in the language. This can
be done in 1 lesson in Spanish and German but
might be better done in several main sessions in
French. However, the principle is simple teach
the students the main letter and letter-string
combinations that produce different sounds in the
TL from those they do in English you are
teaching them the key differences
essentially.The method for teaching them how the
language sounds is a VAK method, harnessing the
power of the image, the sound and a gesture to
represent a word that contains the key sound all
at once. Once taught and practised, students are
ready to put their skills into practice
immediately and can begin to read texts out loud
with accurate pronunciation. This is both
incredibly motivating as well as having proven
gains in terms of comprehension.There are
materials on your CD for teaching the sounds in
French, German and Spanish but do feel free to
make your own too.2. Make the sounds part of
every lessonOnce students know how to pronounce
the written word, there is no need to employ a
teaching methodology that always presents the
word orally first with a picture. It is quite
possible (and actually very benefitical) to
present the written words alongside the visual
image. Also, it is helpful for starter
activities to present students with opportunities
to read new texts and pronounce them accurately.
These could be cartoon strips, short articles
from the news, tongue twisters, song lyrics,
etc3. Listening activities make the most of
your text bookOften the first few listenings
from every new topic in a text book do not
challenge pupils in terms of comprehension and it
can feel like we are just doing them because they
are there. Instead of missing them out, one way
to heighten the cognitive challenge of these
tasks is to ask students to predict the spellings
of the words they hear as well as doing the
match up activity the text book suggests.4.
Reading comprehension Research has shown that
the ability to pronounce the TL accurately has
gains in terms of better levels of comprehension.
Instead of the very limited range of tasks that
we often find in text books for reading
comprehension, it is worth taking a text (perhaps
from a different course book, or old GCSE
materials, or the internet) and setting a series
of tasks aimed to develop students ability to
infer meaning, make links and develop their
confidence to understand material containing some
unfamiliar language. See the example from this
session on the PowerPoint it can easily be
adapted to any text and any language.5. Using
rhymeIf students can pronounce the language
accurately from written text, they are in an
ideal position to engage in creative tasks where
they produce poems, song lyrics with words that
rhyme. If you have tried doing this with
students who dont have a good grasp of the
sound-writing system, youll know how frustrating
it can be for them. However, if they have
developed the skills first, they can be given
much more freedom to be creative on their own,
which is highly motivating.