Teach English in Hepu Jiedao - Shantou Shi

This paper discusses ways to make the learning of phonetics and phonology interesting to ESL students. Using analogies drawn from students? daily experiences and cracking jokes related to students? daily encounters are good ways of arousing students? interests and sustaining their attention. Evoking some laughter in class can enhance teaching effectiveness without stifling the academic value of a phonetics and phonology lesson. Keywords: learning of phonetics, analogies, authentic materials, laughter 1. INTRODUCTION A lot of students think that the learning of phonetics and phonology is boring because of the many theories and technical terms that they need to remember and/or understand. The introduction of the vocal tract chart and the various articulatory organs may even turn a phonetics lesson into a biology-like lesson, which many linguistics students are sick of. How to make a phonetics and phonology lesson interesting is, thus, a difficult task for many linguistics teachers. This paper discusses ways which teachers can use to make the learning of phonetics and phonology appealing to ESL learners. One way of arousing learners? interest in learning phonetics and phonology is the use of analogies drawn from their daily or previous learning experiences. One advantage of using analogies is that students can understand abstract concepts more easily and remember them more deeply. One of the first few topics of phonetics teaching are often devoted to the notion that the shapes and sizes of the vocal tract are different for different speech sounds because of the differences in their sound qualities. This topic is often taught by teachers