This week’s Spotlight lesson, Haul Video, features a fun reading that uses the simple present, simple past, and simple future tenses in context. Your students will hear “be going to” used naturally as they listen to Daisy make a video about her recent shopping trip. (more…)
English spelling and pronunciation can cause a lot of difficulties for English language learners! That’s because English spelling often doesn’t match the pronunciation. English has gone through many sound changes over time, and we’ve kept some of the older spellings that don’t reflect the current sounds. Did you know that while many languages only have 5 vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u), English has 26 vowel sounds? No wonder it’s tough to learn how to spell and pronounce English words correctly!
Two tricky sounds are those spelled with “ph” and “wh”. “Ph” is pronounced as an /f/ sound, and “wh” is pronounced as a /w/ sound, and neither include the /h/ sound! This week’s Spotlight lesson was on
“ph” & “wh” Words, so I decided to record the words from this lesson on the blog this week. (more…)
For many learners of another language, speaking is the scariest skill. After all, speaking is when you have to produce language in the least amount of time, and the listeners are there to form instant opinions of your ability—at least, that’s what it feels like to many! But never fear, practice makes perfect! As teachers, we can also help our students feel more confident about their speaking ability by teaching them pronunciation and intonation rules. What better place to start than with question intonation?
Most languages have only one type of question intonation: rising. English, on the other hand, has two types of question intonation: rising and falling. Fortunately, the question intonation patterns of English follow set rules—it depends if the question is a yes/no question (rising) or wh-question (falling). 
The easiest way for students to pick up the intonation of a language is by modelling fluent speakers. Play the audio clips below for both types of questions, or read the questions out loud yourself, and have your students repeat the questions back.
I. YES/NO QUESTIONS:
In English, yes/no questions start with an auxiliary verb (do, be, have, or a modal such as can, should, will, etc.).
Intonation for Yes/No questions is rising. This means your voice will go up at the end of the question.
