This weekend I was supposed to be celebrating a friends' birthday in Paris, France. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic this trip has been put on hold. It also got me thinking about an assignment I completed about French speakers learning English as an L2, for my linguistics class. Part of the assignment was to research difficulties French speakers have when learning English. The second component was for students to create and present one of the activities they had researched. According to the research, French speakers have difficulty with pronouncing certain sounds in English because they do not exist in French (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992). Instead, they pronounce them as other sounds (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992). For example, the aspiration of the sound /p/ as in “plot” might sound like “blot” because the student is not producing the “puff of air” required to say these sounds (Avery &Ehrlich). I found an activity online called “Run and Grab”, that I thought would be a great way for students to practice the sounds they find difficult pronouncing. I changed the name to ”Sound Race” to emphasize that students need to focus on the sound of the words . Goal – For students to differentiate between minimal pairs (consonants) that French learners have difficulty with recognizing and pronouncing. Objective
References:
Avery, P., & Ehrlich, S. (1992). Teaching American English pronunciation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Whckham, R. (2020) 10 ESL activities for powerful pronunciation progress. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-pronunciation-activities/
0 Comments
|
Archives
February 2021
Categories |