Teaching pronunciation of regular verbs in past simple

Question

I am teaching Past Simple to Elementary Ss on Thursday and have to cover the pronunciation of regular verbs.

I know the basics i.e. verbs finishing with the letters t or d pronounce ed as /id/ e.g. wanted

and that verbs finishing on a voiceless sound are pronounced /t/ and verbs finishing on a voiced sound are pronounced /d/

but I don't know how to explain what is a voiceless and voiced sound.

Can anyone help?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Have the students touch their own throats lightly as they pronounce the consonants. The voiced consonants (b, g, v, z, etc) cause the throat to vibrate, while the voiceless (p, k, f, s, etc) do not.

Anonymous · Answer

0 To put it in a simple way, tell your student to put a hand on his/her throat. If there is a vibration of the throat when the sound is produced, it is voiced. If there is no vibration, it is voiceless. 0-

Toughcookie · Answer

Hi! The gurus here are going to kill me for this, but I believe that with elementary students the important thing is to teach the really different ending sound which is /id/ . The difference between /t/ and /d/ is slight and does not impair communication. Even if they understand the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants, will they take the time to consider this before pronouncing the verb? All the best, Tc

Mister Micawber · Answer

No Death by Guru at all, Toughcookie-- but I don't think that correcting any of the three pronunciations is really that more important than the others. I have one student who assiduously pronounces what should be /t/ endings so strongly as /d/ that his past tenses are often unintelligible; I have others who try so hard to make /id/ part of the preceding syllable that they almost choke in the effort. Depending on the student and the L1, any of the 3 sounds can be a communication problem-- none is necessarily 'really different'.

No teacher should expect the goal to be consideration of the difference before attempting pronunciation. This is one of those mechanical parts of language learning that improve quickest with drilling. I keep a set of flash cards of regular verbs that I use briefly whenever a student exhibits a serious '~~ed' problem~~ a quick run through the set works wonders. If it seems useful or the student seems interested, I then give the cards to the student and have him/her sort them into three piles and discuss the mechanisms in more detail.

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks, Guru. I stand corrected. I guess I made the silliest of mistakes- forgetting the global picture. I teach monolingual classes of Portuguese students, and with them the difference between /t/ and /d/ is indeed slight. I'll try to keep the concept of the global village in mind...Best, Tc

Titithi · Answer

I don't think it's necessary to explain what is a voiceless and voiced sound in past simple ( pronunciation of regular verbs). Imitating is the best way to use for teaching Elementary students. Imagine that a ten-year child should memorize a lot of vocabulary,irregular verbs for distinguishing regular verbs (at least 120 verbs) voiceless sounds and voiced sounds at the same time. It's not wise to stuff a lot into children's brain.If you use flashcards to teach children, they will learn by heart how to pronounce these regular verbs when using them to speak instead of wondering voiced or voiceless sound. After teaching about 20 verbs,you could tell them 3 cases of ending /ed/: 1) verbs finishing with the letters /t/ and /d/pronounce "ed" as /id/.

2)verbs finishing with the letters :k,x,p,s,c,ch,sh,f.pronounce "ed' as /t/.

3) the others:pronounce "ed" as /d/

Children are required to memorize only two simple cases of pronunciation instead of three.They can guess the third case: If it is not in the first case and in the second case, it is in the third case. It's not easy to remember the letters that make the verbs finishing on a voiceless sound. You should give them a sentence or a phrase to have words beginning with these letters in order your students could learn by heart.For example: khi xuong phia song coi chung she falls are pronounced /t/; baked, fixed stopped,missed,forced,watched, washed,staffed. Pay attention to" raised "is pronounced /reizd/ and laughed /la:ft/.( tell them a little about sound and letter or teach them The apple song: A for apple /a/ /a/ /a/. /a/ is the sound of A.).Some verbs are not used in Elementary level.(It doesn't need to remember these verbs).In my country, phonetic is taugh only in university.

Teaching pronunciation of regular verbs in past simple

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