Pronunciation made practical
Homophones are pairs of words such as piece and peace, with different meaning but the same pronunciation. But they may also be phrases which are more than just one word, as in this challenge. In this pair, the homophones occur because two words link together and it’s not clear where the boundary between them lies – there are two possibilities! Can you find the homophones?
This homophone hunt went on Facebook, and the winner is… Jolanta Nyczke with sick snails = six nails!
BrELT is ‘a global ELT community made by Brazilians’ and what a community it is – amazing energy and initiative, and an important part of any teacher’s personal learning network, in Brazil and beyond. But it’s not only online – there are now physical conferences too. This event is their second, and I’m honored to have been invited! More about the event here!
Mishearings are often very surprising! But even so, there’s often a perfectly logical explanation. In this case, the speaker does the following: Continue reading “How is that even possible!?”
Delighted
to announce that PronPack is now available in Greece and Cyprus from our distributor in the region, DES. They have a great deal on the set of four books. Check it out!
Take a look at a video of an English pronunciation lesson, with me using materials and techniques from PronPack 1-4. I explain that there are four kinds of activities, which may be summed up as muscle, mind, meaning and memory. Continue reading “Video – Teaching Pronunciation: muscle, mind, meaning, memory”
There’s a great review of PronPack in the July-August edition of IATEFL Voices, by Tony Rusinak in Canada. Here are a few excerpts…
“Mark Hancock’s PronPack, a set of four pronunciation resource books, can be described as clever, original and well-organised.” Continue reading “PronPack review in IATEFL Voices”
When the implications of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) first hit the consciousness of the ELT community at the beginning of this century, reactions tended to polarize between dogma and denial. On the dogma side were militants who saw native pronunciation models such as received pronunciation (RP) as a residue of colonialism which needed to be uprooted. From the denial point of view, these militants were a noisy distraction who would hopefully tire themselves out and go away. These are caricatures admittedly, but let’s run with them a little… Continue reading “Post-ELF 5: Beyond Dogma and Denial”
PronPack 1-4 has won the 2018 ELTons Award for ‘Innovation in Teacher Resources‘. A judge’s quote says, ‘These books will soon become a must have resource on teacher staff room shelves’. Let it be! Continue reading “PronPack Wins ELTons Award!”
In my previous post, I promised to investigate possible implications a post-ELF perspective for pronunciation teaching, and in this post we will consider the question of what features of phonology we should focus on.
Let me begin with an analogy. If you think of a car, you can probably divide its features into essential and superficial. For example, wheels and a motor are essential (currently, at least). The colour doesn’t matter and is superficial, and the exact body shape probably doesn’t matter much either. There are even features which are accidental such as scratches and dents in the body work.
In my last post, article 2 in this series, I suggested that pronunciation teaching post-ELF must distinguish productive and receptive competences, and these will be asymmetrical.
In an English-as-a-lingua-franca speech community, we will pronounce locally and understand globally. The accent or range of accents we can produce will be much smaller than the range of accents we are capable of understanding. Continue reading “Post-ELF 3: A Hierarchy of Pronunciation Skills”