Contents introduction chapter I. The significant side of teaching pronounciation to pupils

f i: n d /) it anywhere'.

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  I make a column with /ai/, drill 'find' and my students give me 'fight', 'bike', 'buy', 'eye','my', etc. for the sound.
  

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  I accept these without writing them and then encourage students to think of other words spelt like 'find'. I get 'mind' and 'kind'.
  

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  There may be only one or two for any given pattern. If I have thought of any other words myself I add them to the column, ensuring that they are not obscure words or too high for this particular level (in this case I might choose to introduce 'bind' and 'grind', but probably not 'rind' or 'hind').
  

Weak forms

I hear an elementary learner say: 'I will buy vegetables (pronouncing 'table' at the end)'. I note that this is also an opportunity to work on word stress.

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  I make a column with a schwa, and drill 'vegetable', marking the word stress.
  

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  With an elementary class there is a case for simply teaching this point rather than eliciting known words, so I point out the number of syllables and the stress on the beginning of the word, explaining that this makes the final syllable weak and not pronounced as the word 'table'.
  

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  I add to the list 'comfortable' and 'presentable' as further examples, but avoid adding more so as not to overwhelm students at this level.
  

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  For the second example I point out that the stress is on the second syllable. I can think of objections teachers have made to my suggesting this, such as students' confusion at the lack of a steadfast rule or the non-uniformity of the examples, for example, but to cater to this merely serves to reinforce students' belief that a language always obeys a strict set of rules. In my experience this approach is not a useful one. The only way to learn these fundamental pronunciation points is to notice them, note them down and practise them regularly.
  

Sentence stress

I use fluency drills to work on sentence stress. I hear an intermediate learner say: '