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This unit focused on English sounds, pronunciation, and phonology. English is spoken in many countries as a first language, yet English is not identical between those countries, therefore, there is a range of pronunciations that are correct for any word. While English pronunciation has some flexibility, if the pronunciation of a word is too far from acceptable range, it can result in communication failure. Even though there is some subjectivity based on the teacher?s exposure and heritage, English pronunciation should be included to reduce the chance of miss-communication, especially if two EFL speakers are in a situation where their only common language is English. Pronunciation can be the difference between being understood and being embarrassed During my years as an EFL teacher in Japan, I have worked a lot on teaching pronunciation and intonation. Indeed, there are entire web pages devoted to mocking the terrible accent many Japanese speakers of English tend to have. Japanese children learn Japanese by focusing on the words in flat monotone. They learn intonation from their environments. Japanese English textbooks mimic the methods used in elementary school for Japanese, but fail to account for lack of exposure to living English, typically resulting in a classroom full of creepy robots.. I regularly use most of the methods in this unit. To battle a room of creepy robot-voices, I will sometimes use Japanese to explain why the very slow and flat English sounds terrible. Next, I will say some words in English, and with common mispronunciations. If my students are able to hear the difference, I will move on and use a combination of humming, explaining what part of the mouth produces a sound, and then a lot of group repetition, and a balance between a sense of humor and nurturing or encouraging my students. The day I wrote this, I was trying to teach a class of high school kids the correct pronunciation of ?looking?. Initially, my students said, ?luki?? instead of ?l?ki??. With practice, I got them to pronounce, ?look? properly, then, I added ?-ing? and they reverted to the original pronunciation. It surprised me, I laughed. Luckily, my students found it amusing that their mistake made me laugh. I switched to Japanese and explained what was wrong and that reverting caught me by surprise and made me laugh. At that point, since it was my second time switching to Japanese, I decided the lesson should move on. In my experience, a combination of explanation, practice, and being silly, is most effective for tackling problems with pronunciation and intonation for EFL speakers.
