Pronunciation Snippet: Understanding Colloquialisms

My husband has recently started his first job here in Ireland. He could really write a book about the language-related situations he's experienced in his first few months. For an ELT practitioner, his encounters give quite an insight to how complex language learning can be once you've left the safety of the classroom. Not only does my husband have to become accustomed to a new job, but new language, both technical and colloquial, with the colloquial coming from various parts of the country, meaning very different accents. Of course, it got me thinking that we need to bring more of these types of encounters into the classroom to prepare our learners for the use of English in a professional environment. This can apply to ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) contexts too, where many of the employees speak English as a second Language.

Here is a short activity using some of the more colloquial phrases that my husband encountered. You can apply the same steps to any selection of phrases. You could ask your learners about ones they've heard, you can choose some from an authentic audio or video recording, or maybe choose some vocabulary items from the lesson in your course book that you think will be challenging for learners to understand if heard outside the classroom.

What you need: A set of phrases that are used in a certain context, a synonym or explanation of these phrases on a small hand out or written on the board. For this example, I have provided hand outs for which you can find the links below.

Procedure:

• Give the learners a copy of the phrases and explanations mixed up. Ask them to match the phrases to the correct explanations.
• Play the recording and ask the learners to match the phrases 1-5 on the audio to the phrases a-e on the page.

• Break down the pronunciation of each phrase. Start in citation form, then go through the features of connected speech, and then go through the jungle pronunciation, as Richard Cauldwell calls it. (See this post) 

            Select to view breakdown of forms.

• Give the learners the short dialogues and ask them to put the phrases into the correct dialogue.
• Students practise saying the dialogues a few times. They don't have to say the phrases in the jungle form as they heard in the audio, this is just to give them practise of recognising the context that these phrases are in. Alternatively, you could read out one line of the dialogue and they all have to say the response together as a whole class, or do this in pairs.

           Select to view the hand out for the activities.
           Select to view the hand out with answers.