The Lifelong Learning Programme

1. The Lifelong Learning Programme The ComeniusSectoralProgrammeIndividual mobilitiesIn-service trainingfor Teachers and Other Educational Staff Grant from Comenius grants: € 1550 Grant from European Social Funds: € 700 Total grant:€ 2250

2. Course organizer:English Language Teaching CentreUniversity of EdinburghEdinburgh, UKhttp://www.ials.ed.ac.uk/ Training period: 1.08 – 12.08.2011

3. The course title “Pronunciation for Language Teachers” See the description of the training course at: • http://www.ials.ed.ac.uk/teacher/courses/Summer07/Pronunciation.html

4. Participants The course was attended by English-language teachers from 3 continents: • Brasil: 1 • Germany: 1 • Italy: 3 • Japan: 2 • Poland: 4 • South Korea: 1 • Spain: 7 • Romania: 1 Due to the geographical dispersion of the participants, the experience was more than Europe-wide!

5. Areas covered by the training activity • Articulatory setting; • The articulatory organs; • Classification of consonants; • Consonant clusters; • Vowels; • Connected speech – assimilation, deletion, catenation;

6. Areas covered by the training activity (cont.) • English sounds and spelling; • Multi-sound values of English letters; • Rhythm and stress – word stress, sentence stress; • Intonation and paralinguistics – prominence, tones, functions of intonation; • Drama activities.

7. The teaching methods • The theoretical approach to teaching pronunciation was delivered by a specialized, university-level trainer from the University of Edinburgh; • This theoretical approach was complemented by 12 hours of individual work in the language laboratory, including exercises from published materials, shadow reading and reading aloud.

8. It is important to become aware of the way in which you are physically articulating the sounds!

9. Voiced or voiceless plosives?

10. An easy way of measuring the length of the sounds

11. An easy way of measuring the length of the vowels

12. You can’t teach pronunciation without using the phonemic chart!

13. Pronunciation “domino” game

14. Support from the trainer

15. Working in the language laboratory

16. Exercises from published materials in the language laboratory

17. Hi-fi equipment

18. What I have learnt from this course: • Speakers of different nationalities have their own specific difficulties in articulating English sounds: the Koreans find it almost impossible to pronounce the phonemes “v” and “f”; • In the same manner, individual students may have their own difficulties in understanding and producing pronunciation; • English pronunciation must be given appropriate attention during the English-teaching classes. Didactic games are an excellent way of teaching pronunciation. Drama activities, for instance, can enable the students to practice the paralinguistic features of pronunciation, among others.

19. Useful websites for teaching pronunciation http://www.phonemicchart.com/ http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/flash/flashin.htm http://www.youtube.com/macmillanelt http://www.fonetiks.org/ http://www.soundspronapp.com/ http://www.cambridge.org/elt/resources/skills/interactive/pron_animations/index.htm http://accent.gmu.edu/ http://phonphon.pbworks.com/w/page/16499744/FrontPage http://www.soundcomparisons.com/ http://www.photransedit.com/Online/Text2Phonetics.aspx http://www.photransedit.com/

20. For future referenceIf you want to get a grant for in-service mobility, go to: http://www.llp-ro.ro/llp.php?id=247&d=41&menu=