This article describes a simple method to teach pitch, a feature common to both word stress and intonation. The technique can be used by native and nonnative English-speaking teachers and is applicable to students of different levels and language backgrounds. Pronounced as /m/, "mmm" is a sound that should be easy for speakers of any…

Besides numerous positive transformations and unique opportunities in language pedagogy, the post-method era brought with itself several challenges for language teachers. After intensive research and empirical studies, the use of literature was welcomed in ELT classrooms. But the question arises as to what extent and in what ways does literature…

Nonnative speakers of a language are often at a disadvantage in producing extended speech, as they have differing native (L1) phonological systems and rhetorical traditions or little experience in giving talks. Prosody in the form of stress, rhythm, and intonation is a difficult but crucial area needed to master extended speech because prosody…

Bayburt University's English Language Teaching (ELT) department, is starting its courses as of 2016 fall season, using the Turkish sage Dede Korkut's tales as part of its speech training curriculum. The story "Wild Dumrul" presented in this article is famous in world literature for its theme of "marital love and sacrifice."…

The main cause of pronunciation problems faced by EFL learners is their lack of a suprasegmental background. Most of those having oral comprehension and expression difficulties are unaware that their difficulty comes from their negligence of concepts of stress, pitch, juncture and linkers. While remedying stress problems, students should be taught…

The greatest difficulty in reading Arabic script for nonnatives is the absence of short vowels. The correlation of 28 consonants with sounds poses no great difficulty. In Arabic, there are six vowel phonemes which are voiced only by three letters with help of some relevant diacritical marks (?arakat). As the bulk of Arabic publications is written…

The greatest difficulty in reading Arabic script for nonnatives has long been considered as the absence of short vowels, however there is more to be dealt with. While the correlation of 28 Arabic consonants pose no great difficulty in deciphering the script, the six vowel phonemes voiced only by three letters even with help of some relevant…

Every language has its own rhythm. Unlike many other languages in the world, English depends on the correct pronunciation of stressed and unstressed or weakened syllables recurring in the same phrase or sentence. Mastering the rhythm of English makes speaking more effective. Experiments have shown that we tend to hear speech as more rhythmical…

Junctures are pauses used in speech separating thought-groups from one another in order to give the listener time to digest the utterance to signal the end. Where junctures are present, hearers find it easier to understand what is said as they are able to discern the individual words between such verbal breaks. Junctures being universal…

Suprasegmental elements such as "stress," "pitch," "juncture" and "linkers" are language universals that are uttered naturally in the mother tongue without prior training but need to be learned systematically in the target language. Among other techniques of "sentential pronunciation teaching" to…

In this article we discuss the specifics of reading fluency and provide suggestions for identifying when reading is fluent and when it is not. We then discuss the important role that reading fluency plays in the attainment of literacy achievement and briefly review research results that highlight the relationship between fluency and comprehension.…

With the ever increasing number of studies on formulaic language, we are beginning to learn more about the processing of formulaic language (e.g. Ellis et al. 2008; Siyanova et al. 2011), its use in speech (e.g. Aijmer 1996; Wood 2012) and writing (e.g. Hyland 2008a, 2008b) and its application in natural language processing (e.g. Tschichold 2000).…

For years, phoneticians have tried to simplify pronunciation for EFL/ESL learners. Some have identified four degrees of primary, secondary, tertiary, and weak stress, and others only three degrees: primary, secondary, and weak. Still others have concentrated on two stress levels: accented versus unaccented, or stressed versus unstressed (Bowen,…

This article aims at absorbing the pronunciation teachers task and how much phonology should teachers know. Teachers and future teachers need a well-rounded concept of the phonology of the language they are going to teach and the native language of learners. Emphasis must be placed on the understanding of language as a system of rules and as a…

The Acquisition of L2 Phonology is a wide-ranging new collection which focuses on various aspects of the acquisition of an L2 phonological system. The authors are researchers and practitioners from five different countries. The volume has been divided into three major sections. Phonetic Analysis presents five studies of language learners in both…