Pronunciation skills: The muscle buttons and vowels /iː/ or /uː/

Did you know that pronunciation is physical? Watch the following videos and then read the teaching tips below for practical ways of taking pronuciation into your classroom.

Tip 1: Familiarization

Familiarize yourself with /iː/ and /uː/ by identifying objects around your house or staffroom with these sounds. Add a sticky post-it to each object of /iː/ or /uː/. Then each time you see the object say the word, followed by the sound.

You can then take this into class when you feel confident. Enlarge the phonemes /iː/ and /uː/, and stick them on either side of the board. Take certain objects (or photos of objects) in and ask your students to place them by their related sound. Invite peer correction to help students place their objects correctly. Then feed back.

Tip 2: Practice

Poetry or pop music is a great way to bring sounds into the classroom, especially if the sounds are repeated many times throughout. You can hand out phonemes of /iː/ or /uː/ to students and ask them to hold up the sound every time they hear a word with the sound in it. Alternatively, try splitting the class in half and have half of the class with /iː/ and the other with /uː/. At the end, ask who held up the sounds most and with which words.

Have fun with pronunciation! For these sounds, The Jungle Book ‘I Wanna Be Like You (The Monkey Song)’ works perfectly, especially the chorus and the first verse. For example:

Ooh-bi-doo, I wanna be like you

I want to walk like you, talk like you, too

You see it’s true, an ape like me

Can learn to be like you, too

Lyrics can be found online:http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/classicdisney/iwannabelikeyou.htm or http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/lucywoodward/iwannabelikeyouthemonkeysong.html

For the recording itself, try the following link with the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEEPaYD5KZE

Or the original version without the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_5BDzntb68&list=RDG_5BDzntb68#t=34