We asked hundreds of ESL/EFL teachers, "If I could wave a magic wand and fix one thing to help you teach Pronunciation - what would it be?" The number one answer was - How do I start? I created a webinar to answer this great question (link to recording of the webinar http://bit.ly/1SW62M7) and these are the slides from that webinar.

1. Virgin Webinar by Judy Thompson
Saturday December 12, 2015
12:00 EST (Toronto time)

2. Agenda
 Three Introductions: Me, You, Pronunciation
 The Teaching Model today and always:
Lesson, Exercises, Transformation – how to get
learners using what they’ve studied in real life
 Lesson: Begin at the Beginning – individual sounds
 An empowering approach I use for teaching speaking -
You know this already or how to avoid teaching
learners what they already know (boring them)
 Links to resources

3. Judy Thompson
 I graduated from University with
a BA in English
 Married, four children and lived
on a horse farm
 Divorced, children to school and
I became an ESL teacher
 Manuel story changed everything
 Developed my system and
started my company
 TEDx , Radical Teachers, teach
English around the world
 Webinars!!!

4. Participants
Teachers participate for different reasons:
 Most are teachers who have avoided teaching
pronunciation completely for whatever reasons
 Some (the bravest) teach Pronunciation but don’t feel their
students are speaking as well as they could be
 A few are just plain open-minded pioneers who embrace
learning for its own sake
Students
More and more are students find their own education
solutions on the internet and pursue them
I applaud all of you and thank you for being here

5. How English Got To Be So Messed Up

6. Notes on the History Timeline
 Olde English was a combination of German and Norse
 Adding French in 1066 became Middle English
 English was spoken for 1,000 yrs before it was written
 William Caxton ruined English for all of time by
using an alphabet (26 symbols) that didn’t fit (40
sounds)
 Spelling was random then all those mistakes were
canonized in the Big Book of Mistakes – the dictionary
 Caxton effectively split English into two languages,
Writing and Speaking
 We are only taught to teach Writing because Speaking
was in place before attending school
 We teach Writing and hope for results in Speaking but
that virtually never happens

7. Humans Figure Out Talking Young

8. What Caxton Did to English

9. Talk About Broken English
 Reading/Writing uses 26 symbols in the smaller blue
circle on the left
 Listening/Speaking uses 40 symbols in the larger pink
circle on the right
 Consonants above the line, Vowels below the line
 The purple space in the middle is where the two
versions of English intersect. This is where you
start to teach pronunciation
Notes: You don’t need c, q or x in pronunciation
Vowels don’t make any sense at all. i.e. u in busy, o in
women, e in in pretty, ui in build... all make the same
short i sound

10. We Have to Make a Phonetic Alphabet
I’ll write out why you don’t need c, q or x
 Their sounds are represented by other symbols
 Usually ca, co, cu is /k/’ cap, cop, cup
 Usually ci, ce, cy is /s/ - city, celery, cycle
 But spelling is actually random
 c is /sh/ in ocean and social, chef, machine
 c is /ch/ in cello, cappuccino...
 c is silent in muscle and scissors
 q is /kw/
 x is /gz/ in exam, /ks/ in excite, /z/ in Xerox

11. Notes for the Beginning
 If I haven’t said this before, consonant sounds stop
and vowel sounds stretch
 We know Reading/Writing and Listening/Speaking
are completely different languages in English
 We have the ABC alphabet for Reading/Writing
(it doesn’t work well but we have one)
 We don’t have an alphabet for Listening/Speaking
 We’ll make a simple phonetic alphabet that uses
keyboard symbols so anyone can read what English
sounds like

12. Sound Notation

14. 24 English Consonant Sounds

15. Six New Consonant Sounds
Transformation:
/Sh/ - shoe, sugar, ocean, machine, nation
Note: Capital letters indicate two symbols work together

16. Teach Consonants First
 It’s validating: Learners have most of the consonant
sounds they need for English from their first language
 It’s empowering: Students experience real success right
out of the gate – “I know all this already”
 Customize: Focus on the few sounds that your students
are missing, usually the ‘th’ sounds, ‘y’ as /j/ for Spanish
speakers, consonant blends and final consonants for
Asian speakers, ‘w’ as /w/ not /v/ for East Indian speakers...
 Dry Run: Use consonants to teach how the styles of
exercises work: Mystery Match, Sound Mazes, Minimal
Pairs... so when we get to vowel sounds – which are tricky,
students are not overwhelmed trying to figure out how the
sound focus exercises work
btw - there are unlimited individual sound focus exercises

17. Recap – Back Up to the First Day
Talk about the History of English
1. Provides context for what students have learned (Why
they don’t speak English after years of study)
2. Give students an opportunity to listen to your voice
3. Talk about the teeter-totter action in Speaking class! The
first day the teachers does the talking and students listen.
They gradually switch until the students do all the talking
– it’s a Speaking Class
4. On the next slide is a Killer Ice-Breaker Exercise
Set your students up for Transformation from the first day.

18. Sowing the Seeds of Success

19. Old Friends

20. More Transformation
Past Tense ‘ed’ Exercise video link: http://bit.ly/1NoBzT7

21. Humans Figure Out Talking Young

22. Revisit Our 3-Step Model
Lesson: deliver relevant information
To do this you have to distinguish what you learned to teach
from what students need to know. It’s not the same thing.
Practice: there are unlimited exercises possibilities
Transformation: This is the goal. Skills and systems that
work for students in real life when the teacher is not there
So far we have taught that:
 spelling never tells us how words are pronounced
 how to develop and trust their inner ear for generating
speaking (not reading)

23. Student Transformations in this Webinar
There was a shift in consciousness for learners:
 When they saw the History of English and where English
split into Writing and Speaking
 When they saw Vennglish where the writing and speaking
symbols intersect
 With the Killer Ice-Breaker and they introduced
themselves with an adjective (but it was subconscious)
 When they saw Sound Notation with dog and /woof/
 There was a shift at the /sh/ sugar and nation
 Old Friends when they sounded exactly like a native
speaker
 ‘ed’ Past Tense Exercise and they could discern between
sounds when the spelling gave no clue

24. Conclusion
 We talked about Context for Speaking English as in
not connected to writing in any meaningful way
 We talked about the 3-Step Teaching/Learning Model
Lesson, Practice, Transformation I use for everything
 We talked about You know this already as an approach
that harvests tools and information that intelligent,
language speaking individuals already possess in order
to make your lessons easy to digest, super relevant and
validating for learners
 The Speaking Made Simple curriculum is six steps to
fluency and each step is delivered exactly the same way

25. Resources
 Free 18 YouTube video Playlist of me teaching teachers
Speaking Made Simple: http://bit.ly/1H9Sp6R
 Email me for free 8.5 x 11 copies of the History of English,
Vennglish and Old Friends
judy@thompsonlanguagecenter.com
I didn’t intend to pitch on this video but you should know there are books,
posters, materials and a curriculum in the E-Store on my website if you are
interested. http://thompsonlanguagecenter.com/e-store/
Thanks for watching!
The next video is on Pronunciation and Literacy