Pronunciation Activities

What did you say?

Create a list of words that sound similar for every student in your class. The lists should be different(can have same words but different order). Have students work in pairs and pass out the list of words to every student. Students take turns reading their list to their partner. The student who is listening should write down the words that they hear. They may only hear each word three times. After the list is read have the students compare their list to the actual list. Some examples of words are: think - sink, three - tree, vest - west,

cheeks - chicks, pepper - paper, sip - ship, vet - wet, pen - pin, warm - worm, thick - sick, soup-soap

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Tongue Twisters

A good way to have your students practice pronunciation is by using tongue twisters or poems. Write the tongue twister on the board and first explain any of the words that the students might not know. Then have the students practice saying it, gradually saying it faster and faster (if the students are shy it helps to have the students practice in partners). After they have practiced erase the tongue twister from the board and play the game telephone with words from the tongue twister. If you have a big class divide the class into two teams and have the last person from each team come up to the board and write the word or phrase they heard.

Another version of this idea is having the students practice pronunciation with common English proverbs.  You can place the students in groups first, and have them discuss/guess the meanings of the proverbs, and then practice pronounciation with each other.  It is a good 10 or 15 minute activity.  The following webpage has a list of proverbs that are good for pronounciation practice:

http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Yang-Proverbs.html

Past Tense--¨-ed¨

• If the letter before -ed is a ¨t¨ or a ¨d¨, the -ted or -ded is another syllable (coun-ted, ad-ded). However, with any other letter, it´s a ´d or ´t (buttoned=button´d, walk´t). Have the students divide a piece of paper into three sections: /d/, /id/, and /t/. Read off a list of regular past tense verbs and have the students write the words in the correct columns. For example:

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Have some fun activities/ideas?  How about worksheets, review sheets or songs?

Send your ideas to malloryforseth@gmail.com. Please include a short summary of the activity along with any worksheets or extra materials needed for the activity.