How to teach pronunciation?

It is a great help if we can take a look at the description of english consonants and vowels given by Peter Ladefoged in his Course in fonetics (see the attached link), by understanding how we articulate these sounds, we can provide accurate feedback when working on pronunciation with our students.

Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics: https://bayanbox.ir/view/2038311472801972102/A-Course-in-Phonetics.pdf

Moreover, it is useful to get acquainted with the IPA, so that we will be able to provide a phonetic description of the words we teach. Here you can find it: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/sites/default/files/IPA_Kiel_2015.pdf

The following website provides good multimedia resources in the matters of phonetics and pronunciation, you might want to check it out: https://multimedia-english.com/phonetics

Last but not least, it is a great help to look for channels in Youtube and in the net about blending sounds and linking words so that we can take students pronunciation into a more fluent level. A good example is Rachel's English channel in Youtube.

When teaching pronunciation we, as teachers, should consider sounds which are difficult to produce by learners; some of them might have an equivalent in L1, some others might not, but the aim is to make learners assimilate those phonemes in L2 accurately. There is a sound –amongst several, and as an example for the forum- that leads to misunderstanding if learners do not produce it correctly due to its complexity to be uttered, it is a vowel sound represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol /æ/ in words such as hat, man, hand, map, cat, bad, etc. I think that these types of sounds can be practiced in sentences which contain a number of words with the same phoneme, something like The man has a hat in his hand or That is not a bad cat. If learners achieved the correct pronunciation of a sound like the one mentioned above, they could also identify the difference in pronunciation between the following words, for instance, ankle – uncle, cat – cut, cap – cup, and bat – but.

I consider the pronunciation mistakes which should be brought to students' attention during the class are those which are related to misunderstanding past verbs; for instance, verbs (say-said, read-read) or pronunciation of regular verbs in which their pronunciation is different although these are written similarly e.g. wanted, played and worked. Aditionally, it is also important to bring students' attention over the sounds of consonants for plural nouns and /θ/, /k/ sound in some words.

I tend to agree with the importance of emphasizing the suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation in class. However, I feel that when it comes to working with students whose level of language proficiency is rather low, an emphasis on proper production of phonemes should be placed instead. Said phonemes include both vowel and consonant sounds and I personally tend to favor those foreign to our shared L1 (Spanish).

Even though most of the pronunciation practice that takes place in my classes is reactive, my lessons are usually imbued with some form of integrated pronunciation practice. I’ve prepared a series of slides that help a great deal in showcasing pronunciation related issues that students are likely to encounter due to natural interference with L1. Among these issues, I usually cover the difference between short and long vowel sound: /i/ vs. /І/, for example. And consonant sounds that do not occur naturally in Spanish such as /θ/, /δ/, /z/, /v/, and aspirated sounds /t'/, /p'/ and /k'/.