Teaching Pronunciation: It’s never too early – Jacky Springall
Jacky Springall
Tuesday 10 November 2020, 4:00-5:30pm AEDT
Online Workshop
This practical workshop was based on the premise that EAL teachers need to be pro-active in integrating a focus on pronunciation at all levels of teaching with the main goal of instruction being achieving intelligibility. The session gave a brief overview of the different components of pronunciation that students need to master to both make sense of what they hear and to be understood when they speak, and then provided some ideas for the adult EAL classroom which relate to larger units of speech (suprasegmental elements) primarily stress, rhythm and intonation. Most of these activities can be adapted to any level or context. Jacky’s presentation was followed by Q&A and small group discussions.
Jacky Springall has spent most of her EAL career working with new adult migrants and refugees in the Adult Migrant English Program. This has included classroom teaching, curriculum and professional development roles and coordination of delivery programs. One of her enduring interests has been the integration of pronunciation teaching in everyday EAL programs and its significance for the acquisition of oral language skills. Jacky was involved in several collaborations on teaching pronunciation with Dr. Lynda Yates in the golden days of the AMEP Research Centre resulting in Teaching Pronunciation fact sheets and a professional development kit for assessing intelligibility. Jacky is currently working for Box Hill Institute coordinating the AMEP and SEE programs at Lilydale and Ringwood.
In the breakout groups, the participants discussed:
When teaching pronunciation how do you cater for students from different linguistic backgrounds in terms of addressing their different needs and issues?
