When Teaching Pronunciation, Go for the Low-Hanging Fruit

Teaching pronunciation is one of those things many teachers tend to avoid or leave out altogether. The main reason is that it can seem overwhelming. After sitting in a Phonetics & Phonology class for a whole semester, many student teachers start to wonder how they are ever even going to start teaching all this information.

However, students expect pronunciation to be taught in the classroom. When students are asked to say what they expect from their class, many of them, particularly adult students beyond the beginner level will say that one of their goals is to improve their pronunciation.

There's also a hidden bonus many of them are unaware of that comes with working on their pronunciation: their listening comprehension also improves.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when teaching pronunciation:

- Teach pronunciation when the opportunity arises. There are many classroom interactions that lend themselves to the teaching of pronunciation. So, if you have the time, take a moment to do a little pronunciation work in the middle of a lesson.

- Remember that pronunciation is not "contagious". If it were, every individual living in a foreign country would speak the foreign language with a perfect native accent. What this means in the ESL/EFL classroom is that it's not enough to expect students to improve their pronunciation by imitating their teacher. Some proactive work needs to be done.

- Explaining rules and generalizations can go a long way. Adult students in particular do better when rules are explained to them. Students can spend hours repeating the correct pronunciations of -ed endings modeled by their teacher and still not get them right in their own speech, but a few minutes spent learning the rule behind these pronunciations is usually enough to set them on the right path to eventually get them right, at least most of the time.

- Go for the low-hanging fruit. Identify those areas that are the most challenging for your students and focus on them. Keep in mind that while extensive work on an individual phoneme is unlikely to produce dramatic improvements in overall intelligibility, working on suprasegmental features, such as unstressed syllable vowel reduction can really pay off both in terms of intelligibility and listening comprehension.

An iPad in the classroom: My quest for the perfect app(s)

I think the iPad is a great addition to any classroom. But of course, it's not the hardware that matters, but the apps that help the hardware meet our needs as teachers and allow us to come up with new ways of engaging our students.

I recently got an iPad to use in a Teacher Training course I teach on Saturdays. The introduction of new elements in the classroom is always necessarily characterized by a learning curve. In this case, I've spent two weeks testing various options to come up with the best possible set-up for my class.

I will write about the apps and how they compare in the days to come. The conclusion that I came to after my first few days of trying to find apps that would do what my laptop does is that maybe it's time to think of doing things differently. For years, I have prepared content for my lessons based on Powerpoint slides and PDF files. This worked perfectly well and I felt comfortable with what made it work: a latpop, a projector, a laser pointer.

But in trying to make my old materials fit my new iPad, I've come to the realization that maybe I'm approaching this the wrong way. The addition of the iPad, with all its capabilities, should be reason enough for me to rethink how I prepare my materials, how I present and how I involve my students for a more interactive environment.

So far, the apps I have explored with varying degrees of success include:

Noterize
iAnnotate PDF
Air Sketch
Air Display
Penultimate
Exhibit A
MightyMeeting
Whiteboard HD
GoodReader
2Screens
MyPoint
PDF Expert
Save2PDF

I have enjoyed the reviews and descriptions other educators have posted of these and other apps, and I will be posting my own experience hoping to help others who may be considering using an iPad in the classroom.

How parents can help their kids reinforce Spelling

Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm writing this thinking of parents of children who are native Spanish speakers and attend bilingual school (English/Spanish) where one of their classes is Spelling.

When it comes to helping their kids learn, practice or study their Spelling words, the parents' own ability to speak English is not as key as their understanding of how the child should learn/practice/study.

An eager parent can do more harm than good and confuse the child by using study methods that differ greatly from the way the student has been learning in school, such as using excessive translation when translation is discouraged in the classroom or organizing words alphabetically when words are organized contextually in the book.

Teachers who understand this will usually help parents by giving them tips to help their kids when preparing for a weekly Spelling quiz or even for a Spelling Bee.

For non-bilingual parents, it is essential that teachers share resources to help the parent understand the Spelling words the child needs to practice. A quick visit to http://www.wordreference.com/ will help the parent look up the meaning of the word in the English-Spanish dictionary and hear the pronunciation of the word, in most cases in both American and British English variations. Teachers can therefore suggest this tool to parents.

The following simple steps can be suggested to parents as a study sequence for young children:

1. Ask the child to look at the word (in their book, notebook or a flashcard) and say it aloud. Haptic learners might benefit from using their finger to "underline" or trace the word.

2. Cover the word and ask the child to spell it. Now, this is tricky for non-bilingual parents. How will they know if the child is spelling the word correctly? One option is asking the child not to spell outloud, but rather to write down the word. In that case the parent can simply compare the written word to the one in the book or flashcard. But if the child is practicing for a Spelling Bee, then she will need to spell outloud. Teachers can recommend that parents use an online alphabet such as the one in http://www.learningplanet.com/act/fl/aact/index.asp to check that the child is using the right spelling and actually saying letter names correctly.

3. If the child spells the word correctly with confidence, the parent places a mark next to the word in the book or separates the flashcard into a separate pile, the "known" pile.

4. If the child spells the word correctly with some hesitation and self-correction, the parent places the word into a "needs practice" pile.

5. If the child spells the word incorrectly, the parent places the word into an "unknown" pile, but first guides the child to spell the word correctly by gently pointing out the error. Parent should ask the child, instead of telling her: "What is this letter called?" (pointing to the letter). "Can you spell the word again?" "What comes after 'm'?"

6. Subsequent rounds focus on words in the "needs practice" and "unknown" piles, moving words to the "known" pile when the child demonstrates sufficient confidence when correctly spelling the word.

7. To reinforce meaning, parents can ask the child to use the word in a sentence. If the parent is not bilingual, they can simply say something like: "That sounded very good, what does it mean?".

As teachers we should encourage parents to use a lot of praise when helping their kids with their schoolwork. A child who feels encouraged, relaxed and accepted will do better than one who feels anxious about making mistakes.

If there are any specific techniques or steps the teacher uses in class, those should be explained to parents so they can be used at home too. After all, both parents and teachers are interested in helping kids succeed.