PronPack is a set of four resource books to help teachers focus on English pronunciation in class – each takes a slightly different approach to pronunciation teaching. You can select the approach you prefer, or use the various books to complement one another.
PronPack 1: Pronunciation Workouts are extended drills focusing on specific areas of English pronunciation. Think of them like the scales and other exercises which pianists use to improve their fingering technique. But in the case of pronunciation, it’s the vocal articulators which are getting trained – the tongue, lips, jaw and vocal chords.
The workouts can benefit learners in two different ways – practice and perception. Practice: The workouts can help the mouth muscles to get accustomed to the unfamiliar movements required to speak in English. Perception: The workouts help learners to notice features of English pronunciation. Because the target pronunciation feature is repeated so often in the workout, it becomes much more obvious.
The earlier workouts in the book focus on the sound system of English. They serve to familiarize the learners with the system as a whole by exploring the PronPack Sound Chart. They explore different regions of the system, such as the short vowels or the stop consonants, and they help the learner to become more aware of the articulators in the mouth and vocal tract. The later workouts in the book focus on suprasegmental features such as word stress, connected speech and tonic stress.
This fixed-layout ePub contains worksheets for the students and teacher’s notes for you, with clickable audio files to support many of the activities. The teacher’s notes give a short background to the pronunciation point plus step-by-step guidelines for using the activity in class. They also highlight the teaching focus, the minimum student level and indicate printing requirements. Additional materials including audio and printable resources to accompany this book are available on www.pronpack.com
