pulled apart to discover the spelling of a word. Most activities in the lesson do not incorporate reading or writing, instead providing multiple auditory and kinesthetic opportunities to practice target vocabulary. This allows learners to focus on perception and production of the vocabulary without interference from written text.
Vignette 2: In this pre-CNA class, high intermediate and advanced English learners develop their vocabulary and learn basic nursing skills to prepare them to successfully complete the American Red Cross (ARC) Certified Nursing Assistant Training Program. Learners come from a wide variety of geographical and linguistic backgrounds, including Southeast Asia, Western, Eastern, and Central Africa, and Central America. All have fairly strong verbal and literacy skills, but need to score at least 80% on all of the class quizzes to apply for the ARC training program.
After completing the diagnostic for the different language groups represented in the class, the teacher has determined that many learners do not accurately use word stress when using the medical terminology, making it challenging for listeners to understand the words. Additionally, many learners omit emphasis altogether or use it incorrectly, which can result in reduced comprehension for the listener. These errors occur across language groups.
The lesson focus is nutrition and making decisions about clients’ nutritional and hydration needs (Table 2.4). Learners are working on a set of 15 new words based on this topic. Learners are also practicing the use of modals to recommend verbally and in writing what they would and wouldn’t do concerning food and drink.
Table 2.4 Lesson plan for word stress and emphasis in Vignette 2.
| Activity with Integrated Pronunciation | Literacy Skills | Pronunciation Element |
|---|---|---|
| The teacher reads the words and definitions aloud. The learners work together with their partners to bubble the stress in the target word, drawing small circles over the unstressed syllables, and a large circle over the syllable with the primary stress. Partners take turns reading the words and definitions out loud, using the correct stress pattern for target words. After each definition they rephrase it in their own words. | Vocabulary development and reading comprehension | Perception & controlled production of syllables & lexical stress with peer feedback Auditory and Visual |
| The teacher hands out rubber bands and leads the class through saying the vocabulary list, pulling the rubber bands on the stressed syllables. With learners in small groups, the words are written on the board. Learners quiz one another on the meaning of the words, stretching the rubber bands on the stressed syllable of the target word (e.g., What does dehydration mean? Dehydration is when there is not enough water in the body.). | Vocabulary development and speaking fluency | Controlled production and practice of lexical stress with peer feedback Auditory and Kinesthetic |
| The teacher models creating a sentence from an example T-chart and reading it out loud, emphasizing the modals by underlining them. The teacher leads the class in generating several sentences and saying them out loud, using the rubber bands to emphasize the stressed modals and the new information. Learners create sentences from their T-charts and read them out loud to a partner, continuing to use hand gestures (e.g., If a patient was on a NAS diet, I would check that their food tray was labeled low sodium. I wouldn’t give them extra salt with their meals.) | Grammar, writing and reading comprehension | Controlled production and practice of emphatic stress with peer feedback Auditory and Visual |
| Small groups are given a list of questions around nutrition and feeding scenarios. Learners take turns asking and answering the questions about what they would and wouldn’t do, explaining the reasoning behind their decisions. | Speaking fluency and listening comprehension | Extension of emphatic stress production Auditory |
| Learners are each given two cards describing Patient A and Patient B. Learners prepare a short presentation describing the condition and the doctor’s orders for each patient, and what they would and wouldn’t recommend for each patient based on the condition and orders. Learners annotate their presentations as needed, marking both word and emphatic stress. As homework, learners record their presentations and send them to the teacher. | Speaking fluency, listening comprehension and writing | Extension of emphatic stress production with peer feedback Auditory and Visual |
Opening the Lesson: The class begins with learners working in small groups to match the new vocabulary words to their definitions. Learners pair up with a partner from a different group to compare their answers. The activities in this lesson begin with a focus on the individual vocabulary words, then shift to grammar with a focus on emphatic stress. Often during classroom activities, learners focus on the grammar and vocabulary, and lose sight of the communication aspect. The emphatic stress activities in the next section serve to draw the listeners’ ears to the contrasting information produced when learners compare what they would and would not do in various situations.
Integrating Pronunciation with Textbook Materials
Even the most creative teachers do much of their teaching with textbooks and other published and unpublished materials. The use of such materials provides a curriculum to follow, activities to choose from, and a visible focus for language learning that is shared by everyone in the class. Textbooks, however, are designed to prioritize certain skills depending on the proficiency levels of the learners, the requirements of governmental boards or pedagogical decision makers, or many other constraints. Even the best integrated-skills textbooks emphasize some skills more than others. Pronunciation skills are among the least emphasized skills in most published materials (Levis & Sonsaat, 2016), and teachers who want to integrate pronunciation into their lessons need to understand where pronunciation fits best. Fortunately, it almost always fits.
The first example (Figure 2.1), from a basic ABE class text called What’s Next (Conklin, 2011), looks at challenges faced by new immigrants or refugees in addressing problems with housing. The page excerpted here shows a fill-in-the-blank exercise with a word bank, which is meant to build sight word recognition with the housing-based vocabulary introduced in the unit. These types of fill-in-the-blank or cloze activities are common in all levels of English language classes. We suggest that teachers use these standard vocabulary building activities as opportunities to integrate lexical stress activities that require minimal preparation and are useful for learners to develop an awareness of syllables and begin to notice stress patterns. Lexical stress is both relatively easy to teach and important for intelligibility (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994; Levis, 2018). These types of activities can easily become routines for introducing and teaching any new vocabulary. In addition, we suggest that teachers use the commas in sentences two through five to highlight the function of thought groups and connections to punctuation. Even though punctuation is not consistently connected to pronunciation (Allen, 1971), at a basic level it is useful to call attention to the ways that written language signals pronunciation.
Figure 2.1 Possible pronunciation features in a fill-in-the-blank activity.
The second example is from Ventures, Level 4 (Bitterlin, 2018),