A few weeks ago I had the privilege of skyping into one of Dr Huang’s undergraduate TESOL classes at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. Among many excellent questions the students asked, the one I liked the best was the title of this latest blog post (I slightly paraphrased it). I appreciated this question for it allowed me to revisit my beliefs about pronunciation pedagogy. So, here we go: the most essential component of English pronunciation is, in my opinion, rhythm, and I usually teach it by having my students identify and practice thought groups and key words using a haptic technique (i.e. a systematic combination of movement and touch) called “Fight Club” (see www.actonhaptic.com for a demo video of this particular technique) to anchor English rhythm in learners’ memories and speech by engaging multiple modalities (sight, movement, touch, hearing, speaking) at the same time. Although there’s no empirical data available yet (we hope to get the results of a promising study published in a few months), based on several field tests and on the overwhelmingly positive reception and reaction to a haptic workshop we did at the International TESOL Convention in Portland last week, I am quite confident that working on rhythm haptically may not only be a pedagogical technique that is fun to use, but also an effective means to enhance learner intelligibility and possibly listening comprehension. Now over to you: What do you think is an important element of English pronunciation that ought to be taught to L2 students and how would you teach it?
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I am a Senior Lecturer in TESOL at the University of Wollongong in Australia. This blog is a reflection of my journey as a researcher, L2 teacher educator, and language teacher. Archives
June 2021
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