This is the abstract to a workshop I give on how and why to teach pronunciation. Feel free to contact me for further details.

“Acquiring and developing strong pronunciation skills is one of the most daunting tasks for learners of English. Although maintaining an accent is a cultural trait of a student’s personal background, the ability of producing native-like sounds turns out to be an effective vehicle of motivation for students. Moreover, not working on doing so may hinder fluent communication, which is in fact the ultimate goal when one decides to learn a different language.  Nevertheless, teaching pronunciation is not easy. We as teachers tend to over-rely on technical terms and academic jargon that makes little contribution to students’ language acquisition. For that reason, during this workshop, you will learn a series of techniques that will help you and your students develop pronunciation skills from a proprioceptive approach which promotes physical awareness of one’s movements and organs. By applying this techniques in your classroom, students will work in a lively way, internalizing new movements of their mouths during the course of a lesson that resembles more the training for a game rather than a lesson to be learned.”

See the slideshow here.

Click on the links below for more information.

Is it really necessary to teach pronunciation? by Angie Conti

The Hows and Whys of Teaching Pronunciation

Pronunciation – the poor relation? by Adrian Underhill

Pronunciation: what, why, when and how? (an #eltchat summary) by Sandy Millin

Teaching Pronunciation Using the Prosody Pyramid by Judy B. Gilbert (downloadable PDF)

Useful In-classroom Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation (Colorado State University)

Teaching Pronunciation: Seven Essential Concepts with Judy B. Gilbert (Video) | The New School

Phonemic Online Typewriter