Miss Elise
Pronunciation Coach
Transform Your Students’ Pronunciation in One Hour
Comprehensive lesson plans designed for in-depth, engaging classes.
Elevate your ESL teaching with structured, one-hour pronunciation lessons. These detailed plans provide everything you need to guide your students toward confident, clear American English. Perfect for teachers looking to create impactful learning experiences with practical techniques and proven methods.
Or, dive deeper to discover essential habits and techniques for mastering American English pronunciation with confidence.
The Sound of E, Part 1
Part 1: Lead in, 5 min warm up.
Choose one student to read the quote to the class, and then ask your students what they think of the passage. Do they agree or disagree? Why?
“It’s not about better time-management. It’s about better life management.”
— Alexandra of the Productivity Zone
Part 2: The Sound of E, as in Eve
The teacher will read the description of how the letter E (as in Eve) is formed and have students mimic her movements. The teacher will then read out just the E sound and have the students repeat it until everyone feels confident that they can adequately produce it.
Description: To produce the vowel sound E (as in Eve), place the end of your tongue behind your lower front teeth and then raise the back part of your tongue towards the back of the roof of your mouth, expel your breath while making a slight murmuring sound.
Practice the E sound with students by repeating the following, making only the sound:
E, E, E
E, E, E
E, E, E
E, E, E
Part 3: E Words
Once your students feel confident they can produce the E sound, the teacher will read out the E words slowly, emphasizing the E sound and reviewing any particularly difficult words. Students will repeat after each word is pronounced. The teacher will repeat this exercise twice.
Ear, eager, easy, eon, each
Eagle, eel, east, eat, Eden
Eerie, equate, email, equal, eject
Me, tea, cheek, zeal, weep
Beach, leak, meek, weed, tree
Creek, keep, freedom, dream, green
Part 4: Practice complete sentences emphasizing the E sound.
The teacher will read out one sentence at a time and have students repeat reviewing any challenging words. The teacher will repeat this exercise twice.
1) She eats three times a day, always with a cup of tea.
2) Lee dreams of going to the beach and of swimming in the sea.
3) The eagle flies freely and soars above the eager people watching her.
4) She seeks to make a deal with the Ethiopians.
5) Cheech feasted on the meat with zeal.
6) The cheat weaseled his way into the dealer’s game.
7) The steely-eyed lawyer agreed that the queen was hard to beat.
8) Eat your peas, beseeched the sleepy mother.
9) She feels that feeding the needy is something everyone should do.
10)The teak dresser had a tray of yeasty bread and cheese on it.
Part 5: Student Practice
When Part 4 is finished, the teacher will ask students if they have any questions or need help with the words and sentences they just practiced. If all is well, then students will be placed in pair groups and take turns reading the E words and the sentences to each other out loud, emphasizing the E sound.
Part 6: Informal student test
Once the above exercise is finished, the teacher will randomly choose an E word or a sentence and pick a student to read it out loud correcting any target pronunciation errors as they are made.
Part 7: Tell an E Story
Below you will find a list of names, nouns, verbs, and adjectives with the letter E. Place students in small groups or pairs and give them about 10 minutes to create an E story that they will recite to the class. Make sure that as they develop their story with their classmates, they correctly pronounce the E sound. Circulate around the class, correcting target pronunciation as needed. They may use words outside the list, but whichever group can use the most E words (logically!) and tell the best story wins. This is great for laughs!
Eden - Clean - Peach - Dealer - Beaver
Tree - Ethan - Leave - Appeal - Cheap
Retreat - Creature - Eve - Seat - Leak
Increase - Feature - Freedom - Ethan - Appear
Read - Team - Beans - Cream - Eadie
Flea - Beard - Grease - Leash - Dream
Part 8: Game Time!
If you have time, there is no better way to wrap up a class than with a short game. Just like starting a class with a warmup quote to get students in the learning zone, ending a class on a happy, fun note is a wonderful way to get them excited about returning to your next class. There are numerous pronunciation games, including bingo, rhyming activities, and sound chains. I have attached a few links to get you started.
You can also choose to wrap up your class with something completely different, like placing students in pairs and tackling a few questions from the Conversation Topics or playing a game of hangman or sinking ship.
https://www.tefl.net/elt/ideas/pronunciation/top-fun-pronunciation-games/
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/pronunciation-games-esl/
https://blog.youragora.com/adult-english-learning-esl-games-for-adults