Make pronunciation physical, visible, audible! A multi-experience approach

Adrian Underhill´s presentation had a wealth of information on how to make, as the title of the seminar suggested, pronunciation a multi-experience approach. To begin the seminar, he highlighted the following recent breakthroughs in pronunciation teaching:

1. A physical side of teaching pronunciation has developed that includes putting students in touch with their muscles so that pronunciation is not just a mental activity, but a visible and physical one that students can feel.
2. The sounds have been organized into a phonemic chart (based on symbols used by dictionaries) that includes a geographic design to show how to get the sound.
3. Pronunciation has been demystified so that it is no longer part of a ´black box´ that both teachers and students are afraid to enter.

Following these breakthroughs, Adrian also proposed three breakaway ideas for the future of pronunciation teaching:

1. Mistakes to be seen as a gift where they provide the journey for teaching.
2. Work with the whole system all at once. As opposed to isolating a single sounds or focusing on minimal pairs during one lesson, Adrian argued that students need to learn the sounds all at once, as all vowels affect each other. He highlighted three levels of student progress when using the entire phonemic chart:
a. sounds in isolation
b. bonding the sounds together to make words
c. words together to make connected speech (including such things as rhythm, intonation, etc.)
3. A reduction in repetition without purpose in pronunciation teaching (no more time consuming habit formation)

By using gestures and facial expressions, teachers can begin to get their learners to make the sounds on the chart. This also includes placement of the tongue and jaw to change the different sounds produced. Students can then feel and see their muscles working.

Adrian suggested not only using the chart with entire class, but also with individual students in front of the class. He says students need to get up to the board and get over their fears or embarrassment, and once they do, the real learning can begin. There are four different ways he mentioned to work with individual learners using the chart and a pointer:

1. Teacher has pointer and points to a sound. Student says sound.
2. Teacher has pointer and Student says sound. Teacher points to sound.
3. Student has pointer and points to a sound. Teacher says sound.
4. Student has pointer and Teacher says sound. Student points to sound .

While the teacher is working with this individual learner, the other learners in the class will be engaged with what is happening, and can also make contributions to keep their attention as well.

Adrian also mentioned the interactive phonemic chart on onestopenglish.com as a useful resource that I have included the link for here.

I found the session to be informative, interactive and completely worthwhile. If you ever get the chance to attend a seminar given by Adrian Underhill, I would highly recommend you go to it!