PronPack is a set of four resource books to help teachers focus on English pronunciation in class – each takes a slightly different approach to pronunciation teaching. You can select the approach you prefer, or use the various books to complement one another.
PronPack 2: Pronunciation Puzzles are challenging game-like activities which are fun to do in pairs or small groups but are equally effective for individual students. They include such puzzle types as mazes, sudoku, word searches and crosswords.
The puzzles can benefit learners principally by raising awareness of patterns in the pronunciation of English such as how certain letter combinations are pronounced, where the stress falls in word families, or how words are joined together in connected speech. Although the activities are mainly concerned with awareness-raising they also provide productive rehearsal and practice for students, reading the words and phrases aloud while they work and when checking the answers as a class.
The puzzles at the beginning of the book focus on individual sounds. The later ones focus on features such as the grammatical endings –ed and –s, suffixes and word stress, tonic stress and connected speech. In addition, since all of the words and phrases in the puzzles appear in printed form, they serve to raise awareness of sound-spelling correspondences, and reinforce the insight that English spelling does not reflect pronunciation as closely as students often expect.
This printed book contains worksheets for the students and teacher’s notes for you. The teacher’s notes give a short background to the pronunciation point plus step-by-step guidelines for using the activity in class. They also highlight the teaching focus, the minimum student level and indicate printing requirements. Additional materials including audio and printable resources to accompany Pronunciation Puzzles are available on www.pronpack.com
Other books in the PronPack series are:
Book 1: Pronunciation Workouts – extended choral drill activities activities.
Book 3: Pronunciation Pairworks – communication activities.
Book 4: Pronunciation Poems – poems, raps and chants.
Mark Hancock started teaching English over 30 years ago and wrote his first English language teaching book – Pronunciation Games – over 20 years ago. His approach in both teaching and writing ELT materials is to engage the learner and inspire their intrinsic interest in the content and in the process of the lesson. This is driven by his belief that teaching and learning a language can and should be an enjoyable experience. He studied Geography and Philosophy at St. Andrews University, followed by teacher training courses and finally an MA in Teaching English from Aston University. Mark has taught in Sudan, Turkey, Brazil, Spain and currently lives and works in the UK. Apart from teaching and writing, he also presents at international conferences and leads on short teacher training courses. In his free time, Mark plays the saxophone and guitar, paints in oils and walks in the mountains.
