by Isaiah WonHo Yoo |
4 Steps in Learning to Pronounce the Stops
Help students learn the six English oral stops, or plosives: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/. I have used this lesson mostly with intermediate-level students, and it usually takes about 50 minutes to do the first three activities: Listening Discrimination, Controlled Activity, and Guided Activity. Teachers should decide how much time they want to spend on the last Communicative Activity, but should allow at least 30 minutes for the activity. A common mistake that I see in many ESL/EFL classes is that students are asked to engage in a communicative activity before they have a chance to do more manageable activities. The four activities shown in this lesson plan follow a format presented in “Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages“ by Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996).
Resource Type: Lesson Plan
Audience: Secondary
Audience Language Proficiency: Intermediate
Duration: 50 min/3x and 30+ min for last
Materials And Technology:
Word list from lesson plan
Objective:
To help students aurally discern and orally produce the six oral stops, or plosives, in English: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/
Language Skill: Speaking
Procedure:
Descriptions of each consonant consist of a reference to three features: voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
The phonemes /p/ and /b/, for instance, differ in voicing (/p/ being voiceless and /b/ being voiced) while sharing the same place of articulation (bilabial) and manner of articulation (stop). There are six oral stops, or plosives, in English altogether: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/. While we should not expect our students to know the three features associated with each consonant, explaining how consonants are different from one another does sometimes help students to produce the targeted sounds. For example, most of my students have found it helpful to know that the only difference between / (as in shoe) and / / (as in usual) is the voicing.
I have used this lesson mostly with intermediate-level students, and it usually takes about 50 minutes to do the first three activities. Teachers should decide how much time they want to spend on the Communicative Activity, but should allow at least 30 minutes for the activity. A common mistake that I see in many ESL/EFL classes is that students are asked to engage in a communicative activity before they have a chance to do more manageable activities. The four activities shown below follow a format presented in Teaching Pronunciation by Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996, p. 36):
I have used this lesson mostly with intermediate-level students, and it usually takes about 50 minutes to do the first three activities. Teachers should decide how much time they want to spend on the Communicative Activity, but should allow at least 30 minutes for the activity. A common mistake that I see in many ESL/EFL classes is that students are asked to engage in a communicative activity before they have a chance to do more manageable activities. The four activities shown below follow a format presented in Teaching Pronunciation by Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996, p. 36):
- listening discrimination,
- controlled practice, e.g. minimal pair sentences,
- guided practice, e.g. structured communication exercises such as cued dialogues, and
- communicative practice, e.g. less structured activities such as role plays.
References:
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Supporting Files:
4 Steps In Learning To Pronounce The Stops.pdf