Pronunciation Phone

Setup

Students will need to reference a visual of an old-style phone keypad with a single word under each number. When spoken, each word should sound similar to (but not the same as!) one or more of the other words, e.g., thought and taught, or chip, ship, and sheep).

You can draw this on the board, or on a piece of paper if you only have a couple of students. Once they are familiar with the activity, students can also draw their own phones on a piece of paper.

Students will each need a pen/pencil and paper.

Activity

1. Model and elicit the correct pronunciation of each of the words on the phone.
2. Write a phone number on the board, and elicit the word for each digit from the class.
3. Explain that now students are going to try and write down your phone number (you can use a fake one!). Use the words to ‘spell out’ your phone number, repeating each word at least once. As you do this, students try and write down the actual number in digits.
4. Take volunteers to share the numbers they wrote down. Switch to a different student when a digit is guessed incorrectly. In this manner, the class gradually uncovers your phone number.
5. Now give other students a turn to share their phone numbers in word form. The remaining students guess as before.
6. With larger classes (or shy students), after one or two students share with the whole class, switch to students doing this activity in pairs or small groups.

Target Language

Requiring little to no prep, Pronunciation Phone is a great warmer when you’re short of time, and one that students really enjoy. Importantly, make sure you acknowledge how similar words sound, and how challenging English pronunciation is in general! Creating a lighthearted atmosphere is critical to ensuring students feel comfortable enough to practise.

Adapt the difficulty according to the level of your class. For beginners, words should only sound very similar to one other word, whereas you can make things very complicated and fun for advanced students who have played before. Try ship, sheet, chip, cheap, sheep, seek, cheek, see, seed and cheat if you’re really looking for a challenge!

You can tailor your words to practise specific phonemes students are learning or have trouble enunciating. Common examples include ‘th’ fricatives at the start of words and consonants such as ‘t’, ‘d’ or ‘n’ at the end of words. Finally, Pronunciation Phone is also a nice way to practise past simple ‘-ed’ verb endings. In this case include a few of these verbs in base and past form plus similar variations, e.g., dance, danced, dancer, dances, play, played, player, plays, jump, jumper, jumped, jumps.