Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

part
port
a tack
a tag
He’s coming?
He’s coming.
Such pairs can be used in the following ways:
(a) The teacher instructs the students to judge whether he is
saying two things that sound the same or different.
Sometimes he says the contrasting pair, sometimes he
says one member of the pair twice.
(b) The teacher says three items, two the same, one different.
Students judge which item is the different one.
(c) The teacher says one of the pair and students indicate
which one it is, either by referring to numbers (e.g. Sound
1, Sound 2), or by referring to pictures illustrating the
words, or by performing an action illustrating the word,
or by writing the word on the board or in their books, or
by marking a choice in an arranged exercise, etc.
(d) The teacher says one of the pair and students either
repeat it after him, or say both members of the pair, or
say the other one. This can be done chorally, or by
individual students chosen at random, or in turn rapidly
round the class.
(e) The teacher says one of the pair and the students have to
use the sound feature being highlighted in an utterance of
their own, either orally or in writing.
(f) The teacher shows a picture, or performs an action, or
gives a clue, or writes a word on the board, or holds up a
flash card, which elicits from the student either a choral or
individual production of one or other member of the pair.
But pronunciation teaching does not stop at the drilling stage.
The ultimate step is the recognition and use of the sound

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Pronunciation
64
feature in normal speech. But the learner should be completely
unconscious of his pronunciation, and pronunciation teaching
at this stage consists of the teacher’s monitoring and making
notes of what pronunciation features require further
conscious drill.
Where there is a recognition problem, a common teaching
error is to falsify the speech to facilitate comprehension. The
teacher should always talk at normal speed, rather repeating
numerous times till he is understood, or paraphrasing where
necessary. The difficulty is not to take the easy way out for
the exigencies of the moment, thinking that the problem can
be dealt with adequately later. It is, paradoxically, the teacher
who is most aware of and sympathetic to his students’
problems who is most likely to do this.
Pronunciation then, whilst it can be described and taught
in isolation, is not to be regarded as a separate area of
language learning, but as a number of contributory strands
in the fabric of English, strands to which teachers and pupils
give their attention from time to time.