Claire TS #4

Date/Time: March 20, 12:00-1:00pm

Location: CIES

Topic/Skill: Pronunciation and TOEFL timed speaking Q1

I met with Ana for the second time today. I worked with her on a couple of pronunciation points that Brazilians have difficulty with—the -ed suffix and /d/ vs. /dʒ/ sound. For the first part, I explained the three ways we say -ed and in what context; I gave her some words cut out on little pieces of paper and had her try to assign each of them to one of the three ways of pronouncing -ed. Then I asked her to talk about what she did yesterday and  had her do a sample TOEFL speaking question that required her to use the past tense (and lots of -ed suffixes). For the second part, I gave Ana a printout of info I found online about where the /dʒ/ sound occurs in English (usually as the letters j or g), and how there are only a few cases where the letter d produces this sound (like graduate and soldier). I had her read some tongue-twisters and minimal pair sets to practice the pronunciation differences. Finally, I taught her four new vocabulary words/phrases with strong /d/ and /dʒ/ sounds and did another quick sample TOEFL speaking question with her. Looking back, I’m not really sure if these were great pronunciation issues to tackle with Ana. They were definitely hard ones for her to train her ear and tongue to get right, but I’m not sure if they would often cause her to be misunderstood or lower her TOEFL speaking score significantly. The way I presented the material seemed a little confusing to her, and Ana still made a lot of the same errors by the end of the lesson, so I might want to adjust my approach next time. However, I hope she will become more aware her pronunciation in these areas and build up her “monitor” gradually.