English Lesson Planner

Mohamed Husein

Phonology - Pre intermediate level

Phonology
Pre intermediate level

Description

In this lesson my major aim is to aid Ss achieve ‘comfortable intelligibility’ through natural speech when they are listening to native speakers .The lesson focuses on some features of connected speech of weak forms and elision of /t/ and /d/. The lesson addresses both receptive and productive skills , with a more focus on receptive skills as the learners are always suffering in terms of tracking speakers during the listening sessions. I I will devise exercises that allows clear practice in production and reception and give feedback to individual learners as to where problems exist and how to repair them.

Materials

No materials added to this plan yet.

Main Aims

To help learners be more confident with these features of connected speech to be motivated to use them productively . •
• Encourage Ss to recognize weak forms and the elision of /t/and/d/ in connected speech as they hear streams of speech and thus aid comprehension. •

Subsidiary Aims

• To enable Ss to self monitor, leading to self-correction when speaking.
To encourage prediction of which function lexical item may/may not appear in a particular situation.

Procedure (47-60 minutes)

Warmer/Lead-in (3-5 minutes) • To familiarize ss with the idea of weak and strong forms of common function words

T writes this dialogue on the board: a. I 've just had a letter. b; Who's it from? a; It's from Jim. T asks ss to notice the contracted forms of have and is . t drills the dialogue , using both the strong form and the weak form of from T askes ss to listen and notice the pronunciation of from.

Test #1 (8-10 minutes) • To gauge students' prior knowledge of the target language

Give out the material in Box 41(appendix 1) , with only the weak forms omitted. Play the sentences from the recording . Ask students to fill in the gaps i n the sentences by writing what they hear. Check the answers (Appendix 2 ). Ask students to give complete sentence answers with weak forms. Don't ask them to say the individual words they have written as these will then be produced with their strong forms. If there are problems, demonstrate the weak forms in the whole sentence said aloud. Say the sentences or play them on the recording. Students repeat chorally and individually. Monitor the weak forms and correct where necessary.

Teach (15-20 minutes) • To clarify areas of the target language where students had difficulty in the first test stage

introduce a list of words : some are functional words and others are content words . Explain that content words are always strong and that function words can be used in both weak and strong forms . Introduce the schwa sound through an awareness activity. (appendix 3) Students see schwa in different sentences representing different functional words.I n a prediction exercise they have to guess what schwa stands for in each sentence.

Test #2 (8-10 minutes) • Check students' use of the target language again and compare with the first test

Give students the handout 3 (Box 44). Play the recording. Students write the number of weak words (not the words themselves) in the gaps. Check the answers and then students repeat the sentences after you or the recording. After relistening the recording , students write the words themselves.

Free practice (13-15 minutes) • To provide students with free practice of the target language

students will listen to a conversation and underline the weak form they hear from the recording .Then in pairs , they will practice the conversation themselves , applying the weak forms they have learned.