By Olga Smith
During their visit to the Bell Language School in London Iraqi teachers had the opportunity to receive a workshop from Olga Smith, centred around the series of best-selling pronunciation books "Get Rid of Your Accent". They are visiting London to improve their English teaching skills and the workshop was great fun for them. The part they liked the most were the short tips that are easy to follow, so we want to share them with you here.
Teachers can give the following tips to their students:
1. Avoid speaking in your native language. Speaking in your native language will prevent you from memorising the correct placement of the speech organs and developing the speech organ muscles for the English sounds.
2. Avoid speaking too fast, pronounce every syllable. Many people are not able to make clear sounds when speaking rapidly and these lead to indistinct or ‘woolly’ speech”.
3. Read newspapers, magazines and books out loud. Audiobooks are fantastic to listen to and to imitate the correct pronunciation.
4. Do regular weekly recording exercises: • Record yourself reading, • Listen to your tape, • Make a note of sounds where you made a mistake in pronunciation, • Practice the sounds where you made a mistake with this book.
5. Learn poems and read them expressively; modulate your voice; go to the theatre and join Toastmaster club in your area.
Find more information and tips on www.batcsglobal.com
