28 fev 2018

by | in Career, Pronunciation, Teacher Development

Going to university to study languages was a transformative experience for me and was instrumental in making me the professional I am today. I have even written here on RichmondShare (click here) about the possible dilemma many are faced with when trying to decide whether to take a Letras course or a CELTA. One of the highlights of my Letras degree was studying phonology. I had the pleasure of being taught by Aurora Neiva, a very important professional in the field of Phonology. At the time, I had two jobs and,...

24 fev 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, Language Acquisition, Lesson Ideas, Pronunciation, Reflections about Education, Skills, Teacher Development, Vocabulary

Power To The Music              It is funny how people (students) may instantly think of CCR’s ‘Have you ever seen the rain?’ when you start off a conversation with the chunk ‘Have you ever Blahed?’. Have you ever (seen the rain? - lol) stopped and thought how powerful music can be in terms of learning opportunities? I bet you have, though. As I see it, music is what comes through my ears and touches my heart. In that sense here lies a powerful tool through which mankind has evolved with. Not only...

05 fev 2018

by | in Pronunciation, Skills, Speaking and Spoken Language

Do you have students that complain they can’t understand the listening tracks until you let them read the transcripts? The solution could be in Richard Cauldwell’s work, which has been brought to my attention by my dearest Higor Cavalcante. The author of Phonology for Listening and of the forthcoming A Syllabus for Listening, Cauldwell did an EVO webinar on Sunday and reminded us that it’s a jungle out there. In a very fitting metaphor, he explained we usually teach pronunciation of isolated words as if words were potted plants in...

05 abr 2017

by | in Games, Pronunciation, Resources

Late in February a BrELTer asked what she could do with songs in ELT lessons. My comment there was huge (sorry!) because I simply love using songs in language learning, both as a teacher and as a student. In fact, I have forgotten most of the French I've been taught except for the French in songs (and may I add, "Non, rien de rien, je ne regrette rien"). There's so much we can do with songs other than randomly choosing gaps for students to fill in. Here are a few...

11 mar 2017

by | in Language Acquisition, Pronunciation

After a year or more, I'm back to blogging.  This time I have decided to study and write a little about a subject that is not really comfortable for me to teach and I guess that for lots of my colleagues, it is not easy as well. Let's then talk about pronunciation  regarding the regular  -ED Endings, a particular area of difficulty for Brazilian students, and for students in general. Some years ago I was conducting a workshop for the state sector teachers in Recife, Brazil  (where I live) when...

28 jan 2017

by | in Career, Classroom Experiences, Grammar, Language Acquisition, Pronunciation, Reflections about Education, Resources, Skills, Teacher Development

“A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.” ― Ruth Beechick, An Easy Start in Arithmetic, Grades K-3 In my last post, I talked about writing. The reason why I wrote about it is because I write, and writing is my journey into the core of the English language. The more I write, the more I learn about collocations, spelling, and how words are combined to form sentences. I also learn how words can impact one’s understanding and how they can persuade, motivate, inspire, and...

07 jan 2017

by | in Pronunciation

Teaching pronunciation is often overlooked in our field and the main reason I find is that it can be a bit daunting, not only for teachers to master it (in order to teach it), but also for students to grasp it, especially students who are beginners. However, is it really, daunting? Alternatively, the question would be: does it have to be this way? I oftentimes find myself teaching the correct pronunciation of “basic” or “well-known” words to advanced students (who have been in contact with the language for at least...

10 nov 2016

by | in Pronunciation

In the past few years, I’ve seen a few teachers in Brazil make a point of differentiating accent traits from pronunciation errors. You can listen to Daniel Bonatti explain it here for CanalRh or Vania Below from ManagedEnglish tackle it here. The implication, as I understand, is that diversity in accents should be celebrated, but pronunciation errors should be corrected. While I totally agree with the sentiment (yay, diversity!), I find the practicalities of it a little difficult to wrap my head around. My main question is – and this...

06 nov 2016

by | in Pronunciation, Speaking and Spoken Language, Teacher Development

It seems to me that my posts here have, unintentionally, turned into a pronunciation series. I've been keeping my eyes /aɪz/ and ears /ɪərz/ open to things to write about. Last week, I worked with the pronunciation of different suffixes in different places. Because of that, I thought this would be an appropriate topic and I've chosen three that I think are particularly mispronounced. -ful Adjectives that take the suffix -ful are sometimes pronounced by Brazilians the same way the word 'full' is pronounced: /fʊl/. However, the vowel sound here should be...

06 out 2016

by | in Pronunciation, Speaking and Spoken Language, Teacher Development

After receiving some positive feedback on my previous post about pronunciation, I started thinking about other pronunciation areas that I thought were problematic. These are mistakes your students will certainly make, but that you may be making yourself too. The two sounds I have chosen have a couple of similarities to the /s/ and /z/ I mentioned last time. First of all, these are common mistakes made by Brazilian speakers of English. The final /m/ is a bilabial consonant, which means your lips touch to stop the air coming...