Fruit Claps and Slaps
A fun game to practise word stress with any age is to stand students in a circle and ask each to choose a different word with more than one syllable on a given vocabulary topic, e.g. fruit. Ask each...
View ArticleTh las lette
People in Andalucía speak very quickly – I’ve even heard stories of students who have gone to Madrid or the north of Spain and people who speak the same language have said they don’t understand and...
View ArticlePronunciation Slaps
It’s sometimes hard with classes, especially of adults, to practise pronunciation of key sounds without it becoming a monotonous stage of drilling. An exciting way to practise two similar sounds is by...
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Pronunciation through trial and correction
OK, still thinking about the Silent Way and how you could effectively teach lower level learners using this technique, I was starting to think about how individual words which students may not be...
View ArticleI like watching the washing machine
No, not a random facebook status but yet another post on pronunciation! Every English student has problems with some aspects of English pronunciation and perhaps the best way to highlight the...
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Phonetic WipeOut!
Going phonetically crazy at the most with a couple of my classes and here’s an idea for students to practise their pronunciation and vocabulary at the same time. Tomorrow my B1 students are going to be...
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Repeating and reviewing the past simple
I’ve recently been teaching the past simple (both regular and irregular verbs in positive statements) to my class of nine-year-olds. There’s been lots of gesturing behind me to show that we’re...
View ArticleOugh!
I have a wonderful C1 group this year who aren’t currently interested in the CAE exam or GESE but simply want to keep up their level of English. The classes are largely communicative, with discussions...
View ArticlePhonetic Fun
I’ve recently been doing some work with phonology with my 10-year-olds, trying to familiarise them with the phonetic alphabet. A quick and easy way to raise awareness of English sounds is with a...
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Minimal Pair Tongue Twisters
During a speaking activity the other day, I heard one of my B1 adults say /ʃaɪld/. This isn’t uncommon in our corner of Andalucía, where the /tʃ/ phoneme is often pronounced /ʃ/ and in fact during my...
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Spanish speakers
I’m having a bit of a tidy-up and came across the little book of useful notes I made to help me revise for my Diploma exam. There were a few pages dedicated to problems which Spanish speakers can...
View ArticlePronunciation – the Cinderella of Language Teaching
A little anecdote to start this off, as my head is trying to work out exactly where this post is going… I’ve been teaching Trinity preparation courses for a couple of years in a centre where I’m also...
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Fortnightly Focus #8 – Proactive Pron
Great timing as today in our bi-weekly PDM we reviewed the previous session which had been all about getting to grips with phonology and reflected on what we had been doing in our classes since then....
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