Pronunciation Exercises

Pronunciation Exercises

One Sentence Survey
Students make a table with one question at the top. The teacher can give the stem based on almost any pronunciation sound that is being learned. Students go around and ask each student the answer and record it. Each student then in turn gets up and announces the results of their survey. This is a short presentation that helps students become accustomed to speaking in English in front of an audience.

Example:
“th” sounds - Do you like the theatre? Or “ch” / “j” sounds – Did you ever change jobs?
Student
Ji Yong - yes
Juan Carlos - no
Yerim - yes

Zip Zap Zop
"z" sound
Students make a circle, and the teacher teaches the “z” sound compared to the “s” sound (voiced and unvoiced respectively). The teacher shows the students the imaginary ball. The exercise is played by “throwing” the ball to another person and saying “zip”. That person then throws the ball to another person and says “zap”. The next person throws the ball saying “zop” and then back to “zip” again. Continue with this until the students understand and then instruct them to throw faster. Make sure to instruct students to make eye contact. When someone makes a mistake, everyone puts there hands in the center, looks at the floor and says “moooooo”. This allows for the game to continue easily.

Variation: You can use this for anything once the students understand the concept. Months of the year, the periodic table, vocabulary words, etc.

Tongue Twisters
Students practice saying tongue twisters as fast as they can. Books / phrases from Dr. Seuss are often quite good for this exercise as noted below:

L / R / Th sounds: "Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!"

P / B / F / L sounds: “When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...
...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle."
This is a good page for Dr. Seuss quotes: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/61105.Dr_Seuss

Variation:
Students each are given a tongue twister on a piece of paper and then they draw the picture. They hold it up and the other students have to guess the tongue twister that has been taught.