Pronunciation

=Pronunciation =

Annotated Review: Pronunciation Activity 1

 * Name of activity:** Wordblender


 * URL**: []


 * Definition:** This activity helps students with their pronunciation by helping them practice their ability to distinguish between consonants and consonant clusters at the start and end of words, as well as between medial and long vowel sounds. Learners are asked to pick a start sound from one list and an end sound from another. The animated ‘blender’ then mixed them together and lets the learners know if they got it right.


 * Language Level:** This activity provides three different difficulty levels all intended for A1 learners. This way, students are given the opportunity to try more challenging exercises as their skills improve.


 * Content:** I chose Wordblender partly because, unlike many of the other activities I came across when conducting this research, it did not require the download of a software programme onto the hard disk. I was able to play it directly through the web browser (I use Firefox but tried it on Explorer which worked well too) which is useful for a young child who might happen to come across it at a time when an adult is not available to assist with downloading. The animated guide (a talking blender) is amusing, helpful and encouraging and not distracting at all. Even when you get the answer wrong, the animation has some kind words to offer. The written instructions presented before the game begins are clear and detailed but intended for parents and teachers rather than the A1 learners as they include a lot of information about the language learning areas the activity aims to tackle. This seemed like a problem to me until I clicked on the start button and discovered that animation guide provides short and simple oral instructions that are barely even needed as the activity is so self-explanatory. Furthermore, the activity was short and therefore likely to retain a young child’s attention through to the end. Resume, restart, and try again etc. buttons are all available in prominent positions on the page border thus rendering the activity easy to navigate and very user-friendly.


 * Classroom Suitability:** The fact that this activity does not require extra downloadable material, is short, and makes it easy for learners to figure out what they have to do on their own makes it a good candidate for autonomous classroom learning. During my first try at the activity I had already begun to coming up with supplementary follow up activities. For example, at one point during the activity, learners are given the option to create their own word clusters as opposed to just reproducing the ones provided by the animation. This could become a follow-up activity where each student presents his or her own words to the rest of the class in a way that tests pronunciation as well as other skills. For example, the student who came up with it could utter it orally while other students try to guess the meaning and spelling, thus turning it into a pronunciation, vocabulary and spelling exercise.

Annotated Review: Pronunciation Activity 2
**Name of activity:** Poem Pack

 
 * URL:** []
 * Definition:** This activity pack consists of ten animated poems intended to introduce learners to long vowel sounds such as [ee].
 * Language level:** This is an activity aimed as beginner A1 level learners.
 * Content:** This activity is so much fun I wanted to play it over and over again. It is broken down into 10 parts (or ten poems) each dealing with a different long vowel sound (ee, ai, oa, ea, ay, a-e, oo, y, ing, i-e). Each poem in animated and colourful and the content of the poems is hilarious (for example the [ee] poem is about a family of cr[ee]ps who are anything but sw[ee]t etc.). Each poem is then broken down into a further five areas where learners can choose to hear the poem being read by someone else, read it themselves, search for the target long vowel sound, search for words within the poem which carry the target sound, or print the poem. After completing each step a score out of 8 is given. Students are given the freedom to tackle each poem and each part of each poem in whichever order they like. This type of freedom fosters autonomous learning and encourages each student to explore their own personal strengths and weaknesses. This activity is excellent fun, user-friendly and entirely addictive – recommended to beginners and native speakers, children and adults alike J


 * Classroom Suitability:** Due to the fact that this is an activity pack (and therefore long) which can easily be broken down into components (and therefore short), there are a number of different ways it can be incorporated into the classroom. If a group is small and the children manageable there is not reason why the should not be allowed to work at the activity at their own pace giving the teacher time to observe and help individual students. Alternatively, individual students or groups of students can be assigned a specific poem and therefore long vowel sound which they must present to the rest if the class after completing the activity. They can talk about the particular words in the poem which include the sound or even about the content of the poems which are themselves interesting and educational. These are merely a few examples that serve to illustrate that this activity pack can be moulded to the specific requirements of most ESL classrooms.

This document provides information about the practice of teaching pronunciation both in the past and present