Many adult learners can be totally obsessed with pronunciation.

Some teachers try and slake it with phonics.  But what usually happens is that although they get the individual sounds  perfect, they then just revert back to their old mistakes when speaking words and phrases!  (Phonics is mainly for reading, not pronunciation)

So this is the trick I use for adults, even very good ones, when I pick up a pronunciation mistake that needs fixing.

And it works wonders!

– solving the “schwa” pronunciation with “lemon”

The trick is to use the “Words” part of your software.

Just pick the word they are stuck with and play it (either touch it on screen or hit the corresponding number key) and they repeat it.

Because there are so many recordings of each word, from so many different speakers from different countries with different accents, the students have no way to fall back on their regular accent (or their teacher’s!) and they really have to listen and copy the exact intonation of each recording.

It’s like a barrage of sound that they just can’t avoid.

And of course some of the intonations are so over the top that it gets lots of smiles, so it works amazingly well.

Keep doing it several times till they’ve got it.

I find it *especially* useful for things like schwa sounds (e.g. lemon, dragon etc.), for l/r, word endings and for so many others.

If you’re a native speaker you could do this yourself, but having so many different intonations in the software is what makes it so much fun, and gives you, the teacher, so many new ideas.    (Plus repeat after me you can only do so many times with just one teacher!)

But the real magic …

The really, really cool thing about this is when you get those obsessive, uber-analytical adult students.

You know, the ones who want to know *everything* 🙂

So what you do is to set the software as homework. 

Their mission is to listen to each and every word in next week’s lesson and be able to say fluently every single intonation that is in the software.

All of them!

I tell you, they just get so into it it is crazy!

And as you can imagine with all the hundreds and hundreds of words, and thousands and thousands of recordings, they get so much pronunciation practice it is amazing.

Plus they all go at their own speed.   I really don’t know of another way of getting so much pronunciation practice in such a concentrated space of time.

Too easy?

I think sometimes teachers might overlook certain aspects of the software thinking “it’s too easy” or “just for kids” but this one really is a huge “hidden” bonus I guess and I really love it.

So if you have any adult students who you think would fit, do give it a try, I think you’re going to love the results! 🙂

Be genki,

Richard