English has become the dominant language in the world.

No other language has ever

dominated the world like English has for so long as it has ridden the technological and
globalization wave. It may even never lose its position as the king of languages, according to
some linguists. Around 1.5 billion people speak it, and many sectors use it as their primary
international language. Additionally, English contains four fundamental skills: reading, writing,
speaking, and listening. Teachers should be worried about micro-skills when it comes to
communicating. Pronunciation is one of the fundamental skills of speaking. A crucial aspect of
developing oral proficiency in a second language is pronunciation.

Pronunciation plays a crucial role in speaking since it influences students' willingness to

speak up. Students with poor pronouncing skills find it difficult to communicate their ideas and
risk losing confidence. The pronunciation of English words also differs from other languages.

Clear comprehension of English discourse and pronunciation are two qualities that work
well together. It means that your degree of speech understanding is boosted if you know how to
pronounce the words and phrases correctly and with appropriate intonation. Thus, practicing
your pronunciation is a crucial component of learning any foreign language, including English.
This does not imply that the goal of such phonetic instruction is to entirely and permanently
eliminate a foreign accent. Of course, if you are not intending to work for classified information
or educate yourself on the language professionally, it is not always practicable and not as vital.
The fundamental goal of such training is to develop your ability to hear both yourself and other
people. A further obstacle to understanding between you and the person you are speaking to is
poor pronunciation.

For a variety of reasons, many teachers find it difficult to concentrate on pronunciation.

There aren't many useful tools or established guidelines for what practicing your pronunciation
should entail. Many educational institutions still struggle to include many English dialects, along
with their lexical, grammatical, and cultural origins, in textbooks. In order to solve the problem
of the difficulties of pronunciation, the proper technique is required. Different teaching
approaches assign different levels of importance to pronunciation as an aspect of language
learning. While there are various techniques and methods to teach and enhance pronunciation in
ESL/EFL classrooms, incorporating drama and plays are found to be ideal.
 Actors use various voice activities in order to warm up their voices, improve their
projection or just improve their overall delivery. Many of these drama voice activities can be
used in English Language Learners to help them improve everything from phoneme articulation
to intonation and stress.

Actors need to have a variety of voices in order to be successful and effective. To tell a
story and represent a character, they must talk in a variety of tones, velocities, and accents. To
assist actors in achieving this type of vocal range, acting coaches and trainers have created a
wide variety of exercises. Learners of other languages can benefit from many of these activities
as well. These exercises can assist the learners as they work to grasp a brand-new language with
everything from phoneme articulation to word stress to intonation and, most crucially, effectively
and appropriately conveying feelings and thoughts. ESL/EFL teachers can use some of these
activities to incorporate drama and plays to teach pronunciation in the classrooms.

Posture and Breathing Exercises

In order to help our students with their pronunciation, we are going to take them right
back to the beginning and that is to posture. In order to have good pronunciation and good
vocalization, we have to stand in such a way that we can fully use all of the vocal tools available
to us. For good posture, consider the following: (a) feet shoulder width apart; (b) knees should be
slightly bent and loose; (c) hips should be comfortably over the knees; (d) spine should be
straight as if someone is pulling an invisible string right through the body; and (e) shoulders
should be slightly back.

To apply this technique, teachers can have an activity for their students. For example,
have all the students stand up and find a partner. Next, partners will face each other and assume a
good posture position as described above. Lastly, their partners can critique each other in order
to help them improve their posture.

Obviously, breathing is a very automatic process for humans. It performs an essential role
in keeping us alive. However, in order to achieve their entire vocal range, both actors and singers
teach their bodies to breathe in a specific way. And this is diaphragmatic breathing. We always
use a diaphragm when we breathe since it is a natural element of the breathing process. To help
us get more volume and air moving through our lungs, they were paying attention to the muscle
contraction when they were deliberately breathing with the diaphragm. All students should stand
up and place their hands just below the ribs in order to practice diaphragmatic breathing. After
letting them breathe normally for a moment, instruct them to try to expand their chest cavity as
much as they can when taking a breath in and to expel as much air as they can when taking a
breath out. They should feel more movement when they do this right here where their diaphragm
is. Point out that this is diaphragmatic breathing by giving it a few tries. In addition, in order to
achieve the full range of our voices, we also have to be able to control our breathing. Try the
following activities with the students to practice diaphragmatic breathing and breathing control.

Activity #1 (Diaphragmatic Breathing): First, have students explosively expel air so they can
make the repeated sound, “huh.” Then, have them place their hand on their diaphragm so they
can feel it. After, have them change the sound to “ha”, “hi”, and “ho.”

Activity #2 (Breathing Control): First, have students breathed as deeply as they can. Then, have
them hold their breath for a count of five. Finally, have them expel the air as quickly and as
explosively as possible and have them repeat this three or four times.

Activities for Consonant and Vowel Production

The following activities will help students to practice making a particular vowel and
consonant sounds for phonemes:

Activity #1 (Consonant Production): Have students practice holding fricative sounds (e.g. /sh/,
/f/, /v/, /th/, etc.) and nasal sounds (e.g. /m/, /n/, /ng/) for an extended period of time or for as
long as possible.

Activity #2 (Consonant Production): Have students say tongue twisters with the focus on
exaggerated articulation instead of speed. For example, “Six Thick Thistle Sticks.”

Activity #3 (Vowel Production): Have students stand up and start walking around the room. As
they are walking, they’re producing a vowel sound, changing it up every few minutes. And have
them keep the vowel sound going for as long as possible.

Activity #4 (Vowel Production): Have students say a series of short words, all starting with the
same consonant but having a different vowel sound. Students say these words as quickly as
possible, multiple times, and then move onto another series of words with different consonant
sound, but the same vowel sounds (e.g. no, know, now, neigh, knee).

Word and Sentence Stress

When actors deliver a line or dialogue, they pay a lot of attention to stress, both word
stress and sentence stress. Where we put the stress when we say something can go a long way to
deliver a particular message or to convey meaning. Some activities that can be used to students
that can help them get decisions about stress both word stress and sentence stress is as follows:

Activity #1 (Word Stress): First, go over the definition of the schwa with the students. The
unstressed variant of several English vowel sounds is the schwa. Because we un-stress many of
our vowel sounds, it is the most common vowel sound in the English language.