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When teaching English, pronunciation is perhaps considered as the least important part by the teachers. One reason being that for native speakers they have acquired the language by birth, they don't get to study the science of phonetics in educational institution simply because it's their mother tongue, until and unless they choose to study the language at higher level. But for an effective ESL teacher, teaching the pronunciation and phonology is an essential part of teaching English to their students. Students must be taught the importance of accurate pronunciation and clarity of communication. They must be taught how the variation in volume and pitch in a sentence defines the flow of whatever we speak, which is called intonation. Of course it's a difficult task to teach it to the students but using gestures, humming or singing out sentences can be helpful. Similarly, stress or a particular word or syllable is also important part of the pronunciation; stress on a word/syllable in a sentence can change the message of an entire sentence. Now when we say that stress and intonation are important part of speaking skills, there comes the importance of how a word is spoken, is it spoken the same way as it is written? This is one of the most problematic areas for English language learners as there are many words which are written in a similar way but pronounced in a different way. Of course, use of dictionary could be helpful which not only gives the meaning of a particular word, but also gives us the pronunciation, apart from other important information such as that particular word is a noun, adjective or verb etc. It's very important to teach them about the IPA chart which gives us the individual sounds for each English alphabet letter. Using mouth drawings or your own mouth could be helpful in teaching them individual sounds. Symbols for different sounds or phonemes can be taught to help them understand the sounds more clearly.
