Author: Mark Hancock

I argue for a more democratic use of the IPA symbols in this article, which first appeared in Modern English Teacher 29.3 (July 2020).

There seems to be a love-hate relationship between the English teaching community and phonemic symbols. Some teachers love them, others won’t use them. A third category uses them under duress, but do not feel comfortable in doing so. This article is for anybody, but especially teachers in this third category.

A teacher’s feelings about the material they’re teaching with are often perceptible to the class. If a teacher uses phonemic symbols with confidence and pleasure, that will communicate itself to the class. If on the other hand a teacher uses them but dislikes doing so, it’s likely that this dislike will be part of what the learners take home from the lesson. I would like, if at all possible, to help teachers feel more at home with the symbols – to feel as if they ‘own’ them.

Why the myth about ‘native speakers’ being better language teachers? If you want to learn a language, you’d be well advised to look for a qualified teacher who shares the same first language as yourself, or at least knows it well. I can testify from my own experience that teaching pronunciation to someone whose language I know nothing about is like wading across a river when you can’t see the bottom: you just don’t know where the slippery boulders are! I will call this situation, ‘teaching blind’.

For a Spanish speaker, it seems perfectly natural for a [w] sound to be closely associated with a [g]. The Spanish dictionary entry for hueso, for example, gives the pronunciation as [(g)wéso], the bracketed (g) indicating that it is optional. Similarly, there’s an optional [g] at the beginning of huevo (egg).The g may be explicit in the spelling too. For example, the loan word for whiskey is often written güisque. For an English speaker, by contrast, this g comes as a surprise, and teachers are mystified as to why Spanish learners sometimes insert a g before words that begin with a w.  

Delighted to announce the upcoming release of PronPack 5: Pronunciation of English for Spanish Speakers! This new addition to the PronPack collection takes a different approach by focusing sharply on the needs of learners from one specific language background – namely Spanish. Do your learners drop the consonants at the end of words? Put a ‘g’ before ‘w’? Confuse ‘b’ and ‘v’? Switch ‘chicken’ and ‘kitchen’? The lessons in this book focus on issues like these. The objective is to help learners make themselves more intelligible.

Our estimated publication date is September 1st 2020, available in paperback on Amazon and as an eBook on iBooks and KOBO.

If you’re an English native speaker in the domain of ELT, you have the privilege of being sought after. In matters of the English language, you are seen by many people to be the best kind of expert there is, and there’s a market for that. Such people will defer to your judgement on what’s wrong or right. They will prefer you as a candidate for teaching jobs. They will display an unusual level of interest in the minutiae of your home culture. They will marvel at effortless vowels. They will pay you for being able to speak!

Continue reading “Pronunciation and Privilege”

” I have been using at my school the series PronPack with excellent results as the activities do not just shift the focus from the traditional teaching of grammar and vocabulary to phonology, but also the worksheets are fun, engaging and meaningful. And above all, students love them! “

See the full review here

Maria Davou (MA TESOL, PhD Applied Linguistics, ABD)  is a teacher, teacher trainer, researcher and school owner, promoting alternative and innovative approaches to teaching and implementing them in her own school.

PronPack Book Review was first published in the Journal of Applied Languages and Linguistics, Volume 3 – Isssue 2 – December 2019.

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We’re happy to announce that PronPack (printed edition) is now locally available in the Czech Republic from englishbooks.cz !

In my recent plenary at International House, Barcelona, I talked about how pronunciation teaching needs to ajust itself to take into account the role of English as a global Lingua Franca.

Stella: How did you get into teaching phonetics and pronunciation?

Mark: I was teaching at the Cultura Inglesa in Rio de Janeiro, and had a few administrative hours on my timetable. They asked me to produce some fun pronunciation materials for the school. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make sense of the hidden patterns of phonology, and creating tasks and activities which would really engage the learners. I discovered that pronunciation is fascinating, perhaps because it is hybrid. It crosses the frontier between language systems (like grammar and lexis) and skills (like speaking and listening). It also has aspects which are cerebral on the one hand and physical on the other. In this respect, it is like no other aspect of language teaching. To me, language without pronunciation is somewhat two-dimensional. The spoken form lifts it off the page into a fully three-dimensional form. It brings the target language to life.

Continue reading “Mark Hancock interviewed by Stella Palavecino”

PronPack has been out and about this October. The month began with a visit to Stirling in Scotland for the 40^th Anniversary event of SATEFL. I gave a talk on how pronunciation teaching needs to assimilate the fact that English is a global Lingua Franca. The following week, I spoke at the International House conference in Milan, Italy about how different pronunciation activity types match up with different objectives. Finally, at the end of the month PronPack had a display table at the English UK South West conference in Somerset, England. At this event, I spoke about how to boost the attention given to pronunciation when teaching with coursebooks. It’s been an exhilarating month!