Pronunciation: individual sounds

Teaching pronunciation starts with teaching individual sounds. English sounds may differ from what children have in their L1

"Your students will be basing their production of English sounds on the sounds they already have from their own language. So, it's your job to make them more aware of the sounds that they have to produce" 

John Kay 

 Forming sounds:

• Drilling - read more about different kinds of drilling;
• Reapeat after the teacher;
• Use the cassette;
• Practise the vowels and consonants and then put them in words and sentences;
• Introduce the students to a visual representation of the mouth - show the position of the tongue;
• Write the phonemic representation of a word on the board; 

Difficult sounds:

• Pronunciation games;
• Know your students’' weak points;
• Mime sounds ([i] and [i:]);
• Put two sounds together. For instance, schwa and [u] in order to train the sound [əu ];
• Hold a hand to the throat to feel a voiced sound or unvoiced sound; 
• Use a gesture to indicate a long and short vowel; 

Weak and strong sounds:

• First, let students listen and then reinforce with the written form. 

Students can get confused if they first see the word as in English there are letters that are read in different ways. For example, the letter "e" is read as [e] in "melody" but as [ə] in "student"; 

Contractions:

• Use fingers to show the contraction (he and is) - join fingers together;