Murphy's Laws and Linking
I found this a very effective lesson to combine pronunciation practice with
culture learning. First of all, we (speaking listening class for international
teaching assistants) talked about what Murphy's Laws are and where they come from.
Then, we went through some laws I provided on a handout. The students
each selected one law and worked on it in terms of linking, pauses, and pronunciation.
Then they got together in pairs and monitored each other. At the end of the lesson,
each student had to teach the right pronunciation to the rest of the class.
The students had a lot of fun with this activity, escpecially since it
introduced some colloquialisms as well as some feature of the American culture.
A possible follow-up could be that the students try to create their own Murphy's Laws.
Dave's ESL Cafe Copyright © 2008 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved.
