Phonology lesson.

[gybbyr]

Hi all,

I am about to do a phonology lesson as a trainee teacher. Essentially, I have to find an effective way to teach: discrimination, awareness and production. My tools are, for example, a photo of a ship and a plate of chips and a bottle of sherry and a cherry, etc. Can anyone clarify this a little for me? Thanks!

[BobK]

The relevant buzzwords are 'realia' (language teaching - real things that you use to prompt learners to say the relevant word) and 'minimal pair' (phonology - words that are distinguished by the alteration of just one phoneme). Afraid I don't have time now to do the research, but try googling these words. Your lesson needs to look at and practise awareness and discrimination of minimal pairs - perhaps just involving the phonemes /ɪ/ /i:/ /ʃ/ and /ʧ/, as your examples use those vowels and that voiceless fricative/affricate pair - and deal with producing the sounds involved in making those distinctions.

b

[gybbyr]

Thanks Bob, that was really useful.