Remember This?! Series: Pronunciation Instructional Support Kit

November 2022

Audience

Adults

Staff

Topic

Pronunciation

Level

Advanced

Beginning

Intermediate

Pre-Beginning

For this installment of the Remember This?! Series, where we remember great resources for tutoring and teaching, let’s look at our Pronunciation ESL Instructional Support Kit!

All five ESL Instructional Support Kits were created to help teachers, tutors and volunteers reduce their prep time by having flexible, grab-and-go activities to use in one-on-one, small group or all-class contexts. They are classic tools that don't lose their value as the years go by.

The Pronunciation ESL Instructional Support Kit in particular includes about two dozen pronunciation activities addressing word stress, sentence stress, thought groups, voice quality setting and final consonant articulation. Not sure what all those things are? No worries! The kit contains helpful background information on each topic. Just insert your current unit’s vocabulary and sentences to make the activities appropriate for your level!

Here’s a simple, fun activity from the kit to whet your appetite:

Hum the Word Stress

It may be difficult for learners to hear and identify word stress patterns, particularly when they are first learning about word stress. This activity helps learners clearly hear word stress patterns and become familiar with the musicality of them. This activity works well when combined with Move the Word Stress.

Materials Needed: none

1) Select 2-4 words from the weekly unit. Say one word, emphasizing the word stress pattern.

2) Hum the word, emphasizing the word stress pattern.

3) Have the learners imitate you and hum the word stress pattern.

4) Go through each of the words following steps 1-3.

5) Hum one of the word stress patterns from the selected words. Have the learners tell you which word you hummed.

6) After they have identified all of the words in the group by listening to their hummed stress patterns, have the learners take turns humming the patterns while you and the rest of the group identify the word that they hummed

Examples:

pre-SCRIP-tion mm-MMM-mm

HOS-pit-al MMM-mm-mm

Want to see more? Download a copy of the Pronunciation ESL Instructional Support Kit and begin using one or two of these activities next week!

Previous installments in the Remember This?! Series:

For questions or comments about this Tutor Tip contact Tutor Training Coordinator, Meghan Boyle, at mboyle@literacymn.org.

Assembled pronunciation ESL instructional support kit

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Remember This?! Series: Pronunciation Instructional Support Kit