Of midtech, cultural misunderstandings and pronunciation

This week, I had another mishappening: a student said that she had traveled to the US, and while she was there, she went to a dinner party with her husband and some of his friends. During dinner, she decided to tell some stories about her kids, and she didn't understand the look of sheer shock on people when she said her kids were 'terrible'. She told me: "teacher, they are really terrible kids!" 


However, it took me some time (and knowledge of her L1) to understand what she meant: it is common to call kids "terrible" when they are super energetic. So, she was actually offending her own kids at a dinner party, without any knowledge of doing so!

And these kind of mistakes don't happen in cultural exchanges only. Students are very rarely aware of the troubles mispronunciation can cause. For instance, this week I was teaching the long and short vowel difference in "can" and "can't". Well, you can only imagine what my teenage student actually said. And to make matters worse, he looked straight at me and said: you "can't". 

Well, it wasn't pretty.

So I took it up to improve this aspect of my groups: I want them to have a better pronunciation, and a better idea of how cultural exchanges work. It doesn't mean they will speak perfectly, but at least good enough not to get beaten when they visit other countries.

So I was hanging out in my house, winding down after a full day of teaching, and I was watching Comedy Central. I was watching a Brazilian show called "A Culpa É Do Cabral", which means "It´s Cabral´s Fault", referring to the man who allegedly discovered Brazil. 
In this show, they bring comedians from different regions of Brazil to describe, and make fun of, hilariously, our cultural differences. And these Brazilian comedians accomplished what I deemed impossible: to point out our differences in a non-offensive and very funny way.

That was when I had an idea for a lesson. I wanted to accomplish exactly that in my classroom: bring up the cultural differences of English speaking countries and our country, and make sure they pronounce the language correctly. 

So I divided the class into pairs: one student had a word or sentence to speak, and the other had to guess what the word or sentence was while listening to very loud music on headphones. 

So each time the student with the headphones got the word or sentence right, the pair would get a point. I made it into a game to make things more interesting, but you can play along according to your student's traits. 

 The point is to raise awareness as to how the mouth should move while pronouncing certain sounds, as to avoid any confusion. 

And the things they would say! One student said "bird", his pair understood "popcorn"!

It is a fun game, and midtech, because all you need is a headphone (it doesn't need to be a professional one to the point of deafening your students, but it has to be fairly good) and any music player: it can be even your phone!

After they get the game, you can start showing different idiomatic expressions, such as "He's all hat and no cattle" (commonly used in Texas, but unknown to the rest of the globe), and "schmuck" (which I used pretty often in New York, but many people don't know what it means). You can explore cultural differences and pronunciation at the same time!

Fun, easy and meaningful.