Interactive Syllabus

"Whether we like it or not, we are judged on the way we speak: on our accent, our voice quality, our pitch, our ability to enunciate clearly. There is probably no language of which this is truer than English - certainly in present times, with its position as a global language."

(Setter, 2019, p. 204)

This course provides an overview of various techniques for teaching English pronunciation to non-native speakers, in particular Czech and Slovak users of English as a foreign language. Students will learn about different and approaches and methods used to teach English pronunciation, and will practise implementing these techniques through various classroom activities and exercises.

Course outline:

1. Introduction to English pronunciation teaching & Overview of the course and its goals
2. Introducing the phonemic chart & Use of phonemic transcription and its place in general English lessons
   
3. Teaching individual segments/phonemes - selected vowels and consonants - by means of various techniques
4. Detection and analysis of common pronunciation errors in the EFL classroom
   
5. Introduction to teaching suprasegmentals such as word stress, weak forms, linking and sentence stress/intonation/rhythm
6. Word stress activities
7. Weak forms and linking activities
8. Sentence stress, rhythm and intonation activities
9. Use of authentic materials and pronunciation websites, YouTube channels and Instagram accounts for pronunciation teaching
10. Use of general English textbooks for explicit pronunciation teaching & course wrap-up

Course requirements:

• Reading selected chapters from the book How to Teach Pronunciation by Gerald Kelly (2000)
  
• Completing three quizzes testing the information from the assigned book
  
• Conducting a five-minute micro-teaching activity reflecting a chosen pronunciation phenomenon + submitting the activity instructions in written form
  
• Developing one lesson plan for a regular general English lesson that incorporates explicit pronunciation teaching ("integrated lesson" - Kelly, 2000, p. 14 or "IPT" = "integrated pronunciation teaching" - Mompean, 2005, p. 1)
  

References:

Hancock, M. (1995). Pronunciation games. Cambridge University Press.
Hancock, M. (2020). Mark Hancock’s 50 tips for teaching pronunciation. Cambridge University Press.
Kelly, G. (2000). How to teach pronunciation. Pearson Education Limited.
Marks, J., & Bowen, T. (2012). The book of pronunciation: Proposals for a practical pedagogy. Delta Publishing.
Mompean, J. A. (2005). Taking advantage of phonetic symbols in the foreign language classroom. Proceedings of the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference 2005.
Setter, J., & Jenkins, J. (2005). State-of-the-art review article. Language Teaching, 38, 1-17. doi:10.1017/S026144480500251X
Underhill, A. (1994). Sound foundations: Learning and teaching pronunciation. Macmillan Education.