Improvement of Teaching Unit: Enhancing Students' Pronunciation of English Phonemes

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to help the students in the first year of Baccalaureate to improve their English skills in a form that is commonly overlooked: pronunciation. Thus, they will be able to communicate more effectively in international contexts, as English is the lingua franca that they will be using. These students have been observed during a three-week period in order to seek their general weaknesses in this matter, and a teaching unit has been created whose lessons focus on improving them. The chosen pronunciation aspects have been three. Firstly, the pronunciation of -es and -ed endings in nouns and verbs. Secondly, the appearance of an intrusive e in words starting in sp- and st-. Thirdly, the correct pronunciation of -tion, -sion, -ssion, -cian and -tian endings