Collections of Professor Dr David Ngin Sian Pau

a native English speaker or non native English speaker, whose major or specialization at college or university is teaching English can teach pronunciation well.

Intonation

Apart from learning intonation from their English teachers or instructors, the most effective way of learning English intonation for students is to encourage them to listen to British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) as many times as possible with a desire to follow the same intonation as they speak. Because talking to a native English speaker for half an hour non-stop or so may not be possible unless we have a serious discussions on a particular interesting topic. Even if a native English speaker teaches the class, it’s not enough for the students to get to know how the English intonation goes. I never learnt intonation from any native English speaker but the above technique worked very well. So I encourage all my students to do the same.

Things I will consider when teaching intonation:

·intonation when speaking interrogative sentence and question tags
·intonation when speaking the language with angry mood
·intonation when speaking sentences in general
·suprasegmental aspects of the English language
·prosodies: a particular system of versification
·British accent, American accent, Neutral/International accent
·Raise tone, fall tone
·Voice variation

Listening

In listening class, I will encourage students to watch a film, or listen to an English radio station, but not to watch an entire film or listen for two hours. They should listen for short periods - five to ten minutes. And I will ask them to write a short description about what they watched and listened to. At this point, students have to use their own English sentences without referring any book or copying any text from their friends. And I will check all their papers to get to know whether they understand the main point of what they listened to. Therefore, if they don't understand anything in the first time, I will repeat asking them to listen again for the second time. However, for this strategy to work, students must not expect improved understanding too quickly.

And the second technique I will use in listening class is that while listening an audio file, students have to fill-in the missing words especially combined words, which have to be pronounced as if they were one word with linked sounds, and homophones. I should give the “fill in the missing words” paper of the audio transcript, prepared by the teacher, to all students each first before listening to the audio file or video clip. Since the brain is capable of amazing things if given time, students must have the patience to wait for results. If a student continues this exercise many times their listening comprehension skills will greatly improve.

There are more things to do in listening class as below:

1) Multiple choice
2) Listen to a conversation and let students choose where the conversation took place, what the
conversant wants to do or go according to their understanding

Vocabulary

I will choose a list of words to focus on that's an integral part of the students' existing curriculum including words that students find in their everyday lives. Learning vocabulary in my class will be followed by:

·Playing word bingo games and puzzles