TESOL Sao Luís

This chapter focused on the more technical aspects of English pronunciation for the sake of better understanding the intonation, rhythm and stress of the English language. When I first came to Japan to teach almost two years ago, I remember struggling madly to think of ways to explain pronunciation. I was definitely in the camp of teachers that didn't find pronunciation worthy of too much classroom time. However, I later found that devoting small chunks of class time to games like tongue twisters and small tutorials on difficult sounds seemed interesting enough for the students, and I did notice them making a conscious effort to replicate those sounds later in the semester. As the chapter said, pronunciation was definitely a worthwhile activity. Oddly, I actually used techniques that were discussed in the chapter, such as playing a game where students practice using the same sentence in different ways and contexts to see how the pronunciation changes. I also developed an extremely crude idea of the way the mouth works when pronouncing certain sounds, especially \"r,\" \"l,\" \"th,\" and \"v,\" as these are sounds that pose the biggest problems for Japanese students. Learning about the palate, the alveolar ridge, and larynx and the glottis have definitely given me a more detailed idea of what is truly happening in the mouth. While I certainly won't use such technical explanation with my students, at the very least it has given me a better sense of what I am talking about when I explain.