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As of today I have been teaching for two months in South Korea. This course has taught me about different techniques that involve intonation and pronunciation. I find it difficult for my young learners to pronounce certain sounds, /r/ sounds and /v/ sounds. I think this is because in their native language they do not have those sounds. I think this course made a good point in making students say nonsense words to get them used to the English language. The idea of using different attitudes to convey happiness, indifference or anger is all very important for learners to master. Singing is one of the best ways for my kids to learn different words and how to pronounce them correctly. When something is more fun and entertaining a person is more inclined to learn it and practice it. Articulation is an important aspect of teaching that I didn’t realize was important until I was in the classroom trying to teach a 5 year old how to pronounce an /r/ word. I showed her my tongue as I spoke and the shape of my mouth. The approximant /r/ sound description helped me immensely to teach this girl how to pronounce her /r/ sounds. When teaching I’ve come to realize that the goal is to make the student pronounce words just like a native speaker which means I have to spend a lot of time on pronunciation tactics. Tongue twisters are a great way for kids to distinguish similar sounds. I find this helpful because it prevents them from saying the wrong word even though it sounds similar. Plosive articulation is easy to explain to my kids and it ensures that they make the right sounds. As long as they cant breathe when they pronounce it I know they are on the right track. This is important because the sound /k/ and /g/ are almost combined into one in the Korean dialect. This is a serious issue since in English those are two entirely different sounds and cannot be intertwined. Fortunately, the online class helped me navigate this issue through the plosive tactic. Repetition with these tactics is crucial with my students. I now designate 30 min a day going over different pronunciation tactics to get their tongue and mouth used to making these different sounds. Knowing the different speech organs is very helpful during my lessons. Throughout this unit (13) I learned that how something sounds is not actually how it is written which is very confusing for a beginner. Most new students want to pronounce every syllable, but linked speech produces the most natural sound. This is difficult to teach because I also want them to spell correctly. So I normally teach them the word verbally first and then show them how to spell it. This makes them less confused in the future. This unit also taught me about sound joining to help students recognize how to pronounce something more naturally event though the words are completely different. Many of them found that to be interesting. Overall, teaching pronunciation in South Korea is rather difficult because of the sounds they do not make naturally, but luckily there are tactics to teach them these new sounds accurately.
