One of the talks I attended at
IATEFL was Pronunciation for Listeners –
Making sense of connected speech, by Mark Hancock. I already knew Mark from
his blog and his published materials, so I made it a point to attend his talk. It
was certainly worth it!
The best part was to know that I
wouldn’t have to copy anything or take pictures of the slides. I already knew
that Mark is all about sharing his materials and his talks and was certain
that, later on, I would find everything online.
Sure enough, in his ELT page with
Annie McDonald, Mark has posted the handout and the recording of his
talk. Thus, rather than reading my summary of his
presentation, you can experience it first hand.
Mark’s talk was useful in
demonstrating to the audience that pronunciation is also a listening skill and
that it isn’t always easy for students to know where one word ends and the next
begins when they listen. Thus, we need to train our students to listen, and to
do so, we need to develop in them an awareness of the supra-segmental features
that come to play in natural speech, such as elision, assimilation, and the
like. To this end, Mark suggests a series of what he calls micro-listening
activities that are really fun.
Among my favorite ones presented at
IATEFL was the –ed = t maze. Students have to work their
way through the maze by going from one –ed
= t combination to the next. The
interesting thing about it is that he presents the verb and an object that
starts with a vowel so that they can practice the elision that is so common in
verb + object combinations such as “booked a room”.
Check out the recording of his talk
and his handout. He also has an article and an interview on this topic. Make
sure you also explore his website full of rich resources for effective
pronunciation teaching.
