Teaching pronunciation and chunks

Practicing pronunciation and a grammar chunk together

24/9/2024

Practicing pronunciation and a grammar chunk together

The first language of most learners of English does not have the <th> sounds – voiced or unvoiced. So this is one of the very first things I work on with students, especially if they have been learning English for a long time and are still pronouncing <th> as /d/ or /t/ or /f/ or /s/.

Another thing I like to teach my students in the early stages of a course is the importance of chunks. In the process, I capitalize on the fact that many chunks also function in grammar patterns.

The first pattern I generated chunks for was: the Noun of the Noun. This is a very very very common pattern in English and it contains at least two uses of <th>. The and of are two of the most common words in English and they should not be mispronounced. We get to study the pronunciation of of in this weak position in the chunk. And while we’re at it, the /f/ in of is voiced.

Then there is linking: of starts with a vowel so it links to the previous word.

Schwa

Here is the top of the one-page worksheet I created for my business English students.

You can download the one-pager here. If you would like to know more about creating and using the worksheet, join my mailing list where I gradually describe the tools, techniques and the background information that motivates this work.

It's great to be back on this journey!