This week, while reading our Harmer materials on pronunciation, I was surprised to find how little time I spend on such things, in comparison with what I assumed I normally do. Most of my classes are very content-based, with set vocabulary. Often Korean teachers stay a step ahead of the foreign teachers in order to pre-teach vocabulary in Korean-English. The reasoning for such, according to discussions with our director, is that students will be prepared and fully "understand" vocabuary and grammar concepts before review and production in our classes. I find, however, that students often leave a pre-taught lesson remembering little of the grammar and the vocabulary words' meanings even if they are able to reproduce the sounds of English pronunciation. During many lessons, I choose to work on vocabulary for only one or two words. After having students repeat vocabulary and begin the practice stage, pronunciation problems become apparent in context.

The lesson I was able to video this week is a phonics segment of Dolphin Class (second year kindergarteners), which I'm not sure counts as a pronunciation lesson. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching the progression of the lesson and found it useful to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in MIC.

Recently, I've been pleased with how much I remembered to allow students to dialogue and "interrupt" teacher talk, but when working on pronuciation, I find it difficult to carefully listen/ help students self-correct while they are trying to interact with the pronunciation itself. I'm easily distracted by many voices, especially if it's not a chorused answer. Asking young students to chorus a sound is difficult, because they need their own time to get their articulators and places of articulation in line and produce what's being asked of them. I found myself frustrated when they didn't seem to "know" which 'oo' sound was being asked about, but I realized later they were trying to carefully reproduce the sound itself. Matching their head knowledge with pronunciation ability was more difficult than I was able to sympathize with.

I think my MIC's are getting stronger, but I still find it difficult to balance making things comprehensible with overdoing my explanation and not allowing them to negotiate meaning.

I also should have allowed them to identify and mark the sounds in their books in SILENCE instead of playing their song, the sounds of which could confuse them as they worked on their task. Production of pronunciation work still baffles me. How to help them "own" a sound other than just repetition, hearing and saying it in context....?