The useful alphabet (self-initiated independent learning)

Aims:Speaking skill

Level:Beginner

Time:5-10 minutes

Organisation:Individuals

Procedure:Each student gets a letter and has to find 5, 10 or 15 words she/he thinks would be useful for them. They then report to the class, perhaps as a mingle activity, using word cards (on one side they write the letter, on the other the information on the word - spelling, pronunciation, definition).

Chain Spelling (Shiri-tori)

Level:Easy to Medium

The teacher gives a word and asks a student to spell it, and then a second student should say a word beginning with the last letter of the word given. The game continues until someone makes a mistake, that is, to pronounce the word incorrectly, misspell it or come up with a word that has been said already, then he/she is out. The last one remaining in the game is the winner.

This game can be made difficult by limiting the words to a certain category, e.g.. food, tools, or nouns, verbs, etc.

Spelling Contest

Level:Any Level

First, if you have a large class you have to divide it in 2 teams. Then the teacher says a word or a sentence depending on the level for the students to spell. Students should spell these correctly with not even one mistake. The team that has more points is the winner.

Hangman

Level: Any Level

Divide the class into two teams. On the blackboard, draw spaces for the number of letters in a word. Have the players guess letters in the word alternating between the teams. If a letter in the word is guessed correctly, the teacher writes it into the correct space. If a letter is guessed which is not in the word, the teacher draws part of the man being hanged. The teams which can guess the word first receives a point, then start the game over.

Now let we see what pronunciation games are.

Errors made in pronouncing a foreign language vary to a certain extent from one mother tongue to another, although some are widespread. Listening and speaking habits formed during the process of acquiring the mother tongue make it hard for the learners to hear and make differences of sound which are unimportant in that mother tongue. In such circumstances it is no good asking impatiently Can’t you hear what I am saying? Yet it can be helpful to isolate the sound and point out visible features of its formation, such as the position of the jaws and lips. Indeed, this in itself may enable learners to hear it better. Until they can hear that there is a difference between what they say and what they should say, there will not be much advance.

Pronunciation drills, which can take the form of games or contests, should be held regularly, but not for long periods; five minutes every lesson may be enough, with a longer stretch occasionally. They should be as meaningful as possible. Although it is necessary to isolate sounds from time to time, sentence examples such as ‘The man outside ran away’ and ‘The men outside ran away’ do help learners to realise that what may seem a very small difference of sound can accompany a big difference of meaning. But at an elementary stage, while the learners’ vocabulary is very small, these drills and games may have to be based on isolated words and sounds.

Learners can act as the teacher in activities but should not do so unless their pronunciation is reasonably good. The teacher tells the learner what to say or writes it on a piece of paper. If it is spoken accurately the learner’s team can win a point, apart from any points others may win with their answers. It is interesting that inability to make their fellow learners understand what they are saying does a lot to convince learners of the shortcomings of their own pronunciation.

As the games and activities, which follow are all meant to help pronunciation.

Are you saying it?

Level: intermediate

Age: any (except young children)

Group size: whole class, teams, groups

It is not enough to be able to recognise differences between speech sounds; one must also be able to produce them. Production exercises can also take the form of games. For instance: as a means of overcoming persistent difficulties with the pronunciation of sounds, a team contest may be arranged. Suppose the difficulty is poor discrimination between /v/ as in veal and /w/ as in wheel. Assuming that the formation of these sounds, in particular the lip positions, has been demonstrated one team can take /v/-words and the other /w/-words, and then change. To begin with, a few members of each team are called upon to say one or the other kind of word (these will be on the board or can be given orally). Then small groups within each team can be given a minute or two to find two-word or three-word phrases containing both /v/-words and /w/-words. Points are awarded for the way in which they say these, and the opposite team can be involved in the adjudication.

Possible phrases: very wet/very warm, worse verses, wet violets.

What are you saying?

Level: intermediate

Age: any (expect young children)

Group size: whole class

There are some numbered sentences on the board, which differ slightly from one another in pronunciation but greatly in meaning. Examples:

1a. I can’t find my class.

b. I can’t find my glass.

2a. Ballet-dancers work very hard.

  b. Belly dancers work very hard.

3a. The trees are full of birds.

b. The trees are full of buds.

4a. We shall leave there.

  b. We shall live there.

Students take it in turn to read any sentence aloud (there should be about twenty on the board, based on the learners’ actual difficulties with sounds) and various members of the same team mention the number of the sentence they think has been read.

The same or different

Level:intermediate

Age: any (except younger children)

Group size: whole class

This game can be played with sounds, words, or sentences. It goes roughly as follows: the teacher says two sentences and the learners decide whether they are same or different. Examples:

Teacher: ‘We began to think.’ ‘We began to sink.’ Are they the same? I’ll say them once more…Peter?

Peter: ‘The second one was different.’

Teacher: Right. Listen again: ‘That’s a good road.’ ‘That’s a good road.’

John: ‘Different.’

Teacher: ‘Listen again.’ (Repeats them)

John: ‘The same.’

Teacher: Yes, now listen again. ‘I’d like to look at your bag.’ ‘I’d like to look at your back.’ Hands up.

And so on. Sometimes the sentences are given in pairs, sometimes in threes or fours, and often they will be identical, often different. The teacher should sometimes say ‘Listen again’ even when the answer is right.

It is essential that each sentence of a pair should be spoken in exactly the same way (e.g. with the same stress and intonation) apart from the one difference between them.

Which is which?

Level: intermediate and advanced

Age:any (except younger children)

Group size:whole class

These drill-games are like those described under ‘The same or different’, but more is excepted of the learners. They do not simply have to decide whether the utterances are different or the same, but to identify them.

The presentation can be oral or both oral and visual.

Suppose the pupils can hear there is a difference between /i/ and /ı/ as in ‘You must leave there’ and ‘You must live there.’ Let’s call ‘leave’ (go away) A, says the teacher, and ‘live’ (live in a place) B. Now, listen. Which is this? ‘You must live there.’ Tom? Mary? Yes, it’s B. now what about this? And so on, with scoring of team points if necessary.

  Learners can take the teacher’s place if they are good enough, but must be supervised.

Responses can be either oral or written. If the responses is written, pupils write A or B or the words themselves.

For the sake of fun and to keep the class alert, introduce occasionally a sound which is neither of the two, even if the word in which it is put is non-existent, as in You must /lev/ there. Neither is the only acceptable response.

  If isolated words are being used, several can be given at once, the class being told, for instance, Write A if you hear the vowel sound of ‘bed’ (the thing you sleep in) and B if you hear the vowel sound of ‘bad’ (the opposite of good). Now – ‘set, set, sat, set.’ The answer should be A, A, B, and A.

Say what you mean

Level:intermediate and advanced

Age:any

Group size:whole class

Here is a type of pronunciation game in which there is a very close link between sounds and meaning.

The teacher says, for instance, What do people sometimes wear on their heads? Hats. Right. Do they wear huts on their heads? Of course not. But some people live in huts. Where? Does anyone live in a hat? (There could be matchstick figures on the board of somebody wearing a hat and somebody sitting at the door of a hut, as well as ridiculous ones of somebody with a hut on his head and somebody sitting on a hat.) Now, listen. Tell me whether I am right or wrong. Some people live in hats…Some people live in huts…Some of us wear huts…and so on. Write R for right and W for wrong.

Likes and dislikes

Level: intermediate and advanced

Age:any (except young children)

Group size:whole class

This game can be adapted so that the ultimate focus of attention is a pronunciation point. Examples: X likes watches but he doesn’t like clocks; wheels but no bicycles or cars; windows but not doors; twilight but not dawn or dusk (i.e. he likes words containing /w/). Y likes veal but he doesn’t like meat; violets but not flowers; virtue but not goodness, volcanoes but not lava; lovers but not sweethearts (i.e. he likes words containing /v/.)

There is a semantic link between what is liked and what is disliked, and the listener’s attention first focused on the meaning, which is puzzling. For example, how is it possible that somebody can like wheels but not a bicycle?

This is the sort of game that cannot be played many times, perhaps only once within its field of reference (here pronunciation).

If the two sounds concerned are both included in the statement, the ‘solution’ will be found very quickly and the resulting ‘impact’ on the learner will be weaker. Examples: X likes wheels but he doesn’t like veal; watches but not violins. This is also more inconsequential, as the semantic link between the two items is not close.

In balanced activities approach, the teacher uses a variety of activities from these different categories of input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels, including beginners, benefit from this variety; it is more motivating, and it is also more likely to result in effective language learning.