The goal of teaching English pronunciation is to help your students learn to speak clearly, improve their accent and gain confidence. However, it is important to set realistic expectations: sounding exactly like a native speaker may not be achievable after just a few lessons.
That said, this does not diminish the value of striving for improvement. Below are realistic goals for your students.
What to really aim for when teaching English Pronunciation:
- improve your students’ pronunciation skills really quickly;
- build confidence and overcome the fear of speaking English (because they will sound great);
- improve their ability to understand native speakers;
- develop a British accent, even if it isn’t flawless.
After seeing the first results (and they’ll see them very early on if you focus on the most common sounds and words), your students may become so fascinated by the subject that they may actively look for more information on pronunciation themselves (connected speech, the glottal ‘t’, etc.) In the end, those students may truly end up sounding like native speakers, but let’s treat it as a “positive spin-off”, not the main objective of teaching English pronunciation 🙂
It’s way better to underpromise and overdeliver than to overpromise and not meet one’s expectations. Generally speaking, human psychology creates frustration and unhappiness not because of “bad things” happening, but because of not meeting the perceived expectations.
Planning on Teaching English Pronunciation but not sure where to start? Get a tried and tested road map (that I used myself).
Go to https://englishlovezone.etsy.com and start offering your own pronunciation course on teaching the British accent. It’s that easy!
Your students will thank you.