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Connected Speech Activities For Secondary School

This document discusses techniques for teaching learners to understand connected speech. It describes how sounds are often reduced, changed, or dropped when words are spoken together, making them difficult for learners to decode. Two exercises are presented: 1) The teacher dictates chunks from a passage in their "blurred form" and students say the "ideal form". 2) Chunks from a recording are written on a whiteboard in three columns representing how clearly the words are separated - greenhouse, garden, jungle. The teacher models the chunks at each level of separation to help students understand how sounds vary. The goal is to give students receptive exposure to different sound patterns to help them decode chunks more rapidly.

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Dani Silva
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126 views1 page

Connected Speech Activities For Secondary School

This document discusses techniques for teaching learners to understand connected speech. It describes how sounds are often reduced, changed, or dropped when words are spoken together, making them difficult for learners to decode. Two exercises are presented: 1) The teacher dictates chunks from a passage in their "blurred form" and students say the "ideal form". 2) Chunks from a recording are written on a whiteboard in three columns representing how clearly the words are separated - greenhouse, garden, jungle. The teacher models the chunks at each level of separation to help students understand how sounds vary. The goal is to give students receptive exposure to different sound patterns to help them decode chunks more rapidly.

Uploaded by

Dani Silva
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Connected speech

Decoding multi-word clusters can be very challenging for learners because


sounds are often reduced, changed, or dropped and words are mushed
together.
e.g. what do you mean is often pronounced /wɒʤəˈmiːn/.

4. Blurred form vs ideal form – Ur, P., n.d. Teaching Listening


Comprehension. page 45.

Procedure: At the end of a listening or reading class, the teacher dictates


chunks from a passage. She pronounces the blurred form and students say
the ideal form.

Example: Teacher: /dəˈnəʊ/


Students: I don’t know

5. The botanic walk – Cauldwell, R. (2018). A syllabus for listening.

Draw three columns on the whiteboard: Write (or draw!) Greenhouse, Garden,
and Jungle. Explain the analogy of words to plants: separate and neat in the
greenhouse, closer together in the garden, chaotic in the jungle.

Write the chunk which occurred in the recording, e.g. a couple of days.
Point to greenhouse and model the words in isolation /eɪ/ /kʌpl/ ɒf/ deɪz/
Point to garden and model the gentle contact between the words:
/əkʌplɒvˈdeɪz/
Point to jungle and model rapid and messy speech: /əkʌpəˈdeɪz/
Stronger learners can try to predict how other chunks may vary across the
three domains.
The main aim is to provide receptive exposure to different sound shapes of
chunks and train learners to decode them more rapidly when they hear them.

If learners are willing, they can also repeat the “messy” form; Cauldwell (2018)
suggests, if they can say it, they can decode it. However, it’s not necessary as
we aim for intelligibility. I always tell my students, you don’t have to say it like
this but it’s good to know that you may hear it like this!

Note: I used this when teaching listening on the Module 2 course and received
excellent feedback from my tutor, colleagues, and students.

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