My students loved working on pronunciation this semester. They felt like this was one area that could improve in a concrete way. In the beginning, we went over the sounds in English, and over the concept that letters do not equal sounds. This idea needed repeating throughout the entire semester – English has a lot of blended letters and silent letters. Spanish speakers have lots of issues with their vowels! They tend to use short/long vowel sounds interchangeably. I had to first have my students listen to the differences between short and long vowel sounds as many could not distinguish the separate vowel sounds. A good example is “sheep” and “ship.”
Congruently, this weak/strong/silent letter concept, nicely introduced the difference between a “syllable-timed” language and a “stress-timed” language. English, being the latter, has weak syllables that do not take stress or are converted into a quieter, weaker schwa. Spanish has a consistent patterned stress, which has a flow and equal rhythm. This makes Spanish speakers sound like robots when they speak English if they are not aware of this problem.
The Power Point focuses on difficult sounds that Spanish speakers struggle with. Then I use the following two stories to introduce content and function words. Most students need a lot of practice trying to distinguish the two types of words in a sentence. Students listen first and then try to read a few paragraphs (in groups) mimicking the sounds of the sentences. A wrap-up activity consists of students writing then speaking a few sentences on their own.
Spanish pronunciation problems
ESL Instructor