Conversation Hour 12/7

Conversation Hour 12/7
Pronunciation Practice continued

Today we began class with an animated activity! The students learned the “Hokey Pokey” and they loved it! They learned some new vocabulary including:
Elbow: cotovelo

Foot: pé

Knee: joelho

Hip: quadril

For most of class we worked with more minimal pairs to practice hearing and speaking the different sounds. The minimal pairs were listed in columns labeled “left” and “right”

We started with these minimal pairs:
LEFT                RIGHT

men                man

Place              plays (tocar, jogar, brincar in the 3^rd person singular, simple present)

Taught           thought (pensar, simple past)

Ship                sheep (ovelhas)

After reading through and practicing all of the words, I randomly would say a word and students had to tell me if they were in the list on the left or the list on the right. After they got the hang of it, we began a pronunciation journey.

They were given a map. I would say a word and they would decide if it was in the left or right column and then trace their finger on the map in the direction they chose. After I stated 4 words, they would end up at a destination. Everyone would say where they ended up and see if it was where they should have ended. They really liked this game and asked to play it again with new minimal pairs.

Our second list of minimal pairs:
LEFT                                               RIGHT

Pitch (arremessar)                      peach (pêssego)

Pull (puxar)                                  pool (piscina)

Fail (falhar)                                  fell (cair, simple past)

Still (ainda)                                  steal (roubar)

We finished off our class by doing the Hokey Pokey one more time (at the students’ request).