Conversation Hour (9/7)

Continuing a week of pronunciation practice!

In yesterday's class we practiced minimal pairs of long "e" and short "i" sounds!

The minimal pairs we used included:
sit                                   seat
fit                                   feet
sick                                seek
still                                 steal
pitch                               peach
hill                                  heel/heal
slip                                 sleep
fill                                  feel


First I made two lists on the board. List #1 was for words with a short "i" vowel sound and List #2 was for long "e" vowel sound. I presented all of the words to the students and they repeated them to practice hearing and speaking the difference between the two sounds. During this time I explained all new vocabulary, but very few of these words were new to them.

Second I erased all the words and had the students stand in a line in the middle of the classroom. I then spoke the words one at a time and the students had to decide if the word fit in category #1 or #2. They stepped to the left if they thought it was #1 (a short "i" sound) and to right if they thought it was #2 (a long "e" sound). This made the practice more fun!

Third, students returned to their seats and I spoke as sequence of three words using on set of minimal pairs and then the students told me the order of the numbers that I stated. For example: I said "seat, seat, sit" and the students responded "2, 2, 1" because seat fits in category #2 and sit in category #1. It was neat to observe that the more we did this the faster they were able to hear which words I was saying and they didn't need me to repeat the sequence!

Fourth, I showed the cards with each word to the students and asked them to read it to me. They helped each other with some of the pronunciations that were still proving difficult.

Everyone did a really nice job!