Pronounce it if you can

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Pronunciation - IPA transcriptions

pronunciation practice

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

Exercise 6

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson featuring pronunciation practice are to:

  • talk about English pronunciation;
  • practice reading phonetic transcriptions;
  • work on listening skills through video content and audio recordings.

In this lesson, students reflect on their personal English pronunciation habits and strategies for improvement. They watch a video of people discussing difficult words to pronounce, listen to recordings with words and sentences and interpret IPA transcriptions. Students also play a word game in pairs and do repetition and speed reading exercises.

A2 / Pre‐Intermediate60 minStandard LessonPremium Plan

WARM-UP AND WORD TRANSCRIPTION

This lesson offers pronunciation practice and begins with a warm-up. Students discuss questions about personal experiences and tips for English pronunciation. After that, they watch a video about words people struggle to pronounce in English. Students say which ones the people in the video mention. They then complete a sentence about common pronunciation challenges in their own country. Moving on, students look at pairs of words (e.g. culture AND cultural) and listen to a recording. They mark the words they hear. Afterwards, students read IPA transcriptions (e.g. /wɜːld/) and match them to the words from the previous task. Following that, they examine more transcriptions and write the words they represent.

GAME AND PRONUNCIATION PRACTICE

In this part of the lesson, students listen to a recording with sentences. They match transcribed words to the sentences they hear them in. Then, students write the words. Next, they work in pairs and play a game called Gomoku (Five in a Row). Students get a grid with words, choose a word from it and read it aloud. If they say it correctly, they mark it with a circle. Then, their partner chooses a word and does the same, marking it with a rectangle. The first person to mark five words in a row wins. Moving on, students read sentences (e.g. a squirrel rarely goes to the library) slowly. They then read them at a regular speed. Finally, students try to read them as fast as they can. They also choose one sentence and read it three times without stopping.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students write transcribed words in sentences. They then get some pronunciation practice by reading the sentences. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

Comments

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  1. Gustavo Santilli

    I loved this one! Please upload more worksheets focusing on pronunciation and accent reduction 🙏

    1. Olia

      Thanks for your comment, we’re glad you liked it 🙂

  2. Dedene Nelson-Court

    Hi, There’s a little mistake on the student version in Exercise 4. The word ‘world’ is right after January in the example. It should be the first one A. Because in the teacher version, there are 8 IPA transcriptions and in the student version, there are only 7. I hope that makes sense!! Thanks!

    1. Olia

      Thanks for pointing it out, we’ve fixed it 🙂

  3. Sebastian Shead

    Please don’t use AI voices as a spoken language model. Use real people and real voices to demonstrate real English!

    1. Olia

      Thanks for your feedback. We mostly use authentic speech but in some cases AI-generated audio is helpful for specific learning contexts. We also believe AI can now provide high-quality natural-sounding recordings.

  4. Christiane IG

    What an incredible lesson, my students loooove pronunciation lessons. I’ve used it with A2’s and B1’s, great success! thank you!!!!

    1. Olia

      So glad to hear that 😊

  5. Anna Malzy

    This is SUCH a good lesson. Please do follow up with more activities that incorporate the IPA. It’s such a useful system and my students have all loved learning it!

    1. Olia

      Thank you so much! We’ll try to do more 😊

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