*This reflection includes the classes of two weeks.

A number of teachers neglect teaching pronunciation to their

students. The reasons of this fact may be their not knowing how to teach it
or not giving importance to it. But we, as future teachers, should know that
when we are teaching new vocabulary, or whatever else, we should teach
their pronunciations as well. While doing this, it can be better to teach
phonetic transcriptions of the sounds in order to be more understandable. If
we do it at a very early stage, it will work. Also, we should show the
articulation places of the sounds and model them. We can demonstrate the
position of the lips and tongue while producing a sound. By this way,
students can better pronounce them. Another important issue is the
contrast between sounds. We should make clear the difference between
long and short vowels such as “ship” and “sheep”.

Unless students hear what they produce, they will not realize their
errors and mistakes, if there is any. In order to prevent this, we can record
their voices with the help of a device and make them listen to their own
pronunciation. Then, the correct pronunciation of the same word can be
listened to the student. At the end of this activity, students realize the
difference between the two pronunciations and correct themselves. This is a
kind of ear-training, which is very beneficial in teaching pronunciation.

Apart from producing sounds, intonation and stress should be

emphasized as they can change the meaning or the emphasis of the
sentence. With the help of some listening, and following speaking activities,
correct intonation and stress can be imposed to students.

We also mentioned mutual intelligibility, which means to be able to

understand someone as well as being understood by someone.

There are some important notes about teaching pronunciation:

1- We should make students believe that pronunciation is not something

else. That means, however perfect they know grammar, they cannot
have a successful communication without a correct pronunciation. If
you do not know grammar, you can survive but if you do not know
correct pronunciation, you cannot communicate.
2- If there is a mispronunciation, we can record the students’ sound and
make them listen to it. Then, they will understand their mistake.
3- If we have opportunity, we can make our students listen to music: this
helps ear-training.
4- We have to make pronouncing correctly a kind of habit. As in the
ALM, we should correct the mispronunciation and provide habit
formation. (I do not know how true is this but that is what comes to
my mind when the issue is teaching pronunciation.)
5- We have to teach how to use dictionary in order to pronounce the
words correctly. We should make sure the students use dictionaries in
the way we want.
6- Pronunciation can be taught perfectly through games and activities
that students can have fun.
7- We can ask students about the words they have difficulty
pronouncing. Then, we can give the correct pronunciation of them.
8- If we use an activity to teach pronunciation, giving instructions is an
essential step to carry out this activity. We should make sure
everybody understands what we intend to make them understand.
9- Unless importance is given to pronunciation, reading aloud cannot be
encouraged.