Tips for Teaching Pronunciation

When it comes to pronunciation instruction in an English as a foreign language (EFL) or content-based

instruction (CBI) context, teachers should focus on making sure that their students’ pronunciation is
comprehensible. It is not necessary nor even realistic to aim for native-like pronunciation for most L2
speakers (Hayes-Harb & Watzinger-Tharp 2012). We are forming bilingual (or polylingual) speakers, and
we do not need to try to make our students sound like monolingual native speakers of the target
language.

Given all the other things that CBI instructors need to teach their students, it is unlikely that you will find
much extra time in your schedule to have a lesson specifically focused on pronunciation. At the same
time, it would be a disservice to your students to not correct mispronunciations that would cause them
to be incomprehensible to most English speakers. The best approach to pronunciation instruction in a
CBI context is to do quick mini-lessons on pronunciation as the need arises. Below you will see for
examples of “pop up” lessons on pronunciation.

Scenario 1
Veronica was teaching a 10th grade chemistry class, and the lesson of the day was on Boyle’s law.
Veronica noticed that many students were pronouncing “Boyle’s law” in a way that would be very
difficult for other English speakers to understand. To address this, she waited for a moment in the lesson
when she felt that she could take a few minutes to talk about something else without interrupting
anyone. Veronica modeled the pronunciation of “Boyle’s law,” making efforts to exaggerate how she
moved her mouth to pronounce the different sounds. Then she invited the whole class to repeat after
her in chorus. After a couple of repetitions, she called on a few students to pronounce “Boyle’s law”
individually.

Scenario 2
In Nouruddin’s social studies class, one of his students mentioned green tea, but at first Nouruddin did
not understand the student. The student seemed very frustrated that the teacher did not understand
what she was saying, especially given that “green” and “tea” are two very common and basic words in
English. After clarifying what the student was saying, Nouruddin realized that his student was not
extending the vowel sounds long enough in the two words for them to be easily comprehensible.
Nouruddin quickly explained that the vowel sounds in those words need to last longer, and he
accompanied this explanation with a hand gesture to express “longer.” He used the same gesture as he
pronounced in an exaggerated fashion “greeeeeen teeeeeeaaaaaa.” He reminded his students that

© 2019 by World Learning. Tips for Teaching Pronunciation for the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State
and administered by FHI 360. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, except where noted. To view a
copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State

administered by FHI 360 and delivered by World Learning

sounds that may sound silly at first to an L2 learner are probably just right to the ear of a native speaker
of that language.

He had the class repeat together, and then he invited a few individual students, including the original
student who said that, to model the pronunciation. A couple of the students originally pronounced the
words too quickly. He repeated “green tea” to them, emphasizing the length of the vowel sounds and
making the same hand gesture again. Everyone was able to pronounce it well by the second or third try.
When they did pronounce it well, Nouruddin praised them with phrases like “That’s right!” and “You’ve
got it!”

Scenario 3
In Fiona’s class, a student was reading out loud and came across the word “phenomenon.” The student
got “tongue-tied” over the word. To help him, Fiona pronounced the word broken up by syllables

phe - no - me - non

and she tapped her finger once for each of the four syllables. Fiona then invited the student to repeat
the word in the same way, breaking the word up by syllables and tapping his finger once for each
syllable, as if he were in a music lesson learning the right tempo for a song. This trick helped the student
pronounce the word correctly. She had him repeat a few more times in the same way, and then she
invited him to say the word more naturally. He was able to do so. When he did, she said “great job!”
Then she had the whole class repeat the word, the first few times slowly while tapping, and then at the
end all together. She agreed that long words like that can be tough to pronounce, and she suggested
that they try the tapping method the next time they run into difficulties with a long word like that.

References
(This content is copyrighted, and cannot be adapted in any way, or distributed after the end of this course. It is not Public Domain or Creative
Commons-licensed, and therefore not for public use.)

Hayes-Harb, R., & Watzinger-Tharp, J. (2012). Accent, intelligibility, and the role of the listener:
Perceptions of English-accented German by native German speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 45, 260–
282.

Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an accent. New York: Routledge.

To cite this article:

World Learning. (2019). Tips for teaching pronunciation. In “Content-based Instruction” [MOOC].

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State

administered by FHI 360 and delivered by World Learning