Ukrainian accents and the correct way to pronounce 'bus'

When I visit Ukrainian schools, there is usually a question after the lesson that goes something like this..

"Why do you say  b/ʊ/s?  and why not  b/ʌ/s?"

The question is referring to the fact I, like most people from Yorkshire in England, pronounce that word as if I have just been lightly jabbed in the guts.

" Because I'm from North England" I always reply

This answer always seems to disappoint the teacher. It seems they were hoping for a walking example of perfect English and instead got an extra from 'Billy Elliot'.

Of course, the reality is that there isn't such a thing as a 'perfect accent'.

Something brilliantly described by Hugh Dellar on his FB vlogs and website here:

http://www.lexicallab.com/2015/05/politics-pronunciation-and-the-pursuit-of-perfection/

What is a British accent?

So the truth is there is no 'British accent'  despite what American sit-coms might think. School text books use recieved pronunciation (RP) as the standard because,  hey, they have to put something! But, in the real world of English communication, 97% of British speakers have an alternate accent. Are they wrong? Are their accents 'worse'  than RP?

They aren't, and the quicker we make students aware of differences in accent the better.

That's why good modern text books use videos and audios that include people from different parts of the world, both native and non-native speakers. 

So what should we teach?

I don't believe we should teach students that they have to copy 'British accents' or RP. The focus of English lessons should be helping the students to communicate with people from around the world, not on training them to be like British people (who don't speak like that anyway). If students are able to pronouce words intelligibly and can communicate in English then I believe we shouldn't make them feel that it's wrong to have an accent when they speak.

As a teacher I just pronounce a word how I would pronounce it naturally, the students do the same and if we all understand each other that's fine. 

So should we correct?

If one of my students pronounces /V/ as /W/  as they can't distinguish between the sounds, then yes I correct it. This confusion could be because the student is unable to hear the difference, so I would help them to identify the two sounds. However, if the student has a Ukrainian accent due to sentence or word stress I believe this totally fine. As I tell students, 'It's ok to have a Ukrainian accent, you are Ukrainian'.

 Most of what the students learn isn't English as a Foreign Language(EFL)  anymore, it's English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). So British norms are becoming less relevant. Do we need to teach our students RP when they are unlikely to ever encounter anybody speaking like this?

Having an accent is part of who we are. After all, Billy Elliot wouldn't have been the same in RP!

Activity of the Week - Vocab Grab!

Hi Everyone,

This week my students have been preparing for exams, so I came up with a fun game to review vocabulary we have studied so far.

Preparation

Chop up some slips of  paper and write down one word or phrase that you want to practice with the students on the each one. Scatter these slips on a table in the centre of the room.

Procedure

The students stand around the table in a circle a few steps back from the slips of paper.
When the teacher shouts 'Go!', the students must rush to the table, find a word they know and return to the outside of the circle.
The students must then provide a correct definition and example of their word.
Any student who fails to grab a slip or provide a correct definition is out of the game and must sit down.
The last remaining student is the winner!

I had a lot of fun with this activity this week. Hope you guys do too!

Activity of the week - Sentence Building Race

  Hi Everyone,

Here is a quick activity to practice sentence formation and collocation. Especially good for helping students with ZNO Use of English. It's easy to prepare and lots of fun!

Materials:
Slips of paper

Procedure:

• Divide the class into teams of 4/5
• Give a slip of paper to one person on each team
• Give them a root word like 'despite'  or 'suggested'
• The first student writes the root word on the paper and passes the paper to the left.  The next student must add a word either before or after the root word  such as  'despite being'. They pass the slip to the next student who adds another word, e.g. 'Despite being rich'. The students keep passing the slip around the table adding one word each until a logical sentence with at least 6 words is formed.
• The fastest team then holds up the slip to win.

Brilliant for practising collocations with prepositions and gerund/infinitive in particular.

Have fun!

Activity of the Week - Audio Prediction

Hi Everyone,

 This week's activity is designed to get students engaged in listening activities.

When using an audio track or reading text in a class, it is important to engage the students first by setting a context. There are three main reasons for this.

1. More Authentic  -  We rarely listen to information in the real world without knowing the context.

2.Less challenging - Knowing the context of the audio will help the learners to understand what they are listening to.

3. More Engaging  -  Giving learners a reason to listen to the audio will help to generate interest. With no context the learners are just listening for the sake of listening. The task will feel like an examination and it's no wonder they might not find it interesting.

So what can we do?

Good text books will always include a pre-listening task to engage the learners before the listening task.

Here is one.

Audio prediction

Before playing the audio track, choose 5-10 key content words from the audio and write them on the board. Ask your learners to then work in small groups to predict what they will hear by creating their own version of the listening script using the key words on the board.

Give the students 5-10 minutes to do this.

The learners then tell their predictions to the other group or to the whole class.  When the students have done this and they are familiar with their own version of events, they listen to the audio track and note down similarities and differences between the real track and their own version.

For extra motivation, points can be given for correct predictions.

This gives the learners a reason to listen as they are eager to learn what the real story was and how accurate their predictions were. 

Have fun!

Activities of the Week- 5 Activities for small groups

Hi Guys,

Here is the view from our new Dinternal office in Chernyachovskogo Street, Odessa.

As you can see, we have a lot of snow in Odessa at the moment and this can only mean one thing for English teachers.... smaller groups!

We all have experienced that lesson, where we have planned activities for 15+ students only to arrive in the classroom to find that the majority of the class have decided not to risk the deadly perils of snow or wind. leaving us with a group of three or four people when we had expected many more.

Never fear.. help is at hand!

Here are 5 low-prep activities for dealing with small groups:

Grand-prix

Materials: Board, Magnets or paper with sticky-tape or blu-tac

Procedure:

Draw a racetrack like the one above on the board.

Using board magnets or blue-tac, the students will race each other round the track. The winner is the first one to reach the end.

The students/teams answer questions in order to move forward. The questions can be prepared by the students to make the activity even more student-centred and, of course, cut down on your valuable preparation time.

Idea:

• Put different letters on different squares to represent different types of questions. eg  V+ vocabulary   G+ grammar

The Tower Game

Materials:  Building blocks such as  Lego or dominoes or Jenga

  

This is a fun game that works in a similar way to 'Grand-Prix'. 


Students in small teams answer questions on a set topic. As in the previous game, getting students to create their own questions can be fun and motivating and great for recycling.

If the group answers the question correctly they are awarded 10 seconds to build their tower.

The team with the highest tower at the end of the game is the winner.

The towers can fall at any time making the game more fun, less predictable and also more even if there are weaker and stronger teams.

How We Roll

A great activity to generate discussion and use target language in small groups.

Materials: a pair of dice

Procedure: 

Choose  6 discussion topics (e.g. sport) and number them 1-6 on the board

The teacher chooses six structures (eg  present perfect/linking words) and also labels them 1-6.

The first student rolls the dice and the number indicates which topic must speak about.

The second roll indicates which structure the student must include in their discussion.

 The teacher can impose time restrictions or just let the discussion flow.

Word Grab

This activity is great fun and really helps students with listening for detail.

Materials: listening material and some slips with the words or phrases from the dialogue.

Procedure:  

Choose a listening track or even a reading text which can be read out by the teacher.

Choose relevant words or phrases from the text and write them on large slips.

Spread these slips out on the table.

The students then listen to the audio (or the reading from the teacher) and when they hear one of the words on the table they have to try and grab it before the other students.

At the end of the dialogue the student with the most slips is the winner.

Word grab can be used to practice listening for detail and also anticipating information, as well as a novel way of introducing new vocabulary.

Grammatical chairs

Another great activity I practised with JJ Wilson in Kiev!

The simple activity involves students sitting in a circle on chairs. 

The teacher asks a 'Have you ever'  question (questions with other forms work too)  and any student who answers 'yes' has to stand up and change their seat. The person asking the question (in this case the teacher) will try to sit down and claim a seat and the person left standing must ask the next question.

Students who moved then give more information and generate interesting stories and discussions.

A really enjoyable game to practice speaking skills and keep those potentially challenging small-group lessons fun and dynamic.

Have fun!

TeachingwithTom meets....

On Saturday February 10th I had the pleasure of seeing JJ Wilson live in Kyiv. Here in Ukraine JJ is best known as one of the authors of Speakout and Total English.  He wrote his first Pearson title, Language to Go, when he was just 28 years old and was also authored one of my favourite methodology books,  How to Teach Listening.   During the presentation he gave lots of practical tips on how to improve listening skills in general and provided some advice for Ukrainian teachers and students on how to pass the new listening part of ZNO.

If you follow our Facebook pages, you'll know that JJ is also a poet, fiction writer and ex-rugby international, playing for England Under-19s in rugby union and Scotland in rugby league.  After his event, I spoke to JJ about writing, English teaching and, of course, rugby too.

Thanks very much to JJ Wilson for his time and energy.  If you were at any of his three events, I'm sure you enjoyed them just as much as I did.

Lessons from JJ Wilson

Who saw JJ Wilson's fantastic events in Kyiv this week?  I was there on Saturday to get lots of ideas about teaching listening and even got to see the National Presidential Orchestra of Ukraine live on stage.  It was great to see so many teachers there, including several I know from Odessa, Mykolaiv and Kherson.  If you couldn't make it in person, you can watch his presentation from Monday on the Kyiv National University of Trade and Economics YouTube channel.


I was very pleased to see JJ live because I really enjoy teaching from his books. There are loads of great lessons in Speakout but one of my favourites is on the topic of six word stories.  What did you think of JJ's presentation?  Could you describe it in just six words?

Mine would be:  Learnt lots of lovely listening lessons!

If you like or follow Dinternal Education's Facebook page, you'll have the chance to win a small prize personally signed by JJ Wilson tomorrow.  The only thing you have to do is write six words.

Good luck!