Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Classroom procedures
It is very difficult to build up a graded teaching sequence for
pronunciation teaching, because, even at beginner level, all
the sounds of English tend to occur within the first few
months of teaching. Since, as has been seen, the drilling of
isolated sounds has little value, it would also be quite

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Pronunciation
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unrealistic to attempt to teach the sounds of the language
before going on to the language itself.
The teaching sequence must therefore be organised in terms
of priorities and degrees of difficulty. The amount of time
devoted to specifically pronunciation teaching depends on the
larger priorities of the course in general. A useful guide is the
precept ‘little and often’. The teacher should be prepared to
slip a few minutes’ pronunciation drill into a lesson at any
point where a significant problem is noticed. But random
assistance should not take the place of a systematic attempt to
integrate pronunciation teaching into the course. It has a
natural place in much grammar work, e.g. the teaching of
plural endings, third person singular simple present tense,
simple past tense and past participles of regular verbs, use of
questions of different types, use of adverbial modifiers
involving intonation distinctions, and so on.
Pronunciation practice itself might be very short or may
occasionally occupy several minutes. In either case a few key
principles should be followed:
1 Recognition practice should precede production practice.
2 But since production reinforces recognition, there is no
need to wait for perfect recognition before asking for
production.
3 The sounds to be heard and spoken should be clearly
highlighted in short utterances.
4 But this should not be taken to the extreme of tongue-
twisters like Peter Piper.
5 Students should be given the opportunity to hear the same
things said by more than one voice as the model.
6 The English sounds can be demonstrated in contrast with
other English sounds or else in contrast with sounds from
the native language.
7 The target sound contrast should be shown to function
meaningfully, i.e. students should realise that it makes an
important difference to their intelligibility to use it
properly. This can be done by a procedure involving a
progression from straightforward drill, where the success
or failure is simply measured by the teacher’s approval or
disapproval, to a simulated communication situation like
a picture-word matching exercise, or a game, and then to a

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real communication situation like the understanding of a
story or joke where the meaning might depend on the
sound contrast being taught.
The heart of any drilling or demonstrating of specific sound
features is contrast of one kind or another. The most efficient
way of showing contrast is by minimal pairs. Any pair of
words or phrases or sentences where there is only one feature
to distinguish them is a minimal pair. e.g.