Teachers should always be working on student pronunciation to help them communicate more successfully. Is a student's pronunciation adequate for their level and for the tasks they need to perform?

This site does not pretend to teach teachers how and when to work on pronunciation in the class. It is not a site devoted to didactic methodology. It does offer some materials for teachers to use when they decide some pronunciation work is necessary.

The goal should ideally be communicative efficiency with work on individual phonemes, word stress and sentence stress and intonation.

		Books For ESL Professionals.
Pronunciation Games - Mark Hancock (1996)
	Working on your students' pronunciation need not entail dull repetition and drilling. Hancock has gathered together here a wide variety of pronunciation activities and games to work on phoneme production, sentence stress, intonation and rhythm. The book allows teachers to work with different dynamics: individual, pairwork, group work and whole-class work are all possible. Click here for more info.

phonemes

The individual sounds that make up a language are called 'phonemes'. Standard British English has 44 phonemes although this will vary according to the accent/dialect (e.g. American English with Deep South accent). There are some materials here to help students with both recognition and production of these individual sounds, including charts of articulation.

Note: The pronunciation materials here were made with standard British English in mind. Most of the materials will equally be applicable to other forms of English, but, if not, can easily be adapted.

word stress

Non-native speakers need to know where individual words are stressed. Some words are spelt identically but have two pronunciations which give different meanings.

sentence stress and intonation

The tone of the message is often as important as the message itself. Can students recognise intonation patterns and therefore, the meaning of the message? How does a student convey doubt, boredom, uncertainty? Does the student sound like an English speaker? Does the student want to?

As mentioned above, this site's aim is not to answer these questions but to offer teachers the materials to work with once they have decided how they can best improve their students' pronunciation.