Some pronunciation work with IELTS students can really help them understand what they hear, help their general English listening skills more than concentrating on exam tactics would, and also give them techniques and things to work on which will help with their speaking in the longer term. This article explains the most useful and motivating ways to deal with pronunciation in preparation for IELTS Listening, and for improved English more generally. For over 350 pages of photocopiable materials for IELTS Listening and over 1000 pages on IELTS more generally, see https://www.usingenglish.com/e-books/
Pronunciation points which are likely to help students understand IELTS Listening and get the right answers in it include:
- differences between spelling and pronunciation (silent letters, double letters, etc)
- sentence stress (especially noticing which words are stressed and so are the content words which are likely to be important to answer the questions)
- connected speech (intrusive sounds, elision, etc)
- homophones (that they need to write “fare” not “fair”, etc)
- minimal pairs (that they need to write “van” not “ban”, etc)
- unstressed vowel sounds/ schwa (in words, as weak forms, etc)
- intonation (especially changes in intonation to show changes in topic, intonation showing the speaker’s attitude such as if they agree or not, and perhaps intonation to show punctuation such as quotation marks)
- spelling and pronunciation rules (Magic E, etc)
- pronouncing the alphabet (for words which are spelt in IELTS Listening Part 1)
- pronouncing numbers (mostly also for Part 1)
- pronunciation in accents they are less used to (often British or Australian pronunciation)
- consonant clusters
The activities below can all be used to cover one or more these points.
Listen again and repeat
If you notice that students have got the wrong answer in IELTS Listening because they couldn’t catch what was said, the simplest and most useful pronunciation practice is simply for them to listen again and repeat what they hear. As with all the pronunciation practice in this article, it is worth telling students that this is mainly to help them recognise what they hear next time, not a sign that they need to pronounce it exactly that way themselves. To help them repeat what they hear in the recording, you could:
- write up the words which are used
- mark stresses with small and large circles above the words (e.g. “oooOo” above “accommodation”)
- mark difficult sounds with the phonemic script and/ or more familiar words which have the same sounds
- put brackets around sounds which are silent or nearly silent (“wan(t) to go”, etc)
- show linking between words with a line showing where the sound links to or showing the sound where it is pronounced instead of how it is spelt (“a napple”, etc)
- add intrusive sounds (“We yare”, etc)
- pronounce it is a slower and/ or more exaggerated way
- use gestures to show stress, pauses, intonation, etc
- give feedback on their efforts to copy how it is said (perhaps most useful as “That is also fine, but this speaker says…”)
- play the recording until they can copy what it says over the recording, with the same timing and rhythm
The same techniques can also be used if students look at the transcript after listening and have questions about how things were pronounced.
Transcribe then repeat
The problem with the tips above is that it is often difficult to know why students got answers wrong, and they are much more likely to ask about meaning than about pronunciation. Rather than going straight to the transcript and answer key, it is sometimes worth checking their answers by playing the recording again and stopping after each answer is given (plus sometimes stopping after distractors such as multiple-choice options which are contradicted). Especially if you also discuss why each answer is what it is (and isn’t other options), it is easy to spot when they couldn’t catch what was said or missed important pronunciation clues like ones showing a change of topic. You can then elicit the actual words that were said onto the board before following the steps above.
IELTS Listening “errors”
If you write down some gapfill answer in the way they are pronounced rather than the way they are spelt, this can be a good way of showing the pronunciation as well as teaching students spellings that they will need to know in the test (as all spelling must be correct in IELTS Listening). This works well for:
- silent letters (correcting “exibition hall” X, etc)
- homophones (correcting “the root home” X, etc)
- changes when words are put together such as intrusive sounds (correcting “coffee yexports” X, etc)
- schwa (correcting “thirteen dollers” X, etc)
- double letters (correcting “anual event” X, etc)
After changing to the right spelling, students could test each other on the spelling and pronunciation by:
- saying the word in the way that it is spelt or saying it in the way that it is pronounced, and seeing if their partner can spot which version they said
- saying a word as it is pronounced and seeing if their partner can write it down
- saying a word as it is pronounced and seeing if their partner can spell it back
- saying a word as it is spelt and seeing if their partner can say it back more naturally
- spelling a word and seeing if their partner can say it as it is pronounced
IELTS Listening simplest responses
For more focussed practice of what they tend to find tricky in gapfill answers and other words they need to comprehend, this is my favourite first activity. Make a list of some tricky words to pronounce and therefore to understand, along with accompanying contrasting words. For example, you should be able to find around 20 real gapfill answers that have tricky minimal pairs for your students such as “seat” and “sheet”. Give the students a worksheet with the words in A and B columns, and “A” and “B” cards to hold up as they hear them. Students listen to individual words and/ or words in example sentences and race to hold up the right card, e.g. holding up “A” if they hear the A column word “dorm” but “B” if they hear the B word “dome”. They can then play the same game in groups and test each other in other ways such as:
- saying a single word for their partner to spell
- saying a single word for their partner to put into an example sentence
- pointing at a word and getting their partner to pronounce it
- pointing at paired words and checking if their partner can pronounce both
- saying the A version then the B version or just saying the same version twice, and seeing if their partner can spot what they have done
This also works for homophones (A: heard, B: herd), but obviously only with whole sentences for context.
For other points above like schwa, silent letters and double letters, I put a real exam example into a two-word phrase such as a compound noun in which the other word does not have that feature, as in “deserted island”. Without having a list to look at, students try to work out which of the two parts have that feature and race to hold up cards saying “1st word” or “2nd word”, depending on which part they think has schwa, a silent letter or doubled letters. They can then mark those features on the worksheet before testing each other in the ways listed above.
IELTS Listening the same or different
This is similar to the quick reactions game above, but with students having cards saying “The same” and “Different” and racing to hold them up depending on what they hear. I most often use this with a mix of homophones of gapfill answers and minimal pairs of gapfill answers, for example with students listening for the same or different pronunciations of passed/ past (the same) and carve/ curve (different). They can then mark the same pairs on the worksheet with “S” for the “the same” or “D” for “different”, before playing the same game in groups and/ or doing other activities like challenging each other to pronounce them the same or different.
This also works well for pronouncing numbers, this time working out if numbers have the same meaning (“oh seven double nine/ zero seven nine nine”) or different meanings (“seven five pounds/ seventy five p”). After playing the same game in groups, they can then be tested on their memories of how the numbers were pronounced, including in two ways when possible.
IELTS Listening answers pairwork dictation
Collect and/ or make up some gapfill answers that students might have problems pronouncing and therefore recognising such as words which have very different spellings and pronunciations. Split the answers between Student A and Student B worksheets. Ask Student A to dictate all their words to Student B, then get them to do the same the other way around. For an easier start, Student B could have the Student A word and another similar option to choose from when they hear what their partner says. For example, Student B could choose between “farm/ firm” on their worksheet when they hear “firm” from Student A, but then Student A has to write “cloakroom” without any options to choose from. They can then ask each other questions to confirm, preferably ones taken from IELTS Listening like “Is that spelt…?” and “Is that with a final E?”
IELTS Listening the same or different pairwork
This is kind of a combination of the two ideas above. Split homophones, minimal pairs, different ways of saying numbers, etc between Student A and Student B worksheets, and ask students to work together to figure out if they have the same pronunciation/ meaning or not, without showing their worksheets to each other. For example, Student A reads out “where” and Student B reads out “wear” and they work out that they are homophones with the same pronunciation. After checking their answers, they can then test each other on the language in other ways.
IELTS Listening list dictation
Make lists of words and numbers from IELTS Listening that all have something in common, e.g. all being three-syllable words or all being small numbers. Students listen to a list and try to work out what all its items have in common, then do the same for other lists. Good list connected to pronunciation include:
- they are all words which have homophones (“aisle”, “here”, etc)
- they all contain schwa
- they all contain the same difficult sound or the same combination of sounds (all contain “th”, all contain “str”, etc)
Tying in pronunciation with IELTS Listening topics
If you use a combination of the activities and/ or language points above, it is possible to find at least 20 or 30 words and expressions that are worth presenting for each typical IELTS Listening topic, e.g. 25 words and expressions with difficult pron connected to the environment, or the same for science and tech. For example, students could “correct” 35 work and business terms that have been spelt as they are pronounced, test each other on how they are spelt and pronounced, then do a Listening on that topic. Note that there aren’t always enough official related gapfill answers, so you might also need to search tasks and transcripts for other expressions related to health, to psychology, etc.
Tying in IELTS Listening pronunciation with other parts of the exam
A lot of the activities above also work well for IELTS Speaking, so could be done for both parts of the exam in the same class. For example, students could decode typical IELTS Speaking questions written with “er” to show schwa, spelling changed to indicate connected speech, etc, then do the same for IELTS Listening words and expressions. There is little point trying to improve students’ ability to make individual sounds for the Speaking test, as that takes ages and even after all that may still be lost in the stress of free speaking. However, activities like pairwork dictation could be useful for words which often come up in IELTS Speaking but students often pronounce as spelt like “clothes”, “climb” and “iron”. It could also help them with understanding the questions.
Another possibility is linking by functional language, most obviously by using checking/ clarifying phrases in an IELTS Listening vocabulary pairwork dictation, seeing if they can remember suitable checking/ clarifying phrases, then using similar phrases as they are asked tricky IELTS Speaking questions.
The topic-based ideas in the section above could also link Listening to other parts of the exam on the same topic, e.g. pronouncing IELTS Listening vocabulary on the environment, then doing other papers on that topic.