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It is important for teachers to go over pronunciation regularly with students. Studies have found that it is often what students lack confidence in most when learning English. Many teachers neglect to review pronunciation enough because it comes so naturally to a native speaker that we may find difficulty detecting it ourselves. This does not mean that it is impossible to detect and teach with some practice.
The following techniques can be helpful to indicate intonation
1. Have students repeat nonsense phrases in a certain attitude, then replace the nonsense words with real phrases.
2. Gesture to the students with your hands when to raise or lower pitch.
3. Humming/singing will help students to hear the stresses/intonations of phrases.
4. Marking words on the board with upward or downward arrows may also be helpful.
The following techniques can be helpful to indicate stress:
1. Contrastive stress - saying the word and stressing the correct syllable, then saying it and stressing the incorrect syllable. Do this multiple times so students will begin to hear it.
2. Gesturing - clapping, tapping on your desk, etc.
3. Choral work - chant/sing typical rhythms in English
4. The board - underline or box words on the board to show students stressed words/phrases/syllables.
5. Stress marks - put a ' mark before syllables that should be stressed.
Speaking patterns:
1. rise/fall intonation - this is the most typically used pattern of intonation. The phrase will gradually rise in pitch until it reaches a certain word, and then it will go back down.
2. fall/rise intonation - this may indicate surprise or disagreement, or may indicate that the speaker wants a response or confirmation. Very commonly used for questions. It may also indicate that the speaker is not done with what they are saying but is taking a short break speaking.
