Pronunciation is the greatest cause of miscommunication, so we definitely want to help students work on it. However, there are so many aspects of pronunciation and so little time! Which aspects should we focus on?

This is where the “Lingua Franca Core” comes in handy. Developed from research on miscommunication, the Lingua Franca Core recommends focusing on three main aspects of pronunciation to ensure students are understood by English speakers worldwide. These are:

1. consonant sounds
2. vowel sounds
3. chunking

This post will focus on consonant and vowel sounds, and future posts will discuss chunking.

Consonant Sounds

Mispronounced consonants are a big cause of misunderstandings, so it’s important to point them out – especially when they occur at the start of a word.

In particular, we’ll want to focus on the P, T and K, and B, D and G sounds. Different languages pronounce these consonants in different ways. When speakers of Romance and Slavic languages make P, T and K sounds, they sound more like B, D and G sounds.

This leads to misunderstandings, even when the listener is a native speaker who is aware of the problem:

One time, I asked a Dutch person what was growing on some trees in an orchard, and he said, "Oh, those are pears." ... I got really scared and looked around because I thought he was remarking on some nearby bears.

Students who struggle with these sounds can practice pronouncing the P, T, and K sounds using the tissue technique. Basically, they hold a tissue in front of their face, and if they're pronouncing the sounds correctly, the tissue should fly forward (like in this video).

On the other hand, Korean students tend to release too much air when they pronounce the B, D, and G sounds at the start of words. This is why they say “pad” when they mean “bad” or “crate” when they mean “great.” We should point out these mistakes.

So we’ll want to point out all consonant mistakes, especially those involving the P, T and K, and B, D and G sounds. However, there is one exception: the TH sounds in “think” and “that.” Students don't need to master the TH sounds right away, because research shows that mispronouncing them rarely causes communication problems.

So if a student says “fink” instead of “think” or “dee” instead of “the,” it’s usually not worth the time to correct them. In fact, the TH sounds might eventually disappear from the English language!

Consonant Clusters

In addition to individual consonant sounds, students should also pay attention to consonant clusters, especially at the start of words.

Take the word “struggle” for example. There are two consonant clusters: “str” and “gl.” Japanese speakers of English might pronounce the word “struggle” as su-to-ra-gu-lu, while Taiwanese speakers might say srah-go. The Japanese version keeps all the consonant sounds, but inserts vowels between them. On the other hand, the Taiwanese version deletes the T and L consonants.

In general, vowel insertion doesn’t cause too many problems. However you might want to encourage students to insert slightly less obvious vowels, like “uh” instead of “oh” or “ah.” This is similar to how many native speakers pronounce the word “struggle”: strug-g(uh)l.

However, consonant deletion has been known to cause miscommunication, so we’ll need to point them out! Help your students produce consonant clusters, even if it means using extra vowel sounds.

Vowel Sounds

Compared to consonants, vowel sounds vary much more from region to region. The E sound probably has the most variation. For instance, New Zealand E’s often sound like I’s to North Americans. So we don’t need to impose our vowel sounds on our students.

Luckily, small vowel mistakes usually won’t cause misunderstandings. So it's not necessary to correct mistakes such as the pronunciation of “bed” as “bad,” especially when there is context (“I went to bad at twelve”).

However, there is one exception. Improper pronunciation of the "er" sound in “nurse” can lead to misunderstandings. Many learners replace this sound with an “ah” sound (as in “father”). Here are some examples of this causing problems (source):

1. A speaker from Myanmar said, “Have you seen any pearl beads at the shopping center?” but she pronounced pearl like “Paul.” Her listener did not understand.
2. A speaker from Japan said that she took a bus in the “early morning,” but pronounced “early” as “ah-lee.” Her listener heard “alimony” instead of “early morning.”

📌 Takeaways

To sum up, here are the main sounds to help students with:

So help students focus on these aspects of pronunciation first. Once they've mastered those, help them with chunking and nuclear stress, the next most important aspects of pronunciation. Happy tutoring!

• consonants
• lingua franca core
• vowels