基于语音教学我写了一个教学设计并进行了设计意图的分析。

Teaching Plan

Background

·         Class and learner profile:

Grade 6 students who have a general knowledge of phonetics and are enthusiastic about learning English pronunciation. They are able to make correct and clear pronunciation of all the single vowels and consonants. However, they have quite little knowledge of how to connect single sounds.

·         Overall aims of (entire) course:

1. Prepare students for courses taught in high school in English.

2. Enable students to speak intelligible and comprehensible English to allow them to perform effective communication with native speakers.

·         Aims of session and objectives:

Help students to pronounce the -ed endings correctly in different circumstances.

·         Assumptions of learners’ current knowledge and skills:

The students have just learned simple past tense and are now familiar with the form of the suffix -ed, but it is difficult for them to pronounce the form correctly under different circumstances.

Reading material

“Millie: Sandy, you're late. The museum closed just a minute ago.

Sandy: Sorry. My grandma visited us this afternoon, so I stayed at home and talked to her.

Kitty: That's OK.

Sandy: I hope you enjoyed your day. What did you do ?

Millie: We watched a short film. It showed a lot of amazing things in the world.

Kitty: Then we played some amazing games. It was fun! We're going to come here again next weekend.

Sandy: Let me come with you then!” (Catherine, 2013 )

Linguistic analysis

Pronunciation is an important part of the course, and in the study skills part of the text book for Grade 7 students, pronunciation teaching is focused.

As teachers we should first have a clear definition of what is good pronunciation. As Roach stated in his work, not any course on pronunciation has ever pointed out that there is a must for learners to speak with a standard RP accent. What is most important is that learners can produce understandable pronunciation so that they can communicate with native speakers. (Roach, 2009) Yet, in order to make intelligible pronunciation, certain pronunciation rules should be investigated and taught in class. In today's lesson, the students will be taught how to make three different ways of pronouncing the ending -ed. As Dickerson found in his study, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean speakers, when they were familiar with pronouncing rules, they did see clear improvement. At the same time, even though, they can interact with production when used for initiating speech, participants made improvement in both fluency and accuracy after they practiced it sever times. (Dickerson, 1987)

While teaching, the International Phonetic Alphabet is introduced. As is known, English spelling is especially unpredictable, so we need to use a more reliable method to describe pronunciation. (Leong, A., Deterding, D., Low, 2006)  Although, students explore explicit rules, they will learn them in an inductive way in this lesson. As Jones pointed out through 'discovery activities' where students listen and make an effort to articulate the rules which governs the pronunciation by following the rules, or cooperate with their classmates to figure out structures in written or spoken passage. This technique is advantageous in many ways: It makes rules easier for learners to memorize because they are formed by learners themselves; it helps learners to be more aware of the communication aspect of pronunciation; and it offers an opportunity for learners to make communicative practice with their classmates and peers. (Jones, R.H.,2002)

Discussion and Justification

Step 1 Revision and Lead-in (5minutes)

Ask students to talk about what they did yesterday evening.

(Students are supposed to use simple past tense to describe what they did yesterday evening. In this way, we can lead them to use the ending -ed. Because, in English, the ending -ed often appears at the end of a verb, usually it is used to create a past tense of the verb. (Leong, A., Deterding, D., Low, 2006) In the meanwhile, they may notice the differences in the pronunciation of the ending -ed. )

Step2 Presentation (10minutes)

Millie and Kitty met Sandy outside a museum. Listen to their conversion. Pay attention to the different pronunciations of the -ed ending. (Catherine, 2012)

After listening, the students are asked to list how many different ways the ending -ed is pronounced in the conversation.

(There are three different ways that the -ed suffix can be pronounced depending on what occurs before the suffix. (Leong, A., Deterding, D., Low, 2006) In this conversion, all the three pronunciations, ie, /t/, /d/and /ɪd/, are presented to the students. To demonstrate better, IPA is introduced here.)

closed /kləʊzd/

visited /ˈvɪzɪtɪd/

stayed /steɪd/

talked /tɔːkt/

enjoyed /ɪnˈdʒɔɪd/

watched /wɒtʃd/

showed /ʃəʊd/

played /ˌpleɪd/

Step3. Practice (5minutes)

“1. How do you pronounce the endings of these words? Listen carefully and write /t/, /d/and /ɪd/ in the blanks.

1. listened      2. liked       3. wanted        4. hoped         

5. started       6. chatted     7. finished      8. passed     

9. stopped      10.raised     11. walked       12. turned      ” (Catherine, 2013 )

2. Read the above words after the tape.  

(Perhaps one of the oldest ways of teaching pronunciation includes practices in elocution: imitating and reading aloud. As the technology of recording developed and the appearance of Audiolingualism, methods as such become outdated. However, they are still popular because ,different from other language skills, pronunciation involves both motor as well as cognitive functions. As is known to all, repeated practice which is for motor functions usually lead to increased facility. (Jones, R.H.,2002))

Step 4. Discovery activity (10minutes)

After finishing the exercises, the teacher needs to guide the students to figure out if there are any rules that govern the differences in the pronunciation of the ending -ed.

(The rules are as followed

“a. /ɪd/: if the word ends with /t/or /d/.

b. /d/: if the word ends with a voiced sound (other than /d/)

c. /t/: if the word ends with a voiceless sound (other than/t/)”(Leong, A., Deterding, D., Low, 2006))

Step 5. Consolidation (8minutes)

Read the following words and put them into three categories according to the different pronunciation of -ed.

1. danced 2. lived 3. answered 4. visited 5. hated 6. helped 7. shopped 8. carried 9. need

(In this step, words end with /t/or /d/ are easy to detect. However, some students may find it difficult to distinguish words end with a voiced sound from words end with a voiceless sound. Therefore, the teacher needs to help them review voicing. “Place your hand on your throat as you say/z/, the sound at the start of zoo. Try to drag out the /z/for a long time. You should feel a vibration in the throat. This is because the vocal folds are vibrating, producing voicing. We classify /z/ as a voiced sound. Now do the same with /s/, the sound at the start of say. You should note that there is no vibration in the throat, as /s/ is a voiceless sound. ”(Leong, A., Deterding, D., Low, 2006) )

Step6. Homework (2minutes)        

Ask students to share what happened at school with their parents using simple past tense. Pay attention to the pronunciation of the ending -ed, while doing so.

(In order to be really effective, drills should go beyond just simply identifying and mimicking decontextualised sounds; instead teachers should go for more meaningful and communicative inputs. (Wong, 1987))