PRONUNCIATION TIC TAC TOE - long schwa

Not to beat around the bush, straight to the rules:

1. Choose a sound you want to practice, e.g.          ɜː;
2. write its phonetic form on the whiteboard;
3. choose 9 words with that sound, e.g.
    word, work, bird, thirty, turn, journey, early, heard, service,

    (you can point out that 

       * it's possible for a single sound to have many different written forms - and that's what makes English pronunciation hard to master,

       * this sound usually includes "r" in the written form);

4. practice how to say the words;
5. draw a table ... like this:

6. divide the class into groups (you can have more than two groups)

7. assign each group a symbol, e.g. o - x - Δ ;

8. decide which group starts the game; 

9. a group wins the square if each member of the group pronounces the word correctly.

That's basically it. 

Enjoy!

THE ELLEN, HUGH LAURIE & SLANG

Here comes the video,
quite catchy with teenagers;
they watch "The Ellen Show" and know Dr House very well.
Last but not least - it's dangerous: you may end up laughing out loud while watching!

Just ask your students to draw a table like this:

or like this:

then enjoy the show while your students write the words and / or the definitions!


... oh - I've almost forgotten ... the video ;)