Tag Archives: pronunciation

Read Along: Reading and Pronunciation Buddy for Beginners

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It’s been a long time since I haven’t written a post for primary teachers and A1 learners, but hey!  This one’s for you!

If you’re just starting your reading journey—or helping little ones do the same—Google’s Read Along is the perfect tool to make learning fun! While designed primarily for children, these stories can still be valuable for adult learners focusing on reading skills and pronunciation practice. The child-friendly content doesn’t diminish its effectiveness as a learning tool for readers of any age. For me and my adult students, it just makes the whole activity more visually appealing while still focusing on the same goal—helping you improve your reading and pronunciation.

What is Read Along?

It is a FREE tool (yep, no cost at all!) that helps students learn to read  and pronounce correctly while having fun. It works both as an app and online, making it super accessible for everyone.

How does it work?

Meet Diya, the friendly reading buddy!

  • She listens to students and helps them then they struggle with reading
  • Students can choose from hundreds of levelled stories
  • Students can earn badges and rewards as they read

Ready to pronounce? t is important to activate the microphone.

  • Diya, the reading buddy, will prompt you to pronounce;  or alternatively, you can click on the words to hear them being pronounced.
Why do I like it?
  • There are four levels of stories, each with a different level of difficulty. The higher the level, the more challenging the reading—so you can progress at your own pace.
  • You can listen to individual words in a story, and there are also fun activities where you get to record yourself reading aloud! Perfect for practicing pronunciation and building confidence!
  • Uses AI to offer real-time feedback
  • Completely inclusive and accessible for all learners
  • Helps students gain confidence and fluency in reading

So, whether you’re a teacher looking to support your students or a beginner reader wanting to improve pronunciation, Read Along might be the tool for you.

Aspirated /P,K,T/ and Some Fun Activities to Practise

General

“The fortis plosives /p,t,k/, when initial in an accented syllable, are usually accompanied by aspiration” A.C Gimson.

Before you continue reading, you should know I am not a native speaker, so I don’t tend to write many posts on pronunciation. However, some sounds require special attention, and it is my job as a teacher to show my students how to correctly pronounce these sounds. Besides, students love pronunciation activities.

The three sounds we are going to tackle today are easy to pronounce for Romance and Slav speakers and because the sounds seem similar to the sounds in their own native language, these speakers might tend to pronounce these sounds without aspiration.Without aspiration,” there is the danger that the English listener may understand,  for example, “bin” instead of “pin” since he interprets lack of aspiration as the lenis /b/”-A.G Gimson

EXERCISE 1: HAVE FUN ( Spanish speakers)
  • Write these three Spanish words on the board (tetera, papá, cacao) and ask students to read them in Spanish.
  • Now, ask them to imagine how these 3 Spanish words would be pronounced by an English native speaker. Most probably, and with some laughs, it will sound something such as this.

  • Give them 1 minute to practise, in pairs.
  • Ask: what’s the difference? Explain that aspiration happens when these three sounds are in initial accented position. Emphasize the importance, for communicative purposes, of this aspiration.
EXERCISE 2:  THE THEORY. Necessary.

Illustrative video, created by Tools for Clear Speech, which I highly recommend.

  • To pronounce /t/: place the tip of your tongue behind your upper teeth. To produce aspiration, push air out of your mouth.
  • To pronounce /p/: close your lips and release them, pushing air out of your mouth.
  • To pronounce /k/: raise the back of your tongue towards your soft palate. Lung air is compressed behind this closure and then released with force.
. I

/p/ as in “paper” de cristina.cabal

EXERCISE 3:  MORE FUN (  and why not )
  • Ask students to give you words beginning with /p,t,k/ in initial accented position. Write them on the board

  • Take a Kleenex (paper tissue) or a piece of toilet paper. Choose one of the words on the board, for example, “paper”. Hold the piece of paper in front of your mouth and demonstrate the difference between pronouncing non-aspirated  /p/ in “paper” and aspirated /p/ “paper”. You might need to rest after exemplifying 🙂
  • Allow them some time to practise using the words on the board. Emphasize that the piece of paper must move.
EXERCISE 4:  TONGUE TWISTERS

What could be more English than a classic tongue twister?

On the board, write these three below and let them practise in pairs.  I was going to say “more fun” but I am going to refrain; I need to become a more serious teacher.

  • With /p/, the super popular “Peter Piper”

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

If you don’t feel up to it, here you can listen to a perfect pronunciation of the tongue twister.

  • With /t/, the long… “Betty Botter”

Betty Botter bought some butter. But she said the butter’s bitter, “If I put it in my batter. It will make my batter bitter, But a bit of better butter.- that would make my batter better.

  • With /k/ the super difficult …

A cupcake cook in a cupcake cook’s cap cooks cupcakes

And again, If you don’t feel up to it, here you can listen to a perfect pronunciation of the tongue twister.

EXERCISE 5:  STUDENTS’ OWN TONGUE TWISTERS

This is going to be fun.

  • Put students in pairs and assign them a sound /p/, /t/ or /k/.
  • Ask them to imake up a tongue twister with their assigned sound. The tongue twister should have no less than 6 words, and there should be at least 4 words containing the aspirated sound.
  • They should write their tongue twisters on a slip of paper. Well, on two slips of paper as every student should have their own slip of paper with his/her own tongue twister in it. Encourage clear handwriting and let them practise before the next step.
  • Ask students to stand up and pair up with another student in the class. Exchange slips of paper. Read your classmate’s tongue twister. Before moving to find another partner, exchange slips of paper again so that you take your own tongue twister with you.
  • Hope you have enjoyed these activities. I have!!!

7 Activities and Ideas to Practise B and V sounds

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Let’s not beat about the bush.

Some of us are probably spending lots of time and energy teaching how to pronounce the schwa /ə/ or helping our students’ /ð/ sound just right, and while this is not a bad idea and something we obviously need to do, we might be overlooking a very subtle yet essential pronunciation distinction: the difference between the /b/ and /v/ sound.

If you are Spanish, it might be even more difficult for you as there’s no difference in the pronunciation of b and v.  In Spanish, despite differentiating in writing between “vaca” and “baca”, when it comes to pronouncing them,  the “v” sound is miraculously transformed into a /b/ sound. 

So, it is imperative that we teach our students that the “v” sound exists much like Teruel) and here are some exercises we can do to help our students with this elusive sound.

One. The obvious. Practise the sounds in isolation.

Demonstrate how to pronounce the sounds /b/ and /v/ and ask students to imitate you. I can guarantee they will have no problem pronouncing the bilabial plosive /b/ sound but some fun and a bit of reluctance on their part are bound to happen when they attempt to pronounce the labiodental fricative /v/. 

Now, give them a minimal pair they can easily recognise like “boat/vote” to do some practice and help them while they struggle with the “v” sound.

Two. Guess the words. Lady Gaga and Beyonce's  video "Telephone"

Nope. We are not going to sing.

For this exercise -not necessarily done after  One above-, we are going to use a short clip (4:30-4.55)  from Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s video “Telephone”.

Play the video once without sound. Tell students they will need to guess Beyonce’s words. You might want to stop the video to elicit that Gaga is leaving prison. I can already warn you the first time you play it, students will look at you and tell you: “It’s impossible to guess“. Do not give up. Tell them it is a very short sentence containing “v” and “b” words. Play it a couple more times and listen to what they think Beyonce says. Play it with sound now. The important thing here is that they realize how the “v” sound is pronounced when emphasized.

Write the sentence on the board and play the video once again to pronounce along with Beyonce. If only Gaga was called Vivien, it would be perfect!!!!!!

You’ve been a very bad girl. A very very bad bad girl, Gaga!

Three. The Clever Parrot.

 1. On the board, write some minimal pairs and drill pronunciation.  If possible, listen to all the students individually pronouncing a set of minimal pairs.

 2.  Tell students you are going to point to one of the words on the board and pronounce it. They should only repeat after you only if they think the pronunciation is correct. If they think you are mispronouncing the word, i.e. pronouncing a /b/ when it should be a /v/, they should remain silent. Repeat and reinforce the correct pronunciation of all the words on the board.

Four. On their own now. Minimal Pairs Pyramids.

Lovely exercise from www.myhappyenglish.com/.   The instructions for the activity are on the second page. I have demonstrated the activity twice before asking them to pair up and do the activity. They liked it so much that most of them did it more than once. Then, ask some students to volunteer to do it for the rest of the class. A great success. They didn’t want to stop.

Five.  Fun. Tongue twisters.

Tongue twisters are a fun and challenging way to encourage confidence.

Tip: the only way, if there is one, to get your tongue twisters straight is to do it very slowly at the beginning and then increase the rhythm. And to be honest, it is very hard to get it right but this is not the point, is it?

Write tongue twister 1 and tongue twister 2 on the board and ask students to practice them in pairs. After a couple of minutes, write tongue twister 3 and ask for volunteers to read it.

Six. Getting Creative.Creating your own tongue twisters.

Ask students to write a list of 10 words containing either “b” or “v”. Encourage them to write nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs… etc.  Give them about 2 minutes for this task.

Now, you can do this activity in two ways: you can write their words on the board- I find this very time-consuming- or you can ask them to use  Wooclap or Mentimeter and effortlessly you will get a very nice word cloud in under 1 minute.

Once their words are displayed, ask students to write their own tongue twisters with some of the words on the word cloud. Give them 2-3 minutes and then ask them to write their sentence on a slip of paper. Collect all the slips and put them on the walls of the class; ask students to stand up and gallery walk in pairs trying to read their partner’s tongue twisters. Lots of fun guaranteed!

Ex: Bob’s beautiful vase has been visited by visitors vaccinated with available vaccines.

Seven. Speaking Activity with the same Word Cloud

Ask students to write a question to ask someone in the class using at least a word containing a “b” sound and a “v” sound. Needless to say, I encouraged them to be creative and, as long as the sentence had sense and could be answered, use as many words as possible containing /b/ or /v/.

The sentence should start with… When did you last…?

Allow 2-3 minutes for this task.

Whole class: ask a student to ask his/her question to another student. The answer should start with the same words used in the question to further practise these two sounds?

Example:

A: Peter, when did you last watch a beautiful music video? Peter: I last watched a beautiful video last month. It was Telephone by Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

I hope you have enjoyed the activities. If you have, please share this article!

 

Modern Taboo with a Twist

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Is there anything students love more than a good game? The Taboo Game is an oldie but goodie and I have yet to find a student who does not like it.  Playing and learning? It’s always a win-win.

Playing games in class is something that I often do. Well, not this year. I have been on sick leave for 2 weeks and it is taking its toll on my lessons. I feel like I am always in a  hurry trying to make up for lost time. It might be working. I might be finally catching up with the syllabus but I am not having as much fun this year as in the previous ones. And this needs to stop. Right now.

So, to give my students a much-needed respite, we have revised the relative sentences using the Taboo game.

GUIDED PRACTICE: RELATIVE SENTENCES
  1. Before playing, I wrote the beginning of a sentence and asked students to provide the relative pronoun. This is the best time to correct potential mistakes.
  • It’s a person… WHO/THAT
  • It’s something … WHICH/THAT
  • It’s  a place … WHERE
  • It’s a time … WHEN

2. I wrote the word  DOG on the board and asked students to define it using the correct relative pronoun. (for ex, it is an animal that barks).

3. Then, I wrote TEACHER in capitals and under the word TEACHER, I wrote 4 taboo words they were not allowed to use in their description of the word. For example: teach, students, subjects, school. Their definition could be something like ” it is a person whose job involves using the board a lot and helping people learn  English or maths”.

Tip: if it’s a B1 class, I would use only 3 taboo words instead of the 4 you have in this game

SEMI-GUIDED PRACTICE: MODERN TABOO

Once again, to create this game I have used the flexible multipurpose Spark Adobe ( honestly, I cannot go without it).

Procedure:

  1. Divide the class into two teams and ask a representative from each team to come to the front of the class and face away from the board. Decide which team is going to start.
  2.  Player A faces their team A.  Display the presentation below. Team A describes the word at the top of the slide, without using any of the words below it (taboo words). If they use any of the taboo words, they will lose 1 point for their team and a new slide will be displayed. When Player A guesses a word, the team gets 1 point and a new slide is displayed.
  3. Team A continues to describe words for Player A for 1 minute. The game continues with teams and players taking it in turns to describe and guess words. The team with the highest score at the end of the game are the winners.

NOTE: Make sure you don’t use all the words on the presentation below. You will need at least 4 for a variation od the Taboo Game you can do at the end of the game to practise questions.

Taboo

FREE PRACTICE

Once each team has had their turn, I have put them in groups of 4 and given them paper cards to continue playing. This time, Player A describes the word to their Team. One player from Team B is allowed to see the card to make sure none of the words on the card are used. You can get plenty of Taboo cards on IslCollective. Bear in mind, you will need to register to download content.

You can also download the traditional Taboo Cards here (B1-B2)  and here (A1-A2)

THE TWIST: ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

To wrap up the activity, ask a representative from Team A and Team B to come to the front of the class. Ask them to face their team and away from the board.  Display a word. The team will have to ask questions so that Student A guesses the word; again, they cannot use any of the Taboo words in their questions.

Remember our example?TEACHER? This could go like this…

Team A to Student A

  • Who helps you learn English?  Who is standing right next to you? Who writes your school report?

I hope you have enjoyed the activity! Have fun teaching, have fun learning!

Oh! English Pronunciation! Let’s pronounce words ending in -ture!

Phonetics, ,

On this blog post, we are going to address a very common pronunciation mistake among my students, and maybe among yours too.

Let’s start

Write on the board the word CULTURE and ask your students to try to pronounce it. It could be tried in pairs or just shouted. You’ll be surprised at the variety of different pronunciations your students will come up with.

Time to explain a bit of phonetics.

Your students might not be familiar with the international phonetic alphabet, but don’t let this discourage you.

Let’s break the sound up:

Write the symbol /tʃ/ on the board and model pronunciation. It should be quite easy as this sound exists in many languages. If it helps, ask them to find words in their language that have the same sound.

Got it? Now, write the vowel /ə/. You’ll probably want to explain this is the famous schwa, resist the temptation, or maybe not but, really, there is no need to add to their burden.

To get the sound right, just ask your students to relax and punch (slightly, you don’t want them to pass out) their stomachs. Ask: What sound did you get?  Exactly, this is the schwa.

Now that we have the two sounds, put them together and there you have it. Tada!!! /tʃə/

Competition Game

Let’s go back now to our word CULTURE. Again, write it down on the board and, again, ask students to pronounce it. Better? Much better, I’m sure!

Competition: Ask students to work in pairs and tell them they have one minute to write down words ending in –ture. Needless to say, the winner is the pair with more correct –ture ending words.

Write their words on the board. If you feel there are some important ones left, write them on the board. Drill pronunciation.This is my selection of words:

Writing. More fun coming

Once all the words ending in -ture are on the board, ask students to work in pairs and write a sentence containing at least three words ending in- ture.  Give students slips of paper ( I normally fold a regular sheet of paper in two, horizontally) and ask them to write (nice and legible) their small tongue twister there. Ask them to pass it to the pair sitting next to them. In pairs, they practise reading the sentence. Repeat procedure as many times as you deem appropriate.

Example:

The texture of the creature in the picture in the literature classroom was just amazing.

Spoiling the fun

This is English. One of the most unpredictable languages as regards pronunciation.

You might want to point out that in some cases, the ending -ture is not always pronounced /tʃə/, as in the word “mature”. Fortunately, this happens in only very few cases.