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Pronunciation is an integral part of English course and considered the most difficult in English. However, it is often neglected because teachers are lack of confidence or training. Pronunciation concentrates on individual sounds while intonation is generally considered to be the variation in volume and pitch in a whole sentences.
Intonation conveys the message in a sentence. There are two main intonation patterns: rise/fall and fall/rise. The former indicates agreement and nothing more to say; whereas the latter indicates surprise, disagreement, demand for a reply and that the speaker hasn't finished what he/she has to say. Besides, flat intonation indicates speaker doesn't have much to say or doesn't want to communicate. In order to help students to overcome difficulties in practising intonation by some techniques such as practicing nonsense words, gesture, humming or singing and marking on the board.
Stress plays an essential part in interpreting the meaning of a sentence. The strong part which carries the meaning is the stressed word where the intonation begins to fall. The unit also provide some techniques for indicating and teaching stress: contrastive stress, by gesture, choral work, marking on the board or stress marks. Students can speak more naturally by practicing sound joining and linked speech.
Both teacher and students should try the phonemic alphabet and practice by using a phonemic chart with examples of each sound or ‘Sounds Right’ application. Understanding articulation including the speech organs, place of articulation and manner of articulation is vital for teachers to guide students how to pronounce correctly. Peer dictation, teacher's own mouth, visuals, phonemes and tongue twisters are teaching techniques for the pronunciation of individual sounds. Teachers can decide when to teach pronunciation whether whole lesson, lesson slots or as and when required.
