Vocab Box

  Place of articulation deals with the placement of the vocal organs when producing a sound. Before we can cover the particulars of places of articulation, we'll need to take a look at the various vocal organs and their locations. Moving from the front to the back we'd begin with our lips. We can use both lips in order to create a sound or we can use one of our lips with one of our rows of teeth, usually the top, in order to produce another sound. We also have other sounds, which use both of the rows of teeth. Further back we have what's called the alveolar ridge. That's the bit of the mouth that may get burnt when we're eating a pizza that's a bit too hot and the cheese burns just behind there our top two teeth. That again is the hard bit just behind our top teeth, called the...  [Read more]

When I was growing up in school, I experienced many different teaching styles that for the most part did not work for me. Not that I lacked the intelligence, it was because the teaching style did not suit me. After a few years out of school I realized I was better off and figuring it out as I went along. At work if an engineer was trying to explain something I?d have to look at the job and I?d usually figure it out myself. It would go in one ear and out the other when it was being explained to me. This method might not work for everyone. I?m not sure but I think it would be similar to internet learning and doing the work yourself. My experience of learning languages is mixed. When I was learning German, I had a drill-sergeant type teacher in fact he was actually a ...  [Read more]

When I was growing up in school, I experienced many different teaching styles that for the most part did not work for me. Not that I lacked the intelligence, it was because the teaching style did not suit me. After a few years out of school I realized I was better off and figuring it out as I went along. At work if an engineer was trying to explain something I’d have to look at the job and I’d usually figure it out myself. It would go in one ear and out the other when it was being explained to me. This method might not work for everyone. I’m not sure but I think it would be similar to internet learning and doing the work yourself.My experience of learning languages is mixed. When I was learning German, I had a drill-sergeant type teacher in fact he was...  [Read more]

Pronunciation problems happen when speaking a second language because most people are used to hearing and making sounds only exist in their mother tongue. For example there might be many sounds in your mother tongue and English that are similar.Some however,are only partially similar and others are totally different.When you hear or trying to say the partially similar or totally different sounds it?s easy to make mistakes because you are used to hearing and making sounds in your mother tongue.It is important therefore,to make yourself aware of how sounds in a different language are made and practice listening to them and saying them as much as possible. To make language sounds we move our jaw,tongue,lips and the vocal cords in our throat in a number of different...  [Read more]

  And now we have our nasal sounds. There are three nasal sounds and basically the pattern of air that's moving out of our vocal tract has to do with two big instances and that is a closure in the vocal tract. Except aside from the plosives and affricates, what we have is air escaping through our nasal cavity. These sounds include ?m?, ?n? and ?ng?. We're moving from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. First with the M sound or the ?m?, we're closing both lips and the air is escaping through the nasal passage ?m?. Next we have our N sound or our ?n? sound. There, the closure is inside the mouth but our tongue is closing up near our alveolar ridge and the air is escaping through the nose. Again that's ?n?. Finally we have our NG sound and the closure there is happening...  [Read more]

  Now let's take a look at our fricatives. As the name indicates, especially in the beginning there we have a friction going on in the vocal tract and that's basically what we're dealing with mostly. There are a number of fricative sounds and they're made by placing two vocal organs together and making them vibrate to a point, which is audible. We have nine of these sounds and then move from the front to the back of the vocal tract. Let's take a look here in the front of the mouth we have two sounds, which involve our lips. Those two sounds are ?f? and ?v?. The only difference between those two sounds is that one is voiced and the other is not. Regardless we do involve our lips and they are the furthest front of the vocal tract with our fricatives. Again those sounds are ?f? and...  [Read more]

  Then, we have a set of objectives and aims. Here, the learner objectives relate to what we're hoping the students are going to be able to do by the end of your lesson and quite often, that can be a useful way of writing out what the objectives are. So, we would start the sentence "By the end of the lesson, students should be able to?" and then a list of two, three or four items that we're expecting the students to be able to do by completing this lesson. The learner objectives are different to the teacher aims the teacher aims are what you are expecting from that lesson itself. Now, when you first start teaching, quite a normal aim might be to complete the lesson successfully, to get through the whole thing without having any problems. As time goes on and you become more...  [Read more]

  Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This unit gave me the opportunity to review the complexities in the world of phonetics. When I was first introduced to this material in my linguistics course of college, my professor explained how the human mouth and vocal chords affect articulation and I believe that this helped the information resonate with me more effectively. Therefore, based upon that learning experience and the suggestions in this unit,...  [Read more]

  The next thing we should look at is how our consonants are arranged for the top two rows we have P and F at the left side of our chart and G and J at the right side of our chart. They're arranged this way because if we analyze the way we speak we're using the front of our mouth to use these sounds as in ?p? and ?f? and I'm using my lips and my teeth to produce those sounds and as we move to the right on the chart slowly but surely we're making those sounds it towards the back of our mouth. We can use the examples of ?g?. The sound ?g? is produced further back in our mouth than ?p?. The next thing we'll notice about our chart is that some of our symbols are shaded. Notice that none of the symbols in the vowel sections are shaded but only a few are in the consonant section. The...  [Read more]

  When it comes to manner of articulation, we have six different ways in which our breath is produced in order to make our sounds. We have our plosives, our affricates, fricatives, the nasal sounds, our lateral sound and the approximants. Let's take a look at each individually and see how they differ from one another. First we have our plosive sounds. As the word might indicate we have basically a little explosion of sound with our breath. The plosive sounds are made through a three-step process. First there's a closure somewhere in the vocal tract. Second there's a buildup of air and finally there's a sudden release of that air like a little explosion. If we look at some of the sounds that are made this way we might better understand why they are called plosives. Examples are the...  [Read more]

  Amanda from Brazil is currently living in Ankara, Turkey. Amanda completed her TEFL course with ITTT and found a job just two weeks after graduating. In this TEFL review video Amanda recommends ITTT’s TEFL course for those wanting to teach English abroad. Amanda liked how the course not only covered grammar but also taught methods and techniques that can help you become a great teacher. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. A classroom is an...  [Read more]

  So, now we're going to fill the actual procedure of the lesson plan out itself. We mentioned at the start, the first thing we do, is to get some general information about the class that we'll be teaching and then, in order for someone to be able to cover our lesson, we need to present enough information in our lesson plan that they can actually carry it out. What I'm going to do is for each stage of the lesson, I'll indicate what I'm going to do in the lesson and then, we'll cut away from that to have a look to see how that will actually be achieved. So, our lesson is going to be based on a 45-minute lesson and the first phase is going to be the engage phase and it's going to be a straight arrow ESA lesson. I'm going to take approximately five minutes on my engage phase and in...  [Read more]

  Alveolar sounds get their name from the fact that the alveolar ridge is being used. Again, that ridge is just behind the front top row of teeth. Here the tongue is on or very very near the alveolar ridge. It's typically the tip of the tongue or what's just behind the tip of the tongue, called the blade of the tongue. Here, we're talking about sounds such as ?t? and ?d?. If you say them at home, you can tell the tip of your tongue is on that alveolar ridge. Again, that's ?t? and ?d?, as well as sounds such as ?s? and ?z?. Again, the blade of the tongue is just near that alveolar ridge but it is very near nonetheless. The two other sounds that make it into this category is the ?l? sound, where the tip of the tongue is very clearly touching that alveolar ridge, as well as ?r? or the...  [Read more]

Humans speak with each other by creating sounds. That is how we communicate with each other. Over the centuries the different languages have created systems of grammar to explain how the words in their languages work. Sometime after that, they began to create systems to explain how the sounds, or phonemes, of the different words work. Two disciplines arose out of this: phonetics and phonology. Phonetics is the study of the sounds themselves. In the world there are a limited number of possible sounds which the human vocal tract can produce. Of these sounds, the distinctive pronunciations of the different languages are produced. But how are theses sounds produced and represented? The answer to this question is the area of study of Phonetics. Generally, Phonetics is ...  [Read more]

Humans speak with each other by creating sounds. That is how we communicate with each other. Over the centuries the different languages have created systems of grammar to explain how the words in their languages work. Sometime after that, they began to create systems to explain how the sounds, or phonemes, of the different words work. Two disciplines arose out of this: phonetics and phonology.Phonetics is the study of the sounds themselves. In the world there are a limited number of possible sounds which the human vocal tract can produce. Of these sounds, the distinctive pronunciations of the different languages are produced. But how are theses sounds produced and represented' The answer to this question is the area of study of Phonetics. Generally, Phonetics is subdivided into...  [Read more]

A. Why choosing this topic''Studying the peculiarities of English unlocks a wealth of interesting aspects about the language. 'Full command of the English language is not possible without mastering the difficulties of these peculiarities. 'To get students thinking about the way in which the language is used correctly.B. OriginsToday, English is the 'lingua franca' of the world ' a legacy of the former British Empire's political, economic, and maritime superiority. English dialects are spoken in many former British colonies such as India, the Philippines, and Australia. English is also studied as a second language by millions of people worldwide.Why the peculiarities' Just like many other world languages it is a mixture of several languages, starting with words of the Anglo-Saxon...  [Read more]

As a global language, English has been popularly taught as the second language in China for quite a few years. Now there are more Chinese people learning English on various purposes, such as applying for a higher paid job, studying and living abroad, or establishing business with western countries. According to my experience of learning and teaching English, it is harder to master English pronunciation than English grammar for Chinese students. Chinese grammar may appear quite simple compared to that of many highly-inflected Western languages (e.g. Russian, Latin, etc.), or even the low-scale verb conjugations, for instance, of English (e.g. "swim, swam, swum") because of the lack of inflections. (1) Even though there are similarities between...  [Read more]

As a global language, English has been popularly taught as the second language in China for quite a few years. Now there are more Chinese people learning English on various purposes, such as applying for a higher paid job, studying and living abroad, or establishing business with western countries. According to my experience of learning and teaching English, it is harder to master English pronunciation than English grammar for Chinese students. Chinese grammar may appear quite simple compared to that of many highly-inflected Western languages (e.g. Russian, Latin, etc.), or even the low-scale verb conjugations, for instance, of English (e.g. "swim, swam, swum") because of the lack of inflections. (1)Even though there are similarities between English alphabet and Chinese one...  [Read more]

I would like to briefly consider the complexity of a non ' native English teacher in contrast to a native English teacher. My curiosity in this area has stemmed from participating on a TEFL course as a native English speaker. The diversity of students resulted in the course consisting of several students where English is their second language. It also highlighted the immense difference between 'American English' and 'British English'. The initial perception the non ' native English speakers generally voiced, was that the 'natives' had a head start. The more this was unravelled the benefits soon became a rather grey area.'A non- native teacher is a learner for life' Malgorzata Swwaj,English Unlimited, Poland. 1999The fine line that can potentially exist when teaching English to ...  [Read more]

I would like to briefly consider the complexity of a non ? native English teacher in contrast to a native English teacher. My curiosity in this area has stemmed from participating on a TEFL course as a native English speaker. The diversity of students resulted in the course consisting of several students where English is their second language. It also highlighted the immense difference between ?American English? and ?British English?. The initial perception the non ? native English speakers generally voiced, was that the ?natives? had a head start. The more this was unravelled the benefits soon became a rather grey area. ?A non- native teacher is a learner for life? Malgorzata Swwaj,English Unlimited, Poland. 1999 The fine line that can potentially exist when teaching...  [Read more]

The two of us spent 2 years in Indonesia (1996-97) teaching English at a university. Prior to that we spent one year learning Indonesian in classes in Australia. We therefore, have a good insight into the difficulties both with English speakers learning Indonesian and of Indonesian speakers learning English with is the two sides of the same coin. We also found that linguistic problems seemed to be inevitable be bound up in cultural ones on both sides of the fence. Let us look at some of these problems.Before we went to Indonesia we were introduced to people who had already been there (in fact the town of Salatiga). The English teachers/missionaries that we spoke to seemed blind to any difference in culture however, and this cultural blindness operates on both sides as we...  [Read more]

Classroom management requires a positive relationship between the teacher and the student. A teacher, who has a good rapport with their students, will have a better outcome. Respect for each other, will prove positive in both the relationship and study.Obstacles to this rapport may involve the classroom set up, which can create problems, such as with rows. The students, at the back, are disadvantaged. Dr. Scott Mandel Pacoima (Middle school) states ''the further back you go, the more discipline problems there are with visual, oral and physical stimulation from the teacher is increasingly diminished,,,'1.An alternative, he suggests, is to arrange the chairs and tables into a three sided box shape. In this fashion, every student is in the first row and the teacher...  [Read more]

Classroom management requires a positive relationship between the teacher and the student. A teacher, who has a good rapport with their students, will have a better outcome. Respect for each other, will prove positive in both the relationship and study. Obstacles to this rapport may involve the classroom set up, which can create problems, such as with rows. The students, at the back, are disadvantaged. Dr. Scott Mandel Pacoima (Middle school) states ??the further back you go, the more discipline problems there are with visual, oral and physical stimulation from the teacher is increasingly diminished,,,?1. An alternative, he suggests, is to arrange the chairs and tables into a three sided box shape. In this fashion, every student is in the first row and...  [Read more]

Discipline in the classroom is many faceted. In this article, I will focus on being proactive with discipline. I have been a teacher for over twenty-five years and have always worked to create a positive, caring and supportive classroom for my students. In a classroom, there must be rules, positive consequences and negative consequences. That is part of creating a positive discipline plan. If teacher is proactive, she will have much less difficulty with discipline. The goal i s to be able to teach the curriculum in a comfortable classroom atmosphere-for you as a teacher and for your student. The single best resource I have found for discipline is a book entitled The First Days of School by Harry Wong. Harry says, ?What you do on the first days of school will...  [Read more]

Teaching English as a Foreign Language is a career that is open to anyone with an excellent standard of written and spoken English, regardless of age, nationality, or academic history. All you need, apart from a solid understanding of the language, is a TEFL or TESOL certification and the drive to make your dreams come true. However, despite all the many benefits that await teachers heading overseas, there are also a few potential issues that you need to prepare for. So what are the main pros and cons of TEFL? Once you have completed your TEFL certification course you will be able to apply for teaching jobs in virtually any country you can think of. If you dream of living and working by a tropical beach, or if a major world city such as Tokyo, Milan, or Rio is your preference, no problem,...  [Read more]

What makes a person intelligent' Is an intelligent person good at math or language' Howard Gardener theorized that there are many different ways people can be intelligent, this became known as multiple intelligence theory. In this paper I will briefly discuss who Howard Gardener is, what are the multiple intelligences and how can we use them in our TEFL classrooms.Howard Gardener was born in 1943 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He went to Harvard to study history and had Eric Erickson as a tutor. ' Howard Gardner's interest in Psychology and the social sciences grew... and he graduated summa cum laude in 1965"(Smith) . In 1966 he entered Harvard's doctoral program and became part of the Project Zero ( a research team on arts education). He completed his PhD in 1971 and...  [Read more]

  Connected speech is also an important element of phonology and it's involved in joining words together in an effect to make our speech more efficient. Some might say it's a product of being lazy but nonetheless it's what we all do and we want all of our non-native speakers to speak as naturally as possible, so we have to be aware of these things. Here are a few of the more common examples. We have linking, dropping, changing and extra lettering. An example of each would be with linking, we link our words together so that they almost in effect become one word. Instead of saying ?What do you want to do,? we typically will say ?Whatdoyou want to do?? Then, we can also have dropping. Rather than pronouncing each and every consonant, we can sometimes, especially in certain accents,...  [Read more]

IntrodutionEnglish Pronunciation: How does it differ and why' We''re all native English speakers aren''t we, what''s all this about sounding different' Everyone knows that a guy from the states sounds different to a fellow from England. But, can we break it down' Can we state a few simple rules that are continually repeating' Rules that a country''s native always follow when pronouncing a word. The rules which determine their accent. Let''s try. MainAccents vary within countries, so as a starting point, let''s just take the standard English that is spoken. This is considered to be ''General American'' for the US and ''Received Pronunciation'' for England.Rule 1: American is rhotic (i.e. pronouncing all r''s) and English is non-rhotic (pronouncing r''s only when followed by a...  [Read more]

The English language is undisputedly one of the most challenging languages to learn, predominantly due to the vast number of inconsistencies and frequent irregularities and exceptions to the rule (am almost clichéd term).English, like all languages, is constantly developing and evolving – it is not fixed, and not unlike to physical environment, is being subjected to an increasing number of changes (possible the result of increasing globalization). Historically, England was the birthplace of English – it has, however, spread widely, and not exactly, to many parts of the world. As language spreads, words become altered, words become are added, and possibly most frequently – words are lost. One only needs to read Shakespeare to appreciate that language is...  [Read more]

The English language is undisputedly one of the most challenging languages to learn, predominantly due to the vast number of inconsistencies and frequent irregularities and exceptions to the rule (am almost clich?d term). English, like all languages, is constantly developing and evolving ? it is not fixed, and not unlike to physical environment, is being subjected to an increasing number of changes (possible the result of increasing globalization). Historically, England was the birthplace of English ? it has, however, spread widely, and not exactly, to many parts of the world. As language spreads, words become altered, words become are added, and possibly most frequently ? words are lost. One only needs to read Shakespeare to appreciate that language is alive and ...  [Read more]