Teaching American English Pronunciation e-book for Kindle

Buy from

Educational discount pricing

Teaching American English Pronunciation e-book for Kindle

Format: e-book (Kindle)
See also: Paperback | e-book

This introduction to the pronunciation of American English describes the sound system, suggests ways of tackling pronunciation problems, and provides a variety of techniques and exercises for use in the classroom.

  • ISBN: 978-0-19-435820-0

As an ESL teacher, have you looked at the phonetics textbooks on the market and decided that they don't directly address your needs? Unlike pronunciation books aimed at students of linguistics or at learners of English, Teaching American English Pronunciation has been written specifically for ESL teachers. It doesn't only give academic descriptions, but also helps you to improve your students' pronunciation effectively.

Educational discount pricing

K12 schools, college bookstores, and other educational institutions with an Oxford account will receive an educational discount when placing their order through our Customer Service department.

Please call Customer Service at 800-542-2442 (8am - 6pm EST, Monday to Friday). You need an Oxford account to receive the discounted price.

Contact us

Key features

  • Provides a clear, thorough description of the sound system of English
  • Includes practical ideas for overcoming common pronunciation problems
  • Looks at the specific problems that speakers of fifteen different languages have when speaking English
  • Describes a number of classroom techniques to help improve pupils' pronunciation written by leading classroom practitioners
  • Suitable for both trainee ESL teachers on Master's TESOL courses and for new and experienced practising teachers

Contents

Preface
Introduction: Preliminary considerations in the teaching of pronunciation
- Biological factors
- Socio-cultural factors
- Personality factors
- The role of the native language
- Setting realistic goals

PART ONE: The sound system of English


1 Spelling and pronunciation
- The English spelling system
- Sound-spelling correspondences
- Spelling in other languages
- The phonetic alphabet
- Exercises

2 Individual sounds of English
- How speech sounds are made
- Consonants and vowels
The description of English consonants
- Place of articulation
- Manner of articulation
- Voicing
- Summary
The description of English vowels
- Tongue height
- Frontness/backness of tongue
- Tenseness/laxness
- Lip rounding
- Phonetic symbols for vowels
- Complex vowels (dipthongs)
- The vowel /ar/
- The consonant /h/
- Semi-vowels (glides)
- Exercises

3 English sounds in context
Positional variation
- Contrastive sounds of English
- Non-contrastive sounds of English
- Implications for teaching
- Conclusion
Grammatical endings
- The regular past tense
- The plural, possessive, and third person singular
- Grammatical endings in the pronunciation classroom
- Exercises

4 The shape of English words
- Syllable types
- Consonant clusters
- Exercises

5 Word stress and vowel reduction
- What is stress?
- Schwa
- Major and minor stress
- Placement of word stress
- Exercises

6 Connected Speech
Rhythm, sentence stress, and intonation
- The stress-timed rhythm of English
- Placement of stress in sentences
- Intonation
Modifications of sounds in connected speech
- The pronunciation of function words
- Linking
- Deletion of consonants
- Assimilation
- Summary
- Exercises

PART TWO: The identification and correction of specific pronunciation problems

Introduction

7 Common pronunciation problems
- English vowels
- English consonants
- Stress, rhythm, and intonation

8 Problems of selected language groups
- Arabic
- Chinese
- Farsi
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hindi and Punjabi
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Vietnamese

PART THREE: Classroom activities

Introduction

9 A communicative approach to pronunciation teaching
- Introduction
- Consonants and vowels
- Connected speech
- Suprasegmentals
- Monitoring
- Conclusion

10 Pronunciation syllabus design: a question of focus
- The zoom principle
- Assessing learner variables
- Collection of speech samples
- Diagnosis of speech samples
- From diagnosis to syllabus design
- Monitoring progress
- Appendix: Student diagnostic profile

11 Suprasegmentals in the pronunciation class: setting priorities
- Introduction
- Stress/unstress
- Stress and rhythm
- Major sentence stress
- Intonation
- Linking and pausing
- Palatalization
- Conclusion

12 Pronunciation-based listening exercises for the multi-level class
- Introduction
- Minimal pairs
- Stress assignment
- Function words
- Intonation
- Conclusion

13 Teaching pronunciation: an inventory of techniques
- Introduction
Individual sounds
- Minimal pairs
- Visual aids
- Stress, rhythm, and intonation
- Developing fluency
- Conclusion

14 Developing self-correcting and self-monitoring strategies
- Introduction
- Self-correction
- Self-monitoring
- Conclusion

15 Developing natural and confident speech:
- Drama techniques in the pronunciation class
- Introduction
- Articulation
- Pitch, volume, and rate
- Variety
- Conclusion

16 Unintelligibility and the ESL learner
- Introduction
- The receiver
- The sender
- Conclusion

Glossary
Further reading
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Reviews

  • 'This is a handy reference book for the bookshelves of any language teacher with international students.'
    - EL Gazette

Part of... Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers

Each title in the series is intended to serve both as a basis for training courses and seminars, and as a reference text.

View Series