Happy New Year!

Check out Learner English:  A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (Cambridge) and Pronunciation Contrasts in English by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen (Waveland). 

Learner English describes difficulties in English that speakers of various languages are likely to have.  Pronunciation Contrasts provides lots of lists of minimal pairs so that you don't have to think them up off the top of your head in class.

I would suggest that you incorporate pronunciation segments into your regular classes without spending too much time (not more than about 10 minutes) at a time on it, and I would probably start with recognition for a few classes before encouraging production.  For a minimal pair practice, I would distribute 2 differently colored index cards to each student and ask them to hold up one color when they hear /p/ and the other color when they hear /b/ {push/bush, tap/tab}--Pronunciation Contrasts will give you lots of examples of these and other sounds in initial, medial and final position.

Also, unless students' difficulties with these sounds greatly interferes with their communicating successfully in English, I wouldn't worry too very much about it!  Judy Gilbert's Clear Speech is student textbook that will be helpful, as well.  Good luck!

"Faith is not just loyalty to tradition, but a readiness to become something new."  Peter Manseau

Luri Owen
Bayfield & ESOL Coordinator
The Adult Learning Center, Inc.
Phone 970-884-7765

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Martin Senger 
  To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List 
  Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:31 PM
  Subject: [EnglishLanguage 917] Help with pronunciation issues


  Pax et bonum all! (peace & goodness)

  I am an adult ESL teacher in Erie, PA. I am looking for information on teaching pronunciation skills to SE Asian students, who seem to have a particular problem with stops sounds ([p], [b], etc.). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!


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