What's that sound, A step further.

good morrow one and all,
I've been talking a lot recently about the importance of pronunciation in class. I mentiod a few posts back about using the phonemic chart in the classroom as a useful tool but by no means as the be all and end all of how to help`pron.  I've been teaching my students, bit by bit, what each sound looks and sounds like. I mentioned my game What's that Sound a wee while ago. Not only does it help pron but it also throws up a whole bunch of new vocab the students would never have come across without a wee push. Well, it's been a few weeks since then and I have a whole bunch more sides that I've used in class. They have been added to the materials link just over there   --------------->                                                                                  Have fun with phonemes and don't thrust them upon your students or you'll just get a bunch of scared looking faces staring up at the utter guff you've projected in front of them.

I always follow the sounds, especially the minimal pairs, with a game or an activity in the next class to rehash them to the students. Minimal Phone numbers is always a favourite. I'll repost that blog next time so as to give you all a quick reminder and as a way of seeing some updated material.

'til next time

What's that sound?

Good day one and all. A blog post with some new content, how strange I hear you cry from the rooftops.
Here's a little activity I love to do with all ages and levels. It's on of the more interactive, tactile, jumpy around activities we talked about at the conference on Saturday.
I like to choose my two sounds from the minimal pairs list. (Check the slides on the STRIP PowerPoint #jazzhands)Next I stick them on either side of the room and elicit what each sound is and draw students attention to their mouth shape when using the words.

The next step for my is to run through the words I am about to use in the activity. I usually do this with a simple slide and some coloured board markers. I get students to work in pairs and decide which colour is which sound. With the slide pìctures you can see two examples.

When the students are up to scratch with the words, their sounds and meanings I split the class into two or three groups.  There is a team leader who picks the words (which have been cut up and put in a cup) then they say the word to the next memeber of the team. Player two attaches a piece of blue tac to the word and passes it to player three. Again repeating the word. Player three then must say the word and stick it under the relevant phoneme stuck on the wall without looking at it.

When the time is up students sit down and check each others answers. The winning team is the one with the most correct answers. to push the students a little further I give them three minutes to then write a sentence or paragraph using as many of the words freom the previous activity. After three minutes each group has to read their sentnnces aloud.

I've found this last bit of drilling, in context, really helps improve the use of the sounds in question and since i've implemented this final part I've seen far fewer mistakes in the pron. Especially with the 3: sound. No longer do students talk about their beerday and their birthday is something we can all talk about together.

right that's all for today. It's great to be back blogging again. With some real content. I hope you find it of some use.

til the next tim