Тиллар ўҚитиш методикаси ва таълим технологиялари

LECTURE 12. TEACHING PRONUNCIATION TO B1 LEVEL LEARNERS
Lecture outline:
1.Teaching pronunciation with phonemic symbols
Phonemic symbols represent the sounds of the English language.
Using them can be a valuable tool to improving your students' pronunciation.

B1 Pronunciation is clearly intelligible even if a foreign accent is sometimes evident and occasional mispronunciations occur.

Why use phonemic symbols?
The alphabet which we use to write English has 26 letters but (British) English has 44 sounds. Inevitably, English spelling is not a reliable guide to pronunciation because
• Some letters have more than one sound
• Sometimes letters are not pronounced at all
• The same sound may be represented by different letters
• Sometimes syllables indicated by the spelling are not pronounced at all
Here are a few challenging questions to put to your students:
• How do you pronounce gh in 'enough', 'through' and 'ghost'? (like f in fun, not pronounced, like g in got)
• How many syllables are there in 'chocolate'? (2)

The letters of the alphabet can be a poor guide to pronunciation. Phonemic symbols, in contrast, are a totally reliable guide. Each symbol represents one sound consistently. Here are five good reasons why students should know phonemic symbols.

• Students can use dictionaries effectively. The second bit of information in dictionaries for English language learners is the word in phonemic symbols. It comes right after the word itself. Knowing phonemic symbols enables students to get the maximum information from dictionaries.
• Students can become independent learners. They can find out the pronunciation of a word by themselves without asking the teacher. What is more, they can write down the correct pronunciation of a word that they hear. If they cannot use phonemic symbols for this, they will use the sound values of letters in their own language and this will perpetuate pronunciation errors.
• Phonemic symbols are a visual aid. Students can see that two words differ, or are the same, in pronunciation. For example they can see that 'son' and sun' must be pronounced the same because the phonemic symbols are the same. They can use their eyes to help their ears and if they are able to hold and manipulate cards with the symbols on, then they are using the sense of touch as well. The more senses students use, the better they will learn.
• Phonemic symbols, arranged in a chart, are part of every student's armoury of learning resources. Just as they have a dictionary for vocabulary and a grammar book for grammar, so they need reference materials for pronunciation: the phonemic symbols and simple, key words that show the sound of each symbol.
• Although speaking a language is a performance skill, knowledge of how the language works is still of great value. Here is another question to ask students: How many different sounds are there in English? Usually, students do not know. Phonemic symbols on the wall in a classroom remind them that there are 44. Even if they have not mastered all of them, they know what the target is and where the problems are. The chart is a map of English sounds. Even with a map, you can get lost but you are better off with a map than without one.