Words Often Mispronounced

From SZA to the Stone of Scone, the words that help tell the story of 2023 were often mispronounced   Some of the words tied to this year’s hottest topics were also among the most mangled when it came to saying them aloud, with stumpers ranging from the first name […]


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Writing‏‎ in TEFL

Writing is often the last of the four major language skills‏‎ to be learned after listening‏‎, speaking‏‎ and reading‏‎. Subject Matter The first question to ask is what kind of writing will your students be doing? Like all language learning, practice needs to be relevant to the students. This means […]


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Tongue Twisters in English

Tongue Twisters are useful ways to practice pronunciation with your class, especially if the sound you are practicing does not exist in the students’ mother tongue. For example, the /ʃ/ sound does not exist in Greek‏‎ and is often pronounced /s/ by Greek students. This means students there will often […]


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Teaching the /r/ and /l/ Sounds

Quite a number of Asian students have problems distinguishing between the /r/ sound and the /l/ sound. Essentially this is because the difference in these sounds does not exist in their mother tongues‏‎ and so they are unable to “hear” the difference. Thus some students will say led – /led/ […]


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Teaching the /b/ or /p/ Sounds

A Bilabial Plosive in English is either /b/ or /p/ sound used at the beginning of a word as in boy or toy. Or, indeed bilabial and plosive. Some more minimal pairs with b and p include: bat – pat bail – pale bar – par big – pig billow […]


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