Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Michigan? Are you interested in teaching English in Orangeville, Michigan? Check out our opportunities in Orangeville, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
Unit 13 is an important unit, to paraphrase the unit, "Pronunciation gets short shrif." The unit has a normal flow of presentations defining the background and importance to phonology: Intonation, Stress and articulation. The examples on stress provides a technique to present to students how to understand the importance of meaning as to how the stress is placed.
I do not agree with the unit's statement that Linked speech is "lazy speech". That is a pronunciation nuance made by native speakers. I think it is lazy speech - speech that is taken for granted by practioners of that "vernacular". Only when 2L learners live in such environment - it is acceptable. Teachers and students should strive for the best possible pronunication; all the while noted differences between British and American articulations.
I consider the International Phonetic Alphabet to be very important in the learning and learning of a 2L. While the unit presents it in an understandable manner and gives the consonant and vowel; as well as the diphthongs in a list - I think more examples should be provided. It doesn't make sense to have a section where the student (me) should "figure out" other sounds. Understanding is the first step in learning the second step is understanding what the symbole and corresponding sound mean - in order to be able to apply it to words and sentences written using the International alphabet. Many Asian students know this and it behooves the TESOL student to be more than familiar with it's use. All-in-all, it I benefitted from this section - because I am very interested. But most importantly, it gives the teacher and the student a, "common language in which to speak---and learn about language.
