We have these one-hour weekly “freetalk” sessions that the foreign teachers have to do on a rota basis. Drop-in, no assessment. I usually get the students to supply topics, and/or I supply a topic list, and then pick one out of a hat. Quick review of the topic and its vocabulary, then a “just-a -minute” competitive speaking game.
Sometimes it “works”, sometimes its a real drag.
I’m not sure what other people have been doing, but I’m told some run it as a lecture.
The school has decided these freetalk things are a bit too free, and we have to (alternately) post our topic-of-the-week, and, on our next week, run it as a “pronunciation class”.
I’m not particularly keen on posting a topic, because it suggests I’m teaching yet another bloody class at which students can expect to be passive recipients, but I suppose I can do it if shoved.
I’m less sure I can do a “pronunciation class”. AFAICT, this is expected to be a “read-alonga-Ducked” session.
Sounds especially dire.
I suppose I could do something on accents, but I can’t see that lasting the whole semester.
Your job is a total ballache, Duck. Listening and drilling. No interaction. Teaching pronunciation is easy and it’s less of a hassle than trying to talk to people who don’t speak English and don’t want to, all day. Get a book and follow the progression in that.
Well, yeh, but I suppose it goes with the territory. And All My Trials, Lawd, Soon Be put into perspective by young Jimi’s 32-hour schedule.
There are pronunciation books? The world just became a greyer place. I’ll have a look, thanks, though “following the progression” won’t be particularly productive since successive repeat business is (increasingly) rare with these gigs.
While they are shiny and do have lots of stupid idioms, the one I looked at seemed to require some student preparation, which aint going to happen in this (if indeed any) context.
I’ll have a better look later, but even if they don’t work for this, they might well be useful in other contexts, so thanks very much.
Yeah. Just when you think the world of EFL couldn’t get more vacuous and cash-driven, you discover something new, eh? It’s a learning adventure.[/quote][/quote]
What’s weird or wrong about it? English is a not phonetic language. Nobody really knows how to pronounce it. Read read read. It was probably already twisted before the French messed around, and after the French influence, it became impossible to read.
Being a non native English speaker, to listen to the different accents from G.B., and USA, and Canada, and Australia, makes you feel so frustrated. No kidding.
[quote=“jesus80”]
Being a non native English speaker, to listen to the different accents from G.B., and USA, and Canada, and Australia, makes you feel so frustrated. No kidding.[/quote]
Good.
As there are so many varieties of English, it’s kind of pointless trying to teach these to students.
Most students think pronunciation classes means accent training. That’s largely pointless, working with groups and with adults. Your pronunciation improves by itself with more exposure to the language. You’ll always sound like where you’re from unless you are prepared to get obsessed, through self-study.
Pron class that I teach (not by choice) are all about awareness of stress and scwha sounds and stuff: basically a listening class. A focus on actually detecting individual words such as ‘have’ and ‘be’ in sentences, stuff like that.
[quote=“Ermintrude”][quote=“jesus80”]
Being a non native English speaker, to listen to the different accents from G.B., and USA, and Canada, and Australia, makes you feel so frustrated. No kidding.[/quote]
Good.
Pron class that I teach (not by choice) are all about awareness of stress and scwha sounds and stuff: basically a listening class. A focus on actually detecting individual words such as ‘have’ and ‘be’ in sentences, stuff like that.[/quote]
I use dictation for that.
Actually, that’s a lie.
I use dictation as a simple, easily quantified listening test, for examination purposes, but if you could contain the tedium, it would seem (to me) that it’d work as word-detection training.
I use dictation as a simple, easily quantified listening test, for examination purposes, but if you could contain the tedium, it would seem (to me) that it’d work as word-detection training.[/quote]
I do it by mentally translating the lyrics from Kander and Ebb’s seminal ‘Cabaret’ into Icelandic. Make the word counting into a game. I used to have this PowerPoint animation roulette wheel. Say some tensetastic sentence: I should have been going to the dogs this weekend. They decide how many werd they hear, then gamble items on the roulette wheel. It’s a fcking awesome way to get rid of moon cakes. Their listening for tenses in authentic texts gets better.
Listening and drilling. No interaction. Teaching pronunciation is easy and it’s less of a hassle than trying to talk to people who don’t speak English and don’t want to, all day. Get a book and follow the progression in that.