Pronunciation is important for adult ESL students to master. The wrong pronunciation can cause confusion and embarrassment, but the right pronunciation allows for effective communication with native speakers. Learn how to support your ESL students with posts that explain how to teach pronunciation.
If you’ve ever taught adult ESL students whose first language is Arabic, you already know what’s coming. The b and p sounds. They sound harmless enough. But in practice? Oh gosh. *heavy sigh* And no, it’s not because your students aren’t trying hard enough. This happens because of how Arabic sound systems are structured and […]
Look, we all know why we teach Short I and Long E sounds. Nobody wants their students accidentally talking about going to the “b*tch” when they mean “beach.” I’ve watched students’ faces turn bright red when they realize what they just said. It’s either painful for their classmates or provokes irrepressible laughter, which isn’t helpful.
Afaf threw a pencil at me once during a pronunciation lesson. She missed on purpose (I think), but still. That’s what minimal pairs can do to your feistier students. They’re frustrating as heck, but that frustration? It means they’re working. So what are minimal pairs, and why should you care? The Basics: What are Minimal
My long vowel activities were a labor of love for my students. When I first taught a “true beginner” class, it was full of Saudi students. This was a class not shy about speaking, having fun, or making mistakes. Some of them were also pretty vocal about not wanting to continue making the same mistakes
Why do we need TH-pronunciation activities? The voiced TH and the unvoiced TH are two of the most difficult sounds for many of our adult ESL students because these rare phonemes simply don’t exist in many languages. /θ/ is even rarer than /ð/. Imagine going your entire life never making a specific sound and then
“Bet.” I said it clearly. The students hunched over their papers, writing what they heard. “Pat.” More writing. A few confused glances around the room. “Bit. Pot. Bat.” By the fifth word, the most vocal students in my class were openly checking their neighbors’ papers. These were the same students who complained weekly about their
I’ll never forget the day I realized I was having a real conversation with Shimin. No paper, no pencil, no charades. Just two people talking, and I could understand what he was saying. If you’d asked me three months earlier whether that would ever happen, I honestly wouldn’t have known what to tell you. Pronunciation
“Socks.” That’s what the presentation showed. A nice, innocent picture of socks. “SEKS!” my new Saudi student yelled out, loud and enthusiastic, so proud he knew this word. The classroom went silent. Then his friends started whispering to him in Arabic. His face went from proud to confused to absolutely mortified in about three seconds
I’ll never forget the day one of my Saudi students accused a classmate of “sheating” off of them. Except it wasn’t just the sh/ch mix-up…the vowels were also a mess, so what I heard was closer to “shitting.” Did I immediately demonstrate what a blush looks like? Yes. Yes, darn it, I did. This wasn’t
“And then,” my professor paused dramatically, “the Muslims were playing in the streets! Everywhere! They were playing in the streets all over the country!” Everyone paused their notetaking in confusion. Did they miss something? Why were the Muslims playing right after the tragedy? Well, they weren’t, and I was left trying to low-key whisper to
