Pronunciation

I believe there can be some difficulties in teaching pronunciation to pupils in primary school, but it’s only based on my own experience as a pupil. There was not any emphasis on correct pronunciation during my years in primary school. The emphasis was mainly on spelling and glossary tests. I learned most of my pronunciation watching television, movies, listening and speaking. In my mind, I always thought pronunciation is something that takes a lot time to develop. My assumption about teaching pronunciation is that it takes a lot of practice to learn to pronounce words correct, simply because there is a lot of words and many pronunciation “traps”.

It wouldn’t be far from the truth when I say that I never have seen the different symbols in the phonemic symbols, of course they have been in the glossary’s, but I never knew the correct sounds for the phonemes. I would usually guess the right pronunciation. I guess knowing the difference phonemes and allophones would make it easier to open a glossary and learn the correct spelling of the word almost instantly. There is just the challenge of teaching the pupils the system, a system that is almost a new alphabet.

When teaching pronunciation I would always start close to the pronunciation they already have. Growing up in Norway my experience tells me that American English is the accents I heard the most through television. When it comes to pronunciation, I don’t think it’s important if the students have a perfect American or English accent, but that they speak fluently and make themselves understood. I always think there will be different variations of accents in the group of pupils. Some students may have been on vacations or have relatives in English speaking countries, and that will influence their accents. I don’t think that it’s possible or advantageously to micromanage the pupils accents, because it might make the pupils lose some of their motivation if they already have an accent or they are struggling. The main emphasis pronunciation vise is to make them not sound like Petter Solberg