Pronunciation skills with Adrian Underhill
We’ve brought together a series of videos and articles starring and authored by our ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill and partnered them up with some tips and activities to help you, the teacher, get to grips with pronunciation and try your new-found skills in the classroom.
Access the UK and US versions of Adrian Underhill’s phonemic chart.
Videos and articles
Pronunciation skills: The chart
Type: Reference material
ELT Pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill introduces us to the phonemic chart and why it’s important to familiarize ourselves with sounds when teaching or learning a language.
Pronunciation skills: Muscle buttons and vowel sounds /iː/ or /uː/.
Type: Reference material
In these two videos, Adrian Underhill explains the physicality of pronunciation and the use of ‘muscle buttons’ to help us vocalize sounds such as vowels /i:/ and /u:/.
Pronunciation skills: Accents and the L1 grip
Type: Reference material
Which accent should I teach with? This is a common question that Adrian Underhill answers in the video below as well as tackling the subject of the L1 grip and how to escape it!
Pronunciation skills: What accent should I teach?
ELT Pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill addresses your practical concerns on accents, RP and student identity.
Pronunciation skills: Loosening the ‘grip’ of L1 pronunciation
ELT Pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at the emergence of the ‘L1 grip’ and how best to tackle it.
Pronunciation skills: Integrating pronunciation into your daily class work.
In his latest article, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at the ways in which pronunciation can be integrated into your day-to-day classroom work
Pronunciation skills: Why do we need the phonemic chart?
In his latest article, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at why we need to use the phonemic chart in our classrooms.
Pronunciation skills: Monophthongs: Using mime, gesture and inner imaging
In his latest article, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at monophthongs and how mime, gesture and inner imaging can benefit both your teaching and your students’ learning.
Pronunciation skills: Diphthongs - Sliding and putting sounds together
In his latest article, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at diphthongs and how sliding and putting sounds together can benefit both your teaching and your students’ learning.
Pronunciation skills: Consonants – consciously rediscovering the ON and OFF voice buttons
In his latest article, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at consonants and how consciously rediscoving the ON and OFF voice buttons can benefit both your teaching and your students’ learning.
Pronunciation skills: Minimal pairs
Author: Adrian Underhill Type: Article, Reference material
In this video, Adrian looks at the minimal pairand and /?/ and /ð/ and shows us how to make each sound in a simple and effective way while giving advice on how to gain control of the physicality needed to produce each sound.
Pronunciation skills: Monophthongs and consonants
Author: Adrian Underhill Type: Article, Reference material
In this video, Adrian provides a handy overview of the monophthong sounds and provides a brief guided tour of the consonant sounds, showing how each sound relates to its neighbour on the chart and how it is produced in the mouth.
Pronunciation skills: Long and short sounds
Author: Adrian Underhill Type: Article, Reference material
Which sound do you make when you’re having a massage? And what is the noise of having a whole orange in your mouth? In this video, Adrian answers these unusual questions and uses mime to help demonstrate the physicality of each sound.
Pronunciation skills: Off the map sounds
Author: Adrian Underhill Type: Article, Reference material
How can you teach pronunciation without using any sounds? In this video, Adrian helps show us by using mime to introduce us to some ‘off the map’ sounds and demonstrates us how we can identify sounds in relations to their neighbours on the phonetic chart.
Pronunciation skills: The idiot sounds
Author: Adrian Underhill Type: Article, Reference material
Did you know that there is not one but two idiot sounds in the phonetic chart? In this video, pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at the visibility and the physicality of these sounds, helping learners with the long vowel sound /??/ and the most famous of all the phonemes, the schwa /?/
Pronunciation skills with Adrian Underhill: overcoming common pronunciation challenges
In the last article in this series, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at how to overcome common pronunciation problems.
