My Ideal Pronunciation Class
EFL/ESL colleagues, who have worked with me at Universidad Latina or at Centro Cultural Costarrincese-Norteamericano and know me from ESL/EFL teacher conferences, area fully acquainted for my passion towards English pronunciation. In terms of lesson planning for these particular courses that I teach at Ulatina, I really enjoy digging the Web to find suitable material for my classes, to provide students with further practice to be done at home anytime they want, and to consolidate the expected language learning goals for pronunciation.
In the sample plan I provide below, exercises that will be monitored by me, the instructor, are labeled so. However, the idea is to have students work on the plan themselves to become responsible for their pronunciation learning. Of course, if they are able to bring their laptops to class, for those of them who happen to have, the lesson plan will be highly effective.
Most activities planned here are intended to be part of a long-term plan regarding regular past tense pronunciation. Some questions or extra activities might arise spontaneously, but we have a computer connection in class to troubleshoot doubts and the like.
Enabling students to use higher level thinking skills can be achieved by going beyond the application of pronunciation rules and by having students analyze, synthetize, and self-assess the way they are pronouncing regular past tenses. For this purpose, students will be required to give a two-minute presentation to talk about a memorable moment in their childhoods. This can be recorded before class and uploaded to a class wiki to be later used in some kind of peer correction task.
Give this sample lesson plan a try, and then let me know how it went. Please, feel free to contact me to jonathan.acuna@ulatina.ac.cr or jonathan.acuna@centrocultural.cr.
Sample Lesson Plan: The one-computer classroom / Past tenses ending in -ed
Class: BIN-06 Pronunciation II
Duration: 2 hrs. 30 min.
Materials
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M7xIwAqy9I
2. http://www.scribd.com/doc/11966921/Pronunciation-Of-the-final-ed
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1413_gramchallenge26/page2.shtml
4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1413_gramchallenge26/page3.shtml
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8139322.stm
Other material:
· Speakers
· Textbooks
Introduction
As we have already studied in previous lessons, we have already noticed that –ed regular past tenses vary in their pronunciation. Here we will review the concept of voicing to fully understand when and why –ed is pronounced as /t/, /d/, or /ɪd/.
Objectives of this lesson (tell students about them):
Once students have reviewed the concept of voicing and watched a video explaining the –ed pronunciation in past tenses, they will be able to apply the rules to pronounce past tenses with 80% accuracy while reading or speaking.
Procedure
· Presentation
o There will be no real presentation by the teacher at this point.
o Students will watch a video in which a teacher explains how –ed in past tenses is pronounced and classified.
o Students will be asked to take notes.
· Tasks’ sequence
o Activity 1: Group work: Students will be asked to work in groups of three to analyze the information provided in the following link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/11966921/Pronunciation-Of-the-final-ed. This will help them match the importance of consonant voicing and –ed pronunciation, as well of the exceptions.
o Activity 2: Quizzing students: The next two links that will be used –with the whole class- will be a way to review/quiz/assess student understanding of the rules. The links provide two interactive quizzes, so it is a nice way of assessing student understanding of rules.
§ Quiz 1
§ Quiz 2
o Activity 3: Assessment: Students will be give a copy of the article published by the BBC on Monkeys recognise 'bad grammar'. They will work in pairs to highlight the past tenses ending in –ed and to practice reading the passage.
o Activity 4: By changing partners, students will be asked to talk about the possibility of animals to understand language. They will be asked to tell their partners to discuss about their pets when they were kids. And if they believe in animal communication. (These questions will be shown to students on power point.)
· Learning styles addressed: sensory/intuitive learners (procedural info); visual/verbal; sequential/global; logical/mathematical [A wide range of learners are addressed with this practice.]
· Technology alternative (in case things don't work as planned): book CD and additional worksheets
Review before the end of the class session:
Before the class is over, a general review of the rules will be given to students. At random, students will be asked to provide how each rules works.
Homework:
· In the class blog, a couple of links will be provided for students to continue practicing: http://www.english-room.com/pasttense_6a.htm and http://www.eslgold.com/grammar/simple_past.html
· Besides, students will be able to prepare a two-minute presentation talking about a memorable moment in their childhood.
Lesson Plan developed based on Deborah Healey’s proposed lesson plan with technology. American English Institute/Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon
P.S. Find a digital downloadable copy of my pronunciation lesson plan at http://www.scribd.com/doc/27776445/Pronunciation-Lesson-Plan-Sample if you feel like using it.
Jonathan Acuña
Universidad Latina
Costa Rica
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