TESOL Questions and Answers with
Verified Solutions
TESOL ✔✔Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
TEFL ✔✔Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Traveling Teacher ✔✔Also known as the TEFL nomad
Expat Teache
...
TESOL Questions and Answers with
Verified Solutions
TESOL ✔✔Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
TEFL ✔✔Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Traveling Teacher ✔✔Also known as the TEFL nomad
Expat Teacher ✔✔teachers find a country which they truly feel comfortable in, and choose to
call it home for good.
Private Tutor ✔✔great flexibility,$20-$30 per hour!
English language is made up of eight different types of word ✔✔Noun
Verb
Adjective
Pronoun
Adverb
Preposition
Conjunction
Interjection
Noun ✔✔A person, place, thing, or idea
verb ✔✔Verbs describe an action, or the state of a subject..An action word.... Eat, sleep, jump,
watch.
adjective ✔✔A word that describes a noun...Pretty, ugly, expensive.
Pronoun ✔✔A word that takes the place of a noun...........I/we/you/she/he/it/they
Adverb ✔✔A word that describes a verb..with reference to place, time, manner or
degree..Quickly, slowly (time)Very, thoroughly (degree)
Preposition ✔✔A word that shows the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word.They
can exist as single words, or as prepositional phrases which contain several words together, for
example:
In, on, under, behind, in front of.
Conjuction ✔✔words that are used to join together sentences, ideas, phrases or clauses....
connecting words such as and,but, or
Interjection ✔✔small comments that have specific meanings often caused by strong emotions.
A word that expresses emotion.....Oh dear, uh oh, huh
concrete objects ✔✔things which can be held or touch
Proper nouns ✔✔are the particular names of people/places/organizations, and come with a
capital first letter, for example, 'Jack', 'London', and 'Asia'. Proper nouns will usually be taught
after regular nouns, as they require additional instruction to capitalize the first letter.
acting out the verb ✔✔showing video clips, or clear images
verbs can be organized ✔✔Action
Stative
Transitive
Instransitive
Auxiliary
Modal
Regular
Irregular
Action Verbs ✔✔are used to describe actions and movements. They're also known as 'dynamic
verbs',........Speak, play, work, eat, go.
Stative Verbs ✔✔These verbs describe a state instead of an action - they're often associated with
verbs covering thinking, feeling, sensing or owning. Examples include:
Like, hate, want, see, hear, believe, imagine, remember and appreciate.
Transitive verbs ✔✔are those which are accompanied by a direct object, for example:
The phrase "I love..." has to be followed by something; "I love puppies/ice-cream/my mother".
Just the phrase "I love" on its own doesn't make sense.
Intransitive verbs ✔✔don't need to be accompanied by an object to make sense, for example:
"She laughed." or "We talked." are full sentences that don't need any extra information.
Auxiliary Verbs ✔✔are used to support the 'main' or most dominant verb in a sentence.three
most common auxiliary verbs in English are "be", "do" and "have", and they are often used for
grammatical reasons, rather than introducing a direct change to a sentence's meaning.
He is reading a book.
Modal Verbs ✔✔are a type of auxiliary verb which express ability, permission or possibility.
Examples of common modal verbs are:
Can, could, might, must, should, will and would......
it can help to group them by theme, for example:
Ability - teach can and its past tense, could, as in "I couldn't play the piano but now I can."
Permission - teach can and may, as in "Can I/ May I open a window?"
Possibility - introduce could, may, might and will as a way to talk about possibilities or
certainties in the future.
Obligation - discuss the difference between could, should and must and compare how strongly
the speaker feels. "You could ask the doctor about your rash", "You should ask the doctor about
your rash" and "You must ask the doctor about your rash" all have a different sense of urgency.
Phrasal Verbs ✔✔are made up of several words together are known as phrasal verbs. They are
usually formed with a verb combined with an adverb or preposition. Examples include:
Take off, look into, get away with, or put up with.
Regular verbs ✔✔are those which simply need the addition of "ed" at the end of the word, to be
used in the past, or past participle tenses.
wanted
Irregular verbs ✔✔don't follow this rule - instead the past forms are all different.
eat ate eaten
What are Affixes? ✔✔are essentially parts that are added to words to alter their meaning or
create new words altogether. The most common type of affixes are prefixes and suffixes.
Prefixes ✔✔are attached to the front of a word, with the most common being 'un'.
Undo
Unable
Unafraid
Suffixes ✔✔additions at the end of a word that alter the meaning, create a new word or change
its grammatical function. A common suffix is 'er', which can be attached to verbs to create a
noun, or adjective:
Trainer
Walker
Happier
Tenses ✔✔are used to express time in relation to an event that is being discussed.
tenses can be ✔✔split in 4 categories:
simple
continuous
perfect
perfect continuos
Present simple ✔✔It is used to describe facts, express habitual or repeated behaviors, and to
describe emotions..........I run every day
Present continuous ✔✔It is used to describe activities that are occurring at the time that the
speaker is talking....I am walking
Present perfect ✔✔is used to describe actions or situations which started in the past but have
now finished.........This tense is formed using 'have/has' with the past participle of the main verb:
I have tasted tofu before.
Participle ✔✔A verb form that can be used as an adjective
Present perfect continuous ✔✔is used to describe something that started in the past and
continues to the present.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,It is formed using 'have/has' with 'been' and the present
participle form of the main verb:
I have been playing the piano for years.
Past simple ✔✔is used to describe events that occurred once in the past, reoccurring events in
the past, or something that was true for some time in the past. For example:
He ate salad..For regular verbs, the past simple tense is formed by adding 'ed' to the end of the
verb.
Past continuous ✔✔is used to describe events that were ongoing in the past.
To create this tense, the past form of the verb 'to be' is used with a verb in its 'ing' form:
He was flying.
Past perfect ✔✔is used to describe something that started in the past and continued until a given
time in the past. It is useful for clearly indicating the order of the past actions.
This tense uses the verb 'had' and the past participle of the main verb, for example:
He had swum two laps of the pool before his mother joined him.
Past perfect continuous (past perfect progressive) ✔✔is used to express ongoing actions from the
past that continued until another point. Note that this use of the tense does not specify that the
action stopped at the specified past point.
It uses a combination of 'had been' and the 'ing' form of the verb:
She had been walking for an hour when her phone rang.....tense is rarely used in everyday
conversations, and may only come up in more advanced classes, or for lessons focusing on
specific scenarios.
Future simple ✔✔is used to refer to specific times in the future. There are two ways to do this in
English, both used in two distinct types of situation.
The first form uses 'will' and the present tense of the sentence's verb...........I will go to school
tomorrow.......is used to express plans. It is created using the present tense of the verb 'to be' and
'going to'.......I am going to win some money.
Future continuous ✔✔is used to describe fixed events or appointments that will extend over time
in the future.
It is created using 'will be' and the main verb in its 'ing' form:
I will be going to the event on Saturday
Future perfect ✔✔refers to an action in the future as if it has already been completed...It is
formed using 'will have' with the past participle. There can be other forms of this tense, but this
is the most common:
I will have finished my assignment by Monday.
Future perfect continuous ✔✔describes ongoing future actions that will be completed at some
time in the future. It sounds complicated, but it's actually more simple than some of the other
future tenses.
Its most common form uses 'will have been' with the present participle.
In June, I will have been living here for a year.
four basic types of sentence ✔✔Simple
compound
complex
compound-complex
Simple sentences ✔✔consist of one independent clause. This means that they make sense on
their own, and contain a subject and a predicate at the very least:
John jumped high........simple sentences, the easiest structure to start with is the Subject-VerbObject (SVO) structure. For example: "I like apples/oranges/bananas."
Predicate ✔✔tells what the subject is or does
compound sentence ✔✔has two or more independent clauses joined together, usually by a
conjunction.......The girl played but the boy stayed inside.
Complex sentences ✔✔contain one independent clause, and at least one dependent clause.
Here's an example:
When you're tired, take a rest.........remember is that complex sentences also always contain a
subordinate conjunction. These provide a transition between the two clauses, often indicating a
time, place or cause and effect relationship.
dependent clause ✔✔A clause in a complex sentence that cannot stand alone as a complete
sentence and that functions within the sentence as a noun or adjective or adverb
compound-complex sentence ✔✔combines the characteristics of both complex and compound
sentences. It has at least two independent clauses linked by a conjunction as well as a dependent
clause:
The girl ate an apple and the boy played when they got home.
four sentence structures known collectively as conditional sentences: ✔✔Z conditional
First conditional
Second conditional
Third conditional
Conditional sentences ✔✔They will be able to discuss hypothetical scenarios, different
outcomes, and make predictions about the future.
Z conditional sentences ✔✔It is used to express simple truths and is formed using the following
structure:
If (clause 1 happens), (clause 2 happens).
Both clauses in the sentence must be in the present simple tense (for example: eat, take, jump).
Also note that the word 'if' can usually be replaced by 'when' without changing the meaning. See
these two examples below:
If I don't eat, I get hungry.
When you heat ice, it melts.>...............
Zero conditional sentences can also be used to give instructions. If she arrives, tell her to find
me.
If he finishes his work, he can join the group.
First Conditional sentences ✔✔is used to express situations that are real, or very likely could be.
It details a very possible condition and its likely result in the future.
First conditional sentences are formed using the following structure:
If (condition in present tense happens), ... will (result in future tense).
See the examples below:
If you come to lunch, I will buy you a meal.
Second Conditional sentences ✔✔expresses a hypothetical condition and its probable result. This
conditional is less real than the first, so the condition and its result are unlikely to occur.
These sentences use the following structure:
If (condition in past simple tense), ... would (result in present simple tense).
See these examples below:
If I won the lottery, I would buy a Porsche................
One potential problem with this conditional comes with deciding whether to use 'was' or 'were'
for all subjects, for example:
If I was rich, I'd buy a house
IELTS ✔✔International English Language Testing System
Third Conditional sentences ✔✔is a speculative one. It advances the idea of an unreal past
condition and its likely past result, and is great for expressing hindsight. It uses the following
structure:
If (past condition), ... would have (result in past tense).
See the example below:
If I had known that she didn't have any money, I would have bought her dinner.
when teaching any new words you should always introduce their ✔✔Meaning, Form, and
Pronunciation.
Meaning ✔✔The meaning of a new word is usually the first thing introduced to students as it
gives them a context for the vocabulary and its use. This can be done in a variety of ways. The
most common way of introducing the meaning of a word - especially for nouns - is through
flashcards or images. Some teachers also like to use realia .......Meaning can also be introduced
through Total Physical Response (TPR) or miming. TPR is a technique that involves students
performing physical movements when reciting certain words/phrases.
Form ✔✔This means understanding which type of word it is (noun, verb, adjective etc), and any
variations of the word that might be relevant. .....you can also explore the base form of the word
and any prefixes or suffixes which may be attached to it. This can help more advanced students
to use the new word in a variety of different situations.
pronunciation ✔✔There's no single perfect method for introducing vocabulary to students.
What is collocation? ✔✔is two or more words that often go well together......Have a good time
collocations are often taught after students have a strong grasp of more vital grammar points, or
as they come up naturally in context. The exam was on Friday (if the exam is actually on the
coming Friday, this would cause problems)>....................
Strong and weak collocations ✔✔There are certain combinations of words which are considered
strong collocations because they are almost always said together, and rarely collocate with other
words. In contrast, words that make weak collocations can collate with lots of different words.
See the two examples below:
Make a wish/fulfill a wish/express a wish (strong collocation)
Verb collocations ✔✔the most common types used in day to day conversations. .They're used for
instructions or to describe actions, and can often form complete sentences on their own.
......Make' and 'do' are two verbs that are used often in collocations and if they are used
incorrectly will sound quite strange to native speakers. See the examples below:
'Make a cup of tea', / 'do a cup of tea'.....
make' refers to creating .....do' refers to some type of activity.
Strong and weak collocations ✔✔they are almost always said together, and rarely collocate with
other words. In contrast, words that make weak collocations can collate with lots of different
words. See the two examples below:
Make a wish/fulfill a wish/express a wish (strong collocation).......
While it may be difficult to draw the line between a strong and weak collocation, it can still be
useful to be aware of this concept.
Verb collocations ✔✔are the most common types used in day to day conversations. They're used
for instructions or to describe actions, and can often form complete sentences on their own.
These can sometimes cause problems for students if they don't fully understand the meaning or
uses of the verb in question.
'Make' and 'do' are two verbs that are used often in collocations and if they are used incorrectly
will sound quite strange to native speakers. See the examples below:
'Make a cup of tea', / 'do a cup of tea'
Business collocations ✔✔so may be useful both in your students' everyday lives and in their
professional endeavors. These collocations can often be specific to certain industries and types of
business dealings, but can also have their place outside of the professional realm:
Open an account
Make a profit
What are word roots? ✔✔is the basic form of a word before anything additional is added to it.
additional parts such as affixes can be used to alter the meaning of such words.
However, when using word roots as a springboard for learning new vocabulary, there's a lot
more to consider than the basic affixes we covered earlier.
Latin word roots ✔✔many words are created by taking a word root derived from the parent
languages of Latin or Ancient Greek, with modern-day words holding some connected meaning:
Cent (word root) - meaning 'one hundred' in Latin.
Percent (word root with prefix)
Compound words ✔✔Aside from taking word roots and adding a prefix or affix as mentioned
above, some words can also be formed by joining together two complete words:
Schoolhouse - School+house
Getting started ✔✔The key here is to focus on practical knowledge.
Gradual improvements ✔✔You'll often find certain items of vocab which give an opportunity to
demonstrate the different words which can be created by adding a unique affix, or by joining an
additional word to form a single compound word.
Activities for practice ✔✔split your class into groups, and give each group several root words.
Then, give the groups 3 minutes to create as many new words as possible using their roots. ——
——
making 'word trees'. These involve writing down different root words on a sheet of paper and
drawing branches for each possible word which can be formed, similar to a family tree.
Final thoughts ✔✔Word roots can seem quite complex at first, but they're very useful for more
advanced...word roots should still be practiced from time to time to ensure students keep them in
mind, and can use them with independent learning.
Reading skills ✔✔are some of the most essential elements of a good ESL curriculum, but may
also be among the most difficult to master.
learning the English alphabet will be the first step to master. ✔✔Much of this will be based on
repetition, and providing a range of different exercises which challenge students to identify both
the lower and upper case variations of letters.
Alphabet activities ✔✔able to recognize the different letters, and can match them with the
correct sounds.———
Letter Pairs: Play a memory game by writing the alphabet on one set of cards in capitals and in
lower case on another set of cards. This type of activity is great for helping students to match the
visual differences between upper and lower case letters.————
Alphabet Bingo:
rote memorization ✔✔You may find that students who have learned to speak a bit of English
before your class will be able to say the alphabet in the context of the alphabet song. However, if
you show them a letter out of context they may need to sing the song through to identify the
letter.
This is an unfortunate side effect of rote memorization, where students learn the sequence rather
than the individual letters and sounds.
Alphabet fonts ✔✔Students in countries such as China, Japan, Thailand, and Myanmar have
very unique written forms of language, and may not be too familiar with the small variations in
written English. With these classes, you can change the fonts which you use in different
exercises, to show how some letters can vary slightly.
phonics ✔✔After your beginners have mastered the English alphabet, they must learn the sounds
made by combining different letters together. This will allow them to 'sound out' written words
that they are familiar with and perhaps even some words that are new to them.
This process is often referred to as 'phonics' - the pairing of letters to form distinct sounds.
Using CVC words ✔✔A good way to begin practicing this can be through CVC words
(consonant-vowel-consonant), for example:
Dog, cat, hat, dad, hop.
Running dictation: ✔✔Write CVC words on cards-reading out loud the ones they find.
Snakes and ladders: ✔✔write CVCs on certain tiles.they must to read out the words.
More advanced combinations ✔✔After mastering CVCs you can use similar techniques from
those above to move onto more advanced letter combinations. These will include:
Vowel combinations: sleep, food, great.
Consonant blends: brown, grape, frog, swim.
Silent letters: what/when/why, knife/know, climb/thumb.
Overcoming vocabulary limitations ✔✔start with very basic reading texts, ——start off the
lesson by first pre-teaching these words as a warm-up activity.
Scanning, skimming, and reading for detail. ✔✔These are three advanced reading skills which
can be practiced to emulate situations which students may face outside of the classroom.
Scanning ✔✔is a type of reading which involves looking for a specific piece of information in a
written text.
You might scan a text such as an event listing to find when/where it will be held.
Skimming ✔✔is a type of reading which involves quickly reading a text to get the main ideas
and a general understanding.
Similar to scanning, when practicing skimming, it can be useful to base activities around timed
exercises.——-after skimming an article, a student should be able to explain what it's about, and
the general tone of the text. Whereas with scanning they'll likely just be able to give you specific
pieces of information.
Reading for details ✔✔Reading for detail is exactly what it sounds like - reading the entire text
slowly for overall understanding.
This is the type of reading used most often in everyday life, and will likely be what the students
are most familiar with from previous lessons.———
students should not only be able to explain what it's about, but should also be able to answer a
range of questions about the text.
some instances where formal writing skills may still be important for your classes ✔✔For
specific examinations.
When applying to study at overseas universities.
For business emails and letters.
When learning specific grammar patterns.
What your students should know ✔✔First, they should be aware of the basics of punctuation;
that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a period. More advanced punctuation such
as commas and colons can follow later.
Second, you should make sure that your students understand and can identify the most basic
parts of speech, as covered earlier in this course. They will probably have a limited vocabulary at
this point, but it will help if they can recognize which words are nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Basic sentence structures ✔✔A good activity can be to have students write out several basic
sentences. This can help to both practice their writing skills, and reinforce their understanding of
previously taught sentence structures.———Divide the students into groups, and give each
group a list of words containing a mix of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Then challenge them to
sort the words into their correct categories. This will help to remind students of the meanings of
words they've already learned and also give them a deeper understanding of sentence
construction.——-Finally, have the students create some of their own using the words which
they previously sorted into categories.
Examples here would include:
Subject + Verb
I eat
The boy plays
Subject + Verb + Object
I like bananas
She walks home
Subject + Verb + Adjective
I am mean
He is ugly
Write a story ✔✔As such, having younger students write their own stories can be a good way to
introduce writing in a way which excites them.—-To help your students in the beginning, restrict
their choices so they don't get confused or overwhelmed, and pre-teach any structures or
vocabulary which they might need. You can start with very short stories, three or four sentences
in length, and give them a topic to write about such as an animal or a hobby.
Describe a person or object ✔✔You can often use these types of words to have your students
create written descriptions of people or objects.
Before starting this activity, you may wish to warm up the class by pre-teaching any vocabulary
needed for the exercise, such as words related to appearance, for example:
Tall/short, fat/thin, pretty/ugly and old/young.
After this, they can start to write their descriptions. For beginners, these descriptions could be as
short as:
He is old.
He is tall.
Write an email ✔✔writing an email is an activity which could be used for teenagers or adults
with basic English skills.
Practicing writing emails will give your class a useful skill which they will probably enjoy trying
outside of class, or may need to learn for their work life.
Reinforcing sentence structures ✔✔sentence structures will continue to be a challenge. English
sentences can be difficult, and without an intuitive understanding of how they are put together,
your students may struggle. ———advanced level, your students should be more involved in
their own learning. When examining and explaining sentence structures, ask your students 'why'
continually, such as why a certain word is in a certain position, or why it can't go in a different
position. The idea behind this is to make your students think about what they are doing, and why
it's right or wrong.
Writing structures ✔✔Once they have a good understanding of sentences, help them to create
longer pieces of writing by teaching them how to write introductory paragraphs, the main body
of a text, and conclusions.———Assign your students an essay on a subject they enjoy.
Ask your students to write a letter to a friend they haven't talked with in a long time.
Get them to write a 1-page story.
Formal and informal language ✔✔Teaching your students the difference between formal and
informal writing will give them an edge when they come to professional or academic
situations.———To avoid this, ensure that your students understand what types of contexts
require formal language, as well as the corresponding rules, such as:
Formal language should avoid the use of contractions.
In formal writing, do not use slang or idioms.
Formal language contains a number of words and phrases that aren't often used in informal
speech such as Sir/Madam, therefore, due to, thus, kind regards etc.
Journaling ✔✔By completing a short journal entry after every lesson, they will have a written
record of their own progress as well as a reminder of previous work they have completed. This
can also help with motivation, as it allows them to see how far they have come in their learning.
Sentence rewriting ✔✔Sentence rewriting is a very difficult but essential skill if your students
intend to take any kind of ESL exam such as IELTS. In these kinds of tests, students are required
to examine a sentence and then rewrite it without changing its meaning.
Speaking ✔✔is one of the most visible language skills and will take up a large part of your
classroom time.--------
What are speaking skills? ✔✔Spoken English involves a lot of different aspects which aren't
always clear to native speakers. These include:
Pronunciation
Word stress
Sentence stress
Intonation
Conversational skills
Some techniques for creating this kind of environment are: ✔✔Encourage students rather than
punish them.
Reward effort no matter how small.
Provide opportunities for students to speak to each other.
Feel how far you can push a student to answer before moving on and giving a second try later.
Pronunciation is the first building block of speaking. ✔✔Your students will need to spend a lot
of time practicing different sounds and words, repeating and improving each time until they
accurately pronounce the target language.
Drilling ✔✔Drilling involves first reciting a word, phrase or sound to your class and then having
them repeat it back to you.------1. Show a picture of an umbrella and say "Umbrella".
2. Elicit the students to echo this back as a class.
3. Praise the class, and repeat the word again - emphasizing the correct pronunciation.
4. Pick individual students and have them try to pronounce the word.
5. Praise all attempts. If mistakes are made, emphasize the correct spelling, and have the student
repeat it again.
Mixing things up ✔✔Similar pairs= take it in turns reading out certain words from the cards, and
challenging the other to guess which word was spoken. Examples of such words could include:
Ship or sheep?This can be very effective at helping students to fine-tune pronunciations between
themselves.
Telephone: Have your students sit in a circle. Give one student a message, and have him/her
whisper this to the student next to them.
After building basic pronunciation skills, you can start to introduce some more elements to your
students' skill-sets ✔✔such as intonation.
Intonation ✔✔conveying mood and even meaning through the tones that are used by the
speaker.------
What is intonation? ✔✔is the changing pitch of speech. it can indicate the mood or intention of
the speaker, identify if the sentence is a question or a statement and even differentiate between
types of questions. Changing the intonation of a sentence can radically alter its meaning or
purpose.
Rising and falling intonation ✔✔Perhaps the most common intonations used by native English
speakers are rising and falling tones. ---You like that? ↘
(indicates certainty, a question that doesn't need an answer)
You like that? ↗
(indicates surprise, disbelief, a question)
Questions ✔✔Intonation is very important in question forms. Using the incorrect intonation, or
none at all, will leave your students sounding robotic and may confuse listeners. questions that
begin with 'wh' words often use a falling intonation (↘) whereas questions that require yes/no
answers often use a rising tone (↗).
What's your name? ↘
Do you like chips? ↗
Statements ✔✔native English speakers use a flat tone. Altering that can turn the statement into a
question or convey other emotions such as sarcasm or irony.
You want mint ice cream. ➔
(statement of fact)
You want mint ice cream? ↗
(question, perhaps surprise or disbelief)
Word stress is another part of speech which native speakers often do without thinking, ✔✔No
matter how much vocabulary and grammar your students learn, if they do not use the correct
word stress, their English will sound distorted and may even be incomprehensible.
What is word stress? ✔✔words that have more than one syllable will have a syllable that is
longer, louder and pitched higher than the others. This more heavily pronounced syllable is
referred to as the word's stress.
If the incorrect stress is used with a word, or even no stress, it radically changes the way the
word sounds
Onion
Onion
As you can probably tell, the first example is how you would naturally say the word, while the
second would sound unusual to a native listener.
There are different ways in which we use word stresses. This can come down to the type of word
✔✔its context, or form.
Two syllable words ✔✔Nouns or adjectives with two syllables usually have the stress on the
first syllable. Although there are exceptions to this rule——Mo-ther
Happy
In two syllable verbs and prepositions, the final syllable is stressed, although again there are
exceptions to this rule.
Decide
Insult
Behind
It's also important to note that there are a number of nouns which can also be used as verbs.
Import (noun) / Import (verb)
Witness (noun) / Witness (verb)
Three syllable words ✔✔For three-syllable words that end with 'er' or 'ly' the first syllable is
usually stressed.
Easier
Orderly
Words that have three syllables and end in a consonant or with the letter 'y' usually have the
stress on the first syllable.
History
Optimal
Words that end in a suffix ✔✔If a word ends with a suffix, then the word stress is usually on the
second-to-last syllable of the word. 'ic' - artistic
'tion' - retribution
'sion' - extension
Words that end with the suffixes 'ee', 'ese', 'eer', 'ique' and 'ette' usually have the word stress on
the suffix itself.
Trustee
Japanese
Career
Antique
sentence stress is used to indicate which parts of a sentence are most important. ✔✔Learning
about sentence stress can help students in two ways:
1. They will be able to further emphasize meaning with their speaking skills.
2. They will also be able to improve listening abilities, by picking up meaning from key words
without understanding entire sentences.
Content words ✔✔Content words are those which convey most of the meaning and are usually
stressed——Content words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs or negative auxiliaries.
Structure words ✔✔exist to give the sentence its correct grammar and are usually unstressed. —-
Other types of words are usually structure words, although that can change depending on the
speaker's intended meaning.
Content words and structure words ✔✔In the following example, you can see that removing the
structure words still allows the basic meaning of the sentence to be understandable.——
Stressed words: want...buy...car
Unstressed words: I...to...a
Full sentence: I want to buy a car
Changing the meaning of sentences ✔✔Sentence stress can also act to change the meaning of a
sentence. Depending on the speaker's intention,——-I want to fly to Italy.
I want to fly to Italy.
I want to fly to Italy.
I want to fly to Italy.
using word stress in a natural sounding way, and placing it on the correct words. ✔✔Have
students listen to you repeat a sentence in different ways, each time placing the stress on
different words
Drilling is another method which can be used to have students listen to your pronunciation and
then echo it back to you.
Learning musical limericks can help students to break with robotic speaking patterns. Sentence
stress is often called the music of language, and speaking limericks can help to practice this skill
as they naturally align with an internal beat.
students to record themselves speaking.
Placing word stress on the correct words.\ ✔✔
Conversation classes ✔✔students discuss an issue, giving opinions, evidence and their feelings
on a specific topic.
Debates ✔✔To host a debate, first divide the class into teams and give them time to prepare,
making sure they know that all preparations must be done in English.
English corners ✔✔you'll find areas known as "English Corners". These are spaces in public
where people from all backgrounds and nationalities come to mix and practice speaking English.
Humor classes ✔✔Teaching them about humor in English is an extremely advanced skill as it
involves a good understanding of tone as well as cultural and social norms.——teaching them
things like sarcasm and satire will help them relate to English speakers, and also be a real
challenge for any advanced class.
phonetics ✔✔Phonetics can be used to help teach your students correct pronunciation, but also
can be just another thing they have to learn, and may not always be useful.
What are phonetic systems? ✔✔There are a variety of phonetic systems in use. The most
common system is called the IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet. This consists of around
107 letters, 52 diacritics or accent marks and 4 prosodic marks. Through carefully combining
these elements, any sound from the English language (and many others) can be created.
By learning phonetic systems, students can learn to decode new English words by understanding
the relationship between the written letters and the sounds they make.
Why teach phonetics? ✔✔Another issue with English is the fact that English letters and writing
don't always coincide with pronunciation. This is made more challenging by the fact that
different parts of the English speaking world pronounce words very differently.
Understanding the phonetics system can overcome these issues by teaching students to decode
written words on their own. It may also improve their spelling, as they will learn what letters go
with specific sounds.
Problems with phonetics systems ✔✔is that they remove the words and sounds from their
context. This results in students who can read and decode new words, but not understand their
meaning or use. This is called 'False Reading', and is a major problem for phonetics in ESL
learning.
using phonetics in ESL lessons may not be helpful when students encounter written words that
they already know verbally.
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