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 A, as in Cat
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?
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” —Dale Carnegie
Part 2: The Sound of A, as in Cat
The teacher will read the description of how the letter A is formed and have students mimic her movements. The teacher will then read out just the A sound and have the students repeat it until everyone feels confident that they can adequately produce it.
Description: To produce the vowel sound A (as in cat), 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 A sound with students by repeating the following, making only the sound:
A, A, A
A, A, A
A, A, A
A, A, A
Part 3: A Words
Once your students feel confident they can produce the A sound, the teacher will read out the A words slowly, emphasizing the A sound and reviewing any challenging words. Students will repeat after each word is pronounced. The teacher will repeat this exercise twice.
Act, ask, bat, bag, cat
Cab, fan, gap, jam, man
Nap, pan, rat, sat, van
Past, flap, grasp, apple, adopt
American, after, adore, happy, pizza
Panda, zebra, astronaut, alligator, banana
Part 4: Practice complete sentences emphasizing the A 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) Alex adored the last act.
2) She gasped at the bar tab and then proceeded to haggle with Anne about it.
3) Mack was a fan of wearing masks.
4) Sally thought the satire deserved a hats-off applause.
5) The American graduate had apples in his sack which he gave to the lad.
6) The little brat refused to sing the anthem because he was mad at his dad.
7) It was a slam dunk, blabbed Sam.
8) The lab was built, at last, thanks to Pam’s unflappable will.
9) They found the map on the rack behind all the summer hats.
10)Last April, the dam burst, and the water blasted onto the road, hitting a van.
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, students will be placed in pair groups and take turns reading out loud the A words and the sentences to each other, emphasizing the A sound.
Part 6: Informal student test
Once the above exercise is finished, the teacher will randomly choose an A word or a complete sentence and pick a student to read it out loud, correcting any target pronunciation errors as they are made.
Part 7: Tell an A Story
Below you will find a list of names, nouns, verbs, and adjectives with the letter A. Place students in small groups or pairs and give them about 10 minutes to create an A story that they will recite to the class. Make sure that as they create their story with their classmates, they correctly pronounce the A sound. Circulate around the class, correcting target pronunciation as needed. They may use words outside the list, but whichever group can use the most A words (logically!) and tell the best story wins. This is great for laughs!
Allen - Nap - Rap - Blab - Alert
Alarm - Fanny - Ant - Salad - Pasta
American - Antenna - Anton - Sat - Active
Tap - Plan - Area - Mani - Asparagus
Animal - Adventurous - Angelic - Big Mac - Sammy
Trap - Alphabet Soup - Artichokes - Rat - Rap
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