I wanted to start blogging so that I can write down all the stuff that I call upon daily in my job as an EFL teacher. For me, the highlight of any lesson is pronunciation input. There's a magic moment when a student learns how to produce a schwa /ə/ or link together two words with that intrusive /r/, even just getting the intonation right on a tag question can have a huge effect on their ability to communicate. We all strive to gift our students with language but sometimes we need a bit of advice or a cheeky tip to fix Miguel's 'I good like some help with my pronunciation'. I recently finished my MA Phonetics dissertation and was not surprised to find in my research that pronunciation is marginalised in the classroom. Worse still, many teachers are not actually taught how to teach it anyway! Memories of a solitary two-hour CELTA session spring to mind...
So, if you're with me, I'd like to help. I will be posting regular tips and tricks on the most common problems facing our students. The accent will be British English and, despite being northern myself, I'll mostly stick to the standard southern variety as that's probably what you teach. I welcome suggestions for new topics and will try to answer any questions you might have. Check out my first post 'This time next week I'll be lying on a bitch' coming soon!
Lizzlovesaccents
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