Correcting learners' pronunciation mistakes

12. Tell them what part they should change

For example, “You need to change the introduction to your presentation” or “Try replacing the third word with something else”.

13. Ask partners to spot errors

This is a fairly well-known way of giving feedback in speaking tasks, but it can be a minefield if the person giving feedback has no confidence in their ability to do so or in how well the feedback (i.e. criticism) will be taken, and even more so if the person receiving the feedback will in fact react badly. This method is easier to do and easier to take when they have been told specifically which language to use while speaking and so to look out for when listening, usually meaning controlled speaking practice tasks. The feedback can be made even simpler to give and collect and more neutral with some careful planning, e.g. asking them count how many times their partner uses the target form as well as or instead of looking for when it used incorrectly.

14. Try again!

Sometimes, students don't need much help at all but just a chance to do it again. This is likely to be true if you have trained them well in spotting their own errors, if there was some other kind of mental load such as a puzzle to solve that was distracting them from the language, or if they have had a chance to hear someone else doing the same speaking task in the class or on a recording.

Useful language:

“One more time (but think about the grammar more this time/ but concentrating on making less mistakes instead of speaking quickly)”

“Give it another go”

“Do you want one more chance before you get the final score”.

15. Remind them when you studied that point

For example, “Nearly right, but you've forgotten the grammar that we studied last week” or “You've made the same mistake as everyone made in the last test”. 

 

2.2 Correcting Without Hurting

Many teachers, especially if they are new to teaching ESL classes, may be a little intimated by the prospect of having to teach pronunciation. But, just like almost every thing else, if the process is broken down into small manageable steps, the task is not all that daunting. This site is an attempt to do just that- to break the process of teaching pronunciation down into smaller steps.

Why is proper pronunciation important? Because without correct pronunciation- no matter how vast the students vocabulary may be, no matter how well the student understands and uses grammatical rules, no matter what their level of reading or writing skills may be- if they don't use correct pronunciation it may be very difficult for listeners to understand what they say. And that is a huge hindrance to communication. In addition, some research indicates that if a student can not pronounce a word correctly, they may not be able to hear it when spoken by another person either, which furthers hinders communication.

Students from different languages have different pronunciation difficulties. Not all sounds in the English language are common to other languages. For example, some languages do not have an 'r' sound, so students use a similar sound 'l' instead. So when a students says "What a lovely libbon", the native English is totally confused. Or maybe in a student's native tongue there is no distinction between 'b' and 'p'. Just imagine the misunderstanding that will result if a teachers says "I need to be on that bus" and the student hears "I need to pee on that bus".

When teaching pronunciation, teachers are giving feedback to their student about how they are saying things. This feedback includes what the problem is and what they need to do to correct it. This feedback may include where to place the tongue in the mouth to say particular words, or how the lips should be formed, or the action of the tongue when saying specific sounds.

Mastering proper pronunciation is not just a matter of learning individual sounds. Many students can hear and make the different sounds for all the vowels and consonants in English. Unfortunately, they also have to contend with the sound changes that occur with different letter combinations resulting from linking or reduction of vowels and consonants, not to mention stress, pitch, and intonation differences between their native tongue and English.

That's basically all there is to teaching pronunciation- giving feedback and ensuring that the student uses the feedback to improve their speaking skills. That along with providing adequate practice to the students to hear the sounds and practice making the sounds. Remember (as some research implies) if a student can't say a sound, they won't be able to hear it either.

 

2.3 Mistakes Made During Discussions and Activities

With oral mistakes made during class discussions, there are basically two schools of thought: 1) Correct often and thoroughly 2) Let students make mistakes. Sometimes, teachers refine the choice by choosing to let beginners make many mistakes while correcting advanced students often.

However, many teachers are taking a third route these days. This third route might be called 'selective correction'. In this case, the teacher decides to correct only certain errors. Which errors will be corrected is usually decided by the objectives of the lesson, or the specific exercise that is being done at that moment. In other words, if students are focusing on simple past irregular forms, then only mistakes in those forms are corrected (i.e., goed, thinked, etc.). Other mistakes, such as mistakes in a future form, or mistakes of collocations (for example: I made my homework) are ignored.

Finally, many teachers also choose to correct students after the fact. Teachers take notes on common mistakes that students make. During the follow-up correction session the teacher then presents common mistakes made so that all can benefit from an analysis of which mistakes were made and why.

Written Mistakes

There are three basic approaches to correcting written work: 1) Correct each mistake 2) Give a general impression marking 3) Underline mistakes and / or give clues to the type of mistakes made and then let students correct the work themselves.

Fuss

There are two main points to this issue:

If I allow students to make mistakes, I will reinforce the errors they are making.

Many teachers feel that if they do not correct mistakes immediately, they will be helping reinforce incorrect language production skills. This point of view is also reinforced by students who often expect teachers to continually correct them during class. The failure to do so will often create suspicion on the part of the students.

If I don't allow students to make mistakes, I will take away from the natural learning process required to achieve competency and, eventually, fluency.

Learning a language is a long process during which a learner will inevitably make many, many mistakes. In other words we take a myriad of tiny steps going from not speaking a language to being fluent in the language. In the opinion of many teachers, students who are continually corrected become inhibited and cease to participate. This results in the exact opposite of what the teacher is trying to produce - the use of English to communicate.

 

2.4 Problems of correcting students' pronunciation

 

Look at these statements about correction of students' oral work. What do you think?

Advanced students need loads of correction, beginners hardly any. When you start to learn a language you need to be able to communicate imperfectly in lots of situations, not perfectly in a few. The teacher's job is to support learners as they blunder through a range of communicative scenarios, not badger them because they forget the third person -s. With advanced learners the opposite is usually the case.

The jury is out on the question of whether correcting students, however you do it, has any positive effect on their learning. There is some evidence, though, that time spent on correcting learners may be wasted.

Research into Second Language Acquisition has suggested that it may be that some language forms can be acquired more quickly through being given special attention while others may be acquired in the learners' own time, regardless of teacher attention. This helps explain, for example, why intermediate learners usually omit third person -s just like beginners, but often form questions with do correctly, unlike beginners.

There is little point correcting learners if they don't have a fairly immediate opportunity to redo whatever they were doing and get it right.

Learners need the opportunity for a proper rerun of the communication scenario in which they made the error, if they are to have any chance of integrating the correct form into their English. Whether the error was teacher-corrected, peer-corrected or self-corrected in the first place is of relatively minor importance.

Lots of learners and teachers think correction is important.

Is this because it helps them to learn and teach or helps them to feel like learners and teachers? The problem with some learners is they don't make enough mistakes.

Accurate but minimal contributions in speaking activities are unlikely to benefit learning as much as inaccurate but extended participation. Learners can be hampered by their own inhibitions and attitudes to accuracy and errors, the teacher's attitude and behaviour (conscious or unconscious) to accuracy and errors or the restricted nature of the activities proposed by the teacher.

Teachers spend too much time focussing on what students do wrong at the expense of helping them to get things right.

When giving feedback to learners on their performance in speaking English, the emphasis for the teacher should be to discover what learners didn't say and help them say that, rather than pick the bones out of what they did say. This requires the use of activities which stretch learners appropriately and the teacher listening to what learners aren't saying. That's difficult.

Correction slot pro-forma

Here is a sample correction slot pro-forma which has been filled in with some notes that a teacher took during a fluency activity for a pre-intermediate class of Spanish students:

Pronunciation

I go always to cinema

She have got a cat…

Does she can swim?

Swimming bath my fathers

“Comfortable”

“Bag”- said “Back”

intonation very flat (repeat some phrases with more pitch range)

Bodega

Ocio

Yo que se

I don't ever see my sister

Have you seen Minority Report?

Good pronunciation of AMAZING

Why use this pro-forma?

It helps teacher and students identify errors.

It helps you as a teacher to listen and give balanced feedback.

And how to use it ?

It has been divided into four sections. The first two, Grammar/Vocabulary and Pronunciation, are pretty evident and are what teachers look out for as 'mistakes' in most cases.

The third slot, L1, means the words that students used in their own language during the exercise. We believe that in a fluency-based activity, if a student can't find the right word in English, they should say it in their own language so as not to impede the flow. An attentive teacher (who also knows her students' L1) will make a quick note of it and bring it up later, eliciting the translation from the class. If you are teaching a multi-lingual class, you can still use this column. You don't have to know the translations. You can prompt the learners to come up with those.

The '#' column reminds us to include successful language in feedback. Too often in correction slots the emphasis is on what went wrong. Here the teacher can write down examples of good things that happened. This is especially true if the teacher notices that the students are using a recently taught structure or lexical item, or if they have pronounced something correctly that they had trouble with before.

Other suggestions

You can copy your filled-in version and hand it out to groups of students to save writing on the whiteboard. Or simply use it to help you note down language in an organized way.

You can fill out separate sheets for each group of students as you listen or even for each individual student (this would obviously work best with very small classes!). You can pass them round, have students correct their own, each others, whatever.

The advantage of using a set form is that by doing this, you keep an ongoing record of mistakes that can be stored and exploited for revision lessons, tests or as a filler for the end of a class.

 

2.5 Exercises for the Pronunciation of Plurals for English second language

 

One of the most difficult parts of learning to speak English is the correct pronunciation of plural nouns and verbs. Many of these words simply add a suffix such as "s," "es" or "ed" to the original word, and this can be challenging for many English as a Second Language, or ESL, students to pronounce. The key to improving pronunciation of plurals is consistent practice and correction combined with listening.

Plural Noun Pronunciation with S Sounds

Plural nouns will end in either "s" or "es," and can have an "s" or "z" sound. This exercise focuses on the "s" sound, which is used in nouns that end in an unvoiced consonant sound (e.g., ducks, tops, cats). Depending on the students' native language, the biggest problem with pronouncing these words correctly is the two consonants that follow one another, like the "k" and "s" sound at the end of "ducks." Many other languages consistently insert vowel sounds between consonant sounds, so "ks" might sound like "kuh-s" for some students. The key is to focus on flowing from one consonant sound to the next with no vowel insertion.

Write the words you wish to focus on for that day's lesson on the board. Underline the consonant ending (e.g., underline "ts" in "cats") and pronounce it for the students as if it is one sound. Have each student repeat the sound. For fun, have them equate the sound to a sound effect. For example, "ts" sounds like a cymbal on a drum set. Choose a rhythm like "1 2 3 rest," and have them make the sound around the room, keeping the rhythm. When the sound is comfortable, introduce more words that end with that sound until it becomes comfortable.

Plural Noun Pronunciation with Z Sounds 

If a noun ends in a voiced consonant sound, it will end with a "z" sound (e.g., chairs, beds, frogs). Use the previous exercise as a guideline for this one, but with a focus on the voiced z. To compare, have students place their hands on their throats. Make the "s" sound, feeling no vibration in the throat, then make the "z" sound, feeling the throat vibrate with voice. Explain that these words will use that "z" sound.

Choose words ending with a specific consonant like "d" or "g" that will require the "z" sound when pluralized. Follow the exercise above, creating a rhythm around the room with sounds like "gz," until there is no vowel sound in between the consonants. When the students are making the sound successfully, begin adding in the rest of the word.

Plural Verb Pronunciation

The problem with plural verbs is similar to plural nouns; while the ending contains a vowel ("ed") the "e" is often silent. Most students will be tempted to say "walk-eh-d" instead of "walk-d," for example. The important thing is to explain to the students that while the ending is spelled "e-d," it is usually not pronounced "ed." In fact, the "d" is usually pronounced more like a soft "t." For plural verbs, it's best to have the students practice saying first the singular verb, then the plural in rhythm. Too often, ESL students give up on pronouncing plural verbs because their ears can't hear the difference. For example, they say "Yesterday, I walk to the store," because when a native speaker says the sentence, they can't hear the "ed."

To correct this, have the students perform repetition exercises with both singular and plural verbs side by side. "I walk. I walked." Critical listening is essential for students before they can master the pronunciation, so speak and repeat constantly as a guide.

Below are tips for pronunciation activities you can do with your students, including links to printable resources and games and links to related web sites. Enjoy!

Poetry

Drama

Bingo

Contrastive stress

Pronunciation Partners

Humming

Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts

Poetry One interesting way to practice the rythmn or English, as well as such features as linking is to use poetry. One of the poetry web sites that we like is Academy of American Poets, which has a large collection of different poems, many with audio recordings made by the poet.

Walt Whitman's poetry has also worked well with my students. Try the Poetry of Walt Whitman web site.

A neat poetry web site which even includes audio is actually the page for English 88: Modern and Contemporary Poetry at University of Pennsylvania. Check out the Gertrude Stein and Wi lliam Carlos Williams.

Holly is a big fan of Haiku. It is a good way to have your students practice the concept of syllable. Holly not only has students read Haiku, but also write them.

Limericks can also be really fun and helpful. Their predictable stress pattern makes them useful for practicing sentence stress. You can find some (clean) limericks on the web at There once was a man from Nantucket. We've read some in class (clapping out the rhythm helps students pronounce the stressed and unstressed syllables), and for homework, they are working on creating their own limericks.

Drama Drama is also something Sharon used often with my students to practice rythmn, intonation, linking, etc. It's often a good idea to have students work in pairs and focus on a particular aspect of pronunciation, su ch as intonation. Have them decide on the correct intonation, then record the scene, and finally listen and discuss their recording. The Dramatic Exchange Catalog of Plays is one good web sites to find scenes to use with your students.

Bingo One of our favorite activities for a change of pace is PRONUNCIATION BINGO!!! To play pronunciation bingo, first you need to think up a bunch of words that sound simiilar (bath, bass, Beth, Bess, bus, but, bat, path, pat, bit, pit, etc, etc). Now, make up a stack of cards with all your words and bunch of bingo boards (Sharon has a set of six, and she usually can use them with groups of 20-- it usually doesn't matter if some students the same board. Because it is rather challenging to distinguish between similar sounds, we normally don't have more than one winner). For the really adventerous teacher, you can have the bingo winner read out the words for the next game. Here are word stress bingo and final consonant bingo boards for you to download and print out.

Contrastive Stress Practice. Here is another fun activity. Have students write 10 FALSE sentences. They could be about anything, as only as they are not true. Next have students read the statements to their pa rtner. The partner must correct each of the incorrect statements.

For example: "Christmas is in July." "No, Christmas is in December ."

My students really like this game, especially when the false sentences are outrageous!

Pronunciation Partners. Put students in groups of 4-5. Deal 6 cards to each students and put the rest face-down on the table. Students take turns asking for a card they need to complete their set.

Get cards and detailed instructions from our printable resource page.

Humming. Put students in pairs. Give student A a list of questions or statements. Give student B a list of replies. Student A should hum the intonation patterns of his utterances. Student B should reply with the correct response. We like to make sure that all of the sentences have the same number of syllables so that Student B really has to listen to the intonation to get the sentence. Example utterances:

Student A

Student B

I like pizza, pickles, and chips.

(list intonation)

Not all together, I hope.

Would you prefer coffee or tea?

(choice intonation)

Tea, please.

Would you like some ice cream and cake?

(double-rising intonation)

No, thank you. I'm not hungry.

Next week we are flying to Rome.

(falling intonation)

Really? How long will you be there?

Is he going to the dentist?

(rising intonation)

Yes. He has a toothache.

Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts.

These are so fun and successful that they deserve a section of their own.Segmentals. Ask students to find as many objects as they can with a specific vowel or consonant sound. If the weather is nice, send them outside. Bring in books or magazines with lots of pictures to stimulate their minds.