Pronunciation

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Dear readers.I am a student who is studying to become a secondary school English teacher. I am almost finished with my internship and I definately noticed a difference between the pupil' normal teacher and myself. I am teaching at a fairly low grade and the classes I am talking about are first year pupils.One of the things that I have noticed is the use of English in the classroom, their normal teacher uses no English in the classroom, this is very noticable when I talk and they stare at me like I am talking Chinese or something like that.This of course is very agravating for me because I want to talk as much English as possible since this is very good for the pupils.The pupils, of course, speak a bit of English but it is not as fluent as I hoped it to be. You really notice a weak spot in their education.So when they read a story out loud in class I tend to give them some slack and when I notice a major fail in pronunciation I repeat the word correctly and I make them repeat it once or twice so they have the "feeling" of that word.My question now is what do you find more important? Pronunciation or that the pupils know how to build a proper sentence.I think the best is a combination but if I really had to choose I would go for pronunciation. If your in the United Kingdom you can better make a few spelling or grammar mistakes than that you talk so horribely bad that no English man can understand you properly.It is important that you also give your motivation for this so I can understand, and please choose either pronunciation or building a proper sentence.Sincerely,Daphne Schröder

Kooyeen · Accepted Answer

Daphne SchroderMy question now is what do you find more important?

Everything is important. Grammar is very important (if don't, you mean understand what say yes? I believe yes, so you understand definitely me and saying, ok...) Vocabulary and idiomatic usage are very important as well (if you don't think so, then this sentence should make you replace your brain... = should make you change you mind). But I would definitely choose pronounciation over spelling (and as you can see, I just spelled "pronunciation" wrong, LoL). The main language, the real language, is the spoken language. Not being able to spell some difficult words is not vital, since a lot of native speakers can't spell either and everyone just uses a spell checker nowadays.
I believe pronunciation is the very first thing that should be taught, and it should be pointed out that spelling is often unrelated to the way you speak. Unfortunately, most students learn to read and write before they learn to speak (if they ever really learn to speak). That's why you can easily find students that know how to write complex conditional sentences but don't know that ship and sheep are not pronounced the same (in any native dialect, as far as I know).

Dokterjokkebrok · Answer

Hi Daphne and welcome to EF,

I think both skills are equally important to get the message across. Making yourself understood requires both good pronunciation and good usage of internalised grammar structures. Of course, you can do some extra pronunciation practice with them, or even do a couple of remedial classes, but in the end, you need to balance out their skills. This, in my view, is especially important if you teach secondary school children – whether at the level of vmbo, havo or vwo, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that, when (your) students obtain their diplomas, their English proficiency must come up to a certain standard, which in our case would usually be intermediate level or CEFr level B1/B2.

What I usually do is to give an English grammar session – in Dutch – and after they've finished a few grammar excercises, I have them do speaking activities (usually group activities) for them to practise the grammar they've just been taught. While they're at that, I walk about the classroom and join in on them. If I hear that someone's pronunciation is off or that someone has difficulty pronouncing a word, I jump in and help them out. In this way they'll become familiar with grammar structures, internalise them, use them in a communicative situation, and I can correct their pronunciation at the same time. It's a win-win situation. Also, I think it's important to apply a golden rule called N+1. In the past, I would make the mistake of misjudging my students' level of English and, as a result, they would either find my classes too easy or too difficult. In my opinion, this is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching and winging it, as I used to do, just isn't up to the mark. I think the same goes for when you're speaking English to them in the classroom. If it's all Greek to them, then it's probably too difficult. Maybe you could try using very basic English, and every sentence or so, translate what you just said into Dutch.

So, that's my view on this. I hope your classes go well and, just for the record, I think it's very good of you that you want to use English more in the classroom, provided that you use words that
are easily understood at their level.

Kind regards,

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