Teach English in Anyang XiAng - Zhangye Shi

While pronunciation is an integral part of the course, it is in fact the most neglected aspect of English language teaching, says the unit and sets out a broad overview and general guidelines on how to teach pronunciation, to be expanded on in the classroom and with further reading. The unit spells out the definitions of important terms, such as phonology -- the whole sound system of a particular language and it deals with stress, rhythm and intonation in a variety of texts. Intonation is the variation in volume and pitch in a whole sentence, stress is more concerned with individual words. Intonation carries the message and is important in questioning, confirming or disagreeing with statements and fundamental to expression of emotions or feelings. The unit illustrates: 1. The rise and fall intonation, a common intonation, in a variety of sentences illustrating how the falling intonation indicates that the speaker has no more to say. 2. The fall and rise pattern. This pattern is used when requiring an acknowledgement or return greeting and also to indicate the speaker is not yet finished talking. 3. A level, flat intonation indicating the speaker does not have much to say as in telephone conversations where the speaker allows the caller to speak rather grudgingly. The unit describes intonation as a predictor of the nature of information that is forthcoming as in BBC newscasts, citing examples. Techniques for teaching intonation include nonsense words as a warmer, gesture, humming or singing and the board. Stress The unit illustrates how stressing different words in a single sentence can change meaning entirely. It provides rules but stresses that teachers should not become bogged down by the rules, for there are exceptions to these. Nonetheless: All multi-syllable words in English have one or more parts that are stressed. 1. one word has one stress only. But there can be a secondary stress in some words, much smaller than the main stress. 2. we can only stress syllables, not individual vowels or consonants. What we are teaching students is to feel the music of the language and not get bogged down by intricate rules that anyway have exceptions. Techniques for teaching stress include gesture, choral work, the board and stress marks. The unit illustrates the four major ways sounds are joined, including linking, sound dropping (t,d), sound changing and extra lettering (Where dja wanna go?) Importantly, meaning is to be gleaned from context (the way to cut it versus the waiter cut it). The unit illustrates the difference in written and spoken English through examples of sound joining, including linking, sound dropping, sound changing and extra lettering. The phonetic alphabet and the difference between spelling and pronunciation is introduced with the aid of George Bernard Shaw?s poem, Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners. Hence the need for phonemic symbols and the unit advises teachers to focus on the phonemic symbols in the International Phonemic Alphabet rather than traditional spelling when teaching pronunciation. In , the unit underlines the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants, (b and p) and the movement of the lips in the section Articulation. A brief biology lesson reminds us of the speech organs and distinguishes between sounds that are palatal, palatal alveolar, alveolar and dental and labio-dental, bi labial and glottal. The manner of articulation is spelt out, illustrating plosive, fricative, affricates and nasal sounds. Teaching techniques include peer dictation, over-emphasis of individual parts of a word (your own mouth), visuals ie diagrams of the movement of the mouth in articulation, phonemes for the teaching of more difficult sounds and tongue twisters. This is difficult, yet fun.