Best pronunciation games for your English classes

How much time in your lesson do you spend practicing pronunciation with your students? The older the students, the less, because there are things more important, such as complex grammar or new vocabulary. 

During his workshop, Adrian Underhill once said:

It is difficult to disagree because it's hardly possible to find a teacher who would dedicate an entire lesson to pronunciation. 

If we help students improve their pronunciation, they will be able to communicate better in English both in class and outside of school, because very often misunderstandings occur due to incorrect pronunciation.

Today, we offer you a selection of games for young learners, teenagers and adults that will add more variety and more practice of English pronunciation to your classes.

They also like repeating new sounds, copying pronunciation, and they will not miss a chance to get up and move in class.

• English songs are a perfect tool for practicing pronunciation with young learners. They can sing and dance to phonics songs. With the help of such a total physical response, children remember even complex words, sentences and intonation much better. At first glance, singing songs is a very simple exercise, but it is extremely effective.

• Pronunciation Bingo is also a very effective game for memorizing the correct pronunciation of individual sounds or words. To play it, prepare Bingo cards with separate words for each phoneme you want to repeat. You can make them in a text editor or use Bingo Card Generator. Its settings will help you create cards that are right for your students. Then the order is as follows: the teacher shows the students a card with a phoneme, for example, / e /, and pronounces this sound. Students should find the word containing this sound and cross it out. The game can be played as a whole class, in pairs or groups. You will need several sets of cards. 

If this version of the game is a bit difficult, students can just name the sound, and their partners have to find the word in their Bingo cards.

And in this video, there is another interesting variation of this game. Check it out!

• Rhyming – these are activities that focus on teaching children to distinguish phonemes. Therefore, activities should focus on how the words sound. Cards with images and printed words are suitable for such tasks. 

You can play the Rhyming Bingo or Rhyming Memory depending on the needs of your students. These are the simplest games and easy to adapt.

But they can also enjoy games and interesting handouts. In addition to the traditional Rhyming Memory Game, there are other interesting activities.

Correct the teacher

So give them such an opportunity. Your task is to read aloud a sentence with or without errors, and students must say whether it is right or wrong, and correct your mistakes. It’s going to be fun!

Minimal Pairs

Make sets of minimal pairs and write each word on a separate card / sheet of paper. Divide the class into two teams and have each team line up in front of the board. 

The first students in the team keep their hands behind their backs. Show students two cards, for example, 14 and 40. Say aloud one of the words: fourteen. Students hit the right card. The one who hits first must use the word in the sentence to get a score for the team.

Syllables Snap

Distribute a set of cards to each student. They take turns turning over the cards on which the words are written. If two words have the same number of syllables, the first person to say “Snap” and / or tap the cards wins all the cards that have been dealt at that time.

Pronunciation Maze

In the diagonal grid, write a line of words with a common sound, such as the same vowel sound, between the upper left corner and the lower right corner. In all the other cells, write words that people think have the same sound, but they don't. 

Students must get from the starting point to the end of the correct route. After they finish, together with the students, use drilling to say the words on the right route, and then all the surrounding words with different sounds.

It is always useful to use authentic materials and language from the field of knowledge or study of your students to create the appropriate context. 

For example, if you teach lessons to students in the hospitality industry, teach them to pronounce flavors, products on their menu, or explain today's special with the correct stress, etc. It's all a great learning context.

Same or different

Distribute worksheets with the words you want them to compare to students. Highlight the words in different colors on sheets A and B. 

First, students read only the word to decide whether the pronunciation is the same or not, and then they read their different sentences to see if the context gives them any clues. 

When students have finished with all the words, they should pronounce these words to each other and then look at each other's worksheets.

Sound chain

 The teacher gives the sound, and each student has to come up with the word containing it. The next student repeats the previous words in the correct order before adding their own, or, as an option, ask your class to make up a story with words they came up with while playing with a sound chain, in groups or together.

Tongue twisters

Practicing to say them can create a very lively and fun atmosphere, as everyone tries to do everything possible, but eventually focuses on their own pronunciation and speed. This kind of task is well suited for both team building and for students who are comfortable learning one on one. 

As we can see, there are a lot of options on how you can spice up your pronunciation lessons. We always need to remember that whatever the age of our students is, we always need to have pronunciation activities in our agenda and have many ways to implement such activities in our lessons.