Pronunciation skills: glossary, bibliography & activities

In this subsection

• Assimilation and elision (390k)

  

  This comprehensive article by Jonathan Marks explains the most common types of assimilation and elision, gives examples, and considers the significance of these two processes for learners and teachers.

• Pronunciation skills: Adverbs of frequency

  

  Adverbs of frequency such as always and sometimes are a familiar teaching point. But there are plenty of other commonly-used adverbial phrases expressing frequency, and these tend to have fixed stress patterns. This lesson by Jonathan Marks practises some of these phrases with a particular focus on their stress patterns.

• Pronunciation skills: Sound and spelling

  

  The relationship between spelling and pronunciation in English can be confusing for a number of reasons. This lesson plan by Jonathan Marks focuses on homographs and homophones, as well as other pairs of words whose pronunciation learners tend to find confusing.

• Pronunciation skills: Stress in compound nouns

  

  This lesson by Jonathan Marks focuses on a typical stress pattern in compound nouns. Students form compounds to fit definitions and then practise the compounds by asking questions.

• Pronunciation skills: Syllabic l

  

  This lesson practises the pronunciation of syllabic l. Normally, a syllable contains a vowel, but sometimes l can form a syllable without any vowel sound, as in people, with the second syllable consisting simply of the sounds /p/ + /l/, with no vowel between them. Syllabic l occurs in a lot of words with the spelling ‘consonant + le’. It also occcurs when the contraction ‘ll occurs after a consonant sound, as in that’ll do.

• Pronunciation skills: bibliography

  

  A bibliography of sources for further study and classroom exercises.

• Pronunciation skills: destruction as creativity

  

  Focus on reading aloud and text chunking.

• Pronunciation skills: glossaries

  

  Glossaries of terminology for teaching: homophones, rhotic and rhythm.

• Pronunciation skills: How many syllables?

  

  This lesson by Jonathan Marks focuses on plural nouns and 3rd person singular verbs which are spelt with the ending -es. It helps students to develop an awareness of when this ending represents an additional syllable (e.g. age / ages) and when it doesn't (e.g. behave / behaves).

• Pronunciation skills: what is it called?

  

  Focus on pronouncing stress patterns in compound nouns.

• Pronunciation skills: who does what?

  

  Focus on pronouncing stress in compound nouns.