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Unit 13 Overview Mastering grammar, having a good knowledge of vocabulary, being able to read and write well, that is what I was mostly taught in my country. As a non-native English speaker I honestly thought that this part is not that important. When I just started teaching I realised that not being able to pronounce words correctly hugely shakes and frustrates me in communication. Now, I understand clearly that teaching pronunciation is an important area which should be dealt with regularly. In this lesson first we learn how to help students to understand and become familiar with the phonology. This is an indispensable tool in helping to make their communication intelligible, correct. Intonation is an important part of this chart because it not only gives English its rhythm, it also helps you in understanding what a person is saying. We have rise/fall intonation pattern and fall/rise intonation pattern. If it is not emphasised the right word and emphasized the wrong one it can cause comprehension problems for the listener. It can also change the pronunciation of the word such that it sounds like a different word and the whole meaning of the sentence changes. There are a few techniques to help teaching intonation: 1) Nonsense word: Just pure noises can be used to practice conveying attitude and pointing out intonation. 2) Humming or singing: Singing or humming sentences out loud to hear the stress and intonation is a great method as well. The students don?t even have to produce actual words. 3) Gesture: A clear sweep of the hand either up or down can indicate intonation. It demonstrates whether the sentences starts on a high or low pitch and then indicates the direction of the pitch. 4) Board: Making marks on the boards using straight or angled arrows to emphasize the point being made and the direction of the intonation. In addition, underlining or drawing boxes can be used to indicate stress sin a sentence. 5) Stress mark: These are another way to indicate stress. For example, He ?wanted to ?go. 6) Choral work: Chanting or singing typical rhythms of English can help indicate stress. 7) Contrastive stress: Stress on a syllable can be shown by saying it correctly first and then repeating the word with the stress in a different syllable. It will help the students because a student can more readily perceive a sound that is voiced by placing it alongside a sound that is non-voiced. Intonation, word stress may look difficult but there is International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that is included in every dictionary. Students can use the dictionary to sound out any English word, using the phonemic alphabet. They just have to find the symbol that produces each individual sound and put them together to form the phonetic spelling. Because the fundamental principles of the IPA are simple and easy to use, everyone can apply the IPA to transcribe sounds when learning a foreign language.
