Improving pronunciation is a long and hard process

This past week, I included some pronunciation activities in my lessons with the 5^th grade student. I haven’t really worked on pronunciation previous to this week. So, I think he was a bit taken aback when I started put a lot of attention on pronunciation.

On Monday, I worked on [th] sound. I thought about drawing a picture, like we had practiced in class, but my illustrations are so horrendous. I was afraid I might scare him a bit with my monster-like drawings. So, I used my hands to show the position of the teeth and tongue. The issue with his [th] was that he placed his tongue behind his teeth. So, whenever he would make that sound, his tongue started out by touching the backs of his teeth, generating a [d] sound as a result. After modeling and using my hands to demonstrate, he got a little better. I felt bad because I knew he was trying his best, but kept on falling short. When I look back, I realize I should’ve praised him a lot more for even a minor improvement. My expectations were too high. We also worked on the phrase “How’s it going?” I told him to make it more fluid instead of saying each word individually. So, it would sound something like: Howsit going?, of course with a rising intonation. And we also worked on saying ‘invented electricity’. He put too much stress on the first ‘e’ of ‘electricity’. At fist, he didn’t realize what he was doing. So, I told him to pretend the first ‘e’ didn’t exist. After practicing it that way, he heard the difference. For homework, I told him to write 15 words with the [th] sound and practice saying those words.

On Tuesday, we worked on “Have you ever” à “Vyu-ever”. I realized everything is better and easier when shown in writing. At first, I told him to follow what I was saying. He didn’t hear the difference and didn’t know what I was doing. So, I said “Have you ever been to a zoo” but really stressed each word of the phrase ‘have you ever’. And then I said “Vyu-ever been to a zoo?” I then asked him if he heard a difference. He said that he did but didn’t really know how to repeat it. So, I wrote: ‘Vyu-ever’ on the computer so that he could see. There was a quizzical expression on his face at first, and then it sunk it. I asked him to practice it. At first, it was a little awkward and he kept on trying to you ‘have you’. But, after more practicing, he got better. It was quite successful and fun. I’ve never taught pronunciation of phrases. I’ve never really thought about it actually. That’s why I think last week ‘s Methodology class was really useful and insightful. I plan on focusing on pronunciation more often in my classes!

On Wednesday, we warmed up by reviewing "Have you ever..." During that activity, although he got the grammatical part correct, he forgot the pronunciation work we did the previous day!!! And so I made a [v] sound by saying "v...." but there was still a blank look on his face. After I said "Vyu...", he said "Ohh yeahhh! That!" 

On a side note: I wanted to do the chopsticks activity for his [r] and [l], but he didn’t seem to have an issue differentiating those two phonemes (?). It was quite a bummer. T_T