Category Archives: The chart and physicality

This is a really great question from Ruth about the problems of explaining sounds to learners. I hope my answer opens up a different but doable line of action.I have put this on the front page as I think it … Continue reading →

Natalia Malenko puts the following excellent question. But before you read it look carefully at the difference between the three symbols above…. Natalia says….I have noticed, as probably some other lecturers/teachers have too, that in some dictionaries there is an … Continue reading →

Quick note:  If you get the email of my blog posts, you may be finding some phonetic symbols getting altered for wrong ones. In which case please check back to the blog itself. And let me know… So, Chinese speakers … Continue reading →

In last month’s post (The Story of Sounds Episode 11), I referred to proprioception, the name given to our internal kinesthetic awareness of the position and movement of our muscles and parts of the body. During the weeks since then … Continue reading →

Teachers are always interested in how to deal with the specific pronunciation problems created by the ‘grip’ of the mother tongue phonetic set of their students. So for example in Palestine teachers wanted to explore, amongst other things, the confusion … Continue reading →

I have just returned from a most interesting and enjoyable trip working with teachers in Beirut, Amman and Ramullah. Organised by the British Council, the purpose was to explore ways of working with pronunciation to make language learning more vivid, … Continue reading →

Teachers sometimes ask questions like: what is the single thing I could do that would get pronunciation more actively integrated in my classes? And actually I think there is a single thing, a single necessary and sufficient first step: find, … Continue reading →