Workshop 3A
Title: Teaching Pronunciation

Abstract:
At Ability English there exists a small team of specialized teachers, specifically trained in ‘the pronunciation method’. To complement this year’s PD Fest theme of Communities of Practice and in the interest of providing professional development for teachers by teachers, I, Dafne Araya Campos (Head of Pronunciation / Pronunciation specialist) and Lee Harrison (Pronunciation specialist) propose to facilitate a hands-on practical workshop.
We teach a pronunciation course, developed by both NNS (non-native) speaker and NS (native) speaker English language teachers. We believe to have created a categorically unique pronunciation course with unanticipated and reassuring results. In our experience, we have found that the pronunciation aspect of the English language can be a daunting unknown for ESL teachers.
Our aim in this workshop is to do away with the intangibility of pronunciation and its elusive features by providing teachers with clear and succinct explanations on how to instruct on such essentials as sentence and word stress, pitch and intonation, word-linking and the production of intelligible phonemes to achieve overall intelligibility. We would like to provide the opportunity for teachers explore these concepts through a workshop of pronunciation within realistic contexts, using a variety of tools such as mouth models, dramatic body language, voice volume (at times shouting), short videos, role plays and recorded dialogues, all of which are used to impact upon the student in a memorable and effective way.

Biodata:
Dafne Araya Campos has been teaching English to speakers of other languages for three years, teaching across a wide range of programs, including General English, EAP, International Business English, and pronunciation and Fluency.
Dafne holds a Bachelor of Languages, CELTA, and a Masters in Applied Linguistics (TESOL)
Lee Harrison has also been teaching English to speakers of other languages for nine years, teaching across a wide range of programs, including General English, FCE, International Business English, and pronunciation and Fluency. Lee holds a Cert IV in TESOL.