Ágnes Dunai
From pronunciation to storytelling: complete approach to comfortable intelligibility with Adrian Underhill 3/07/2017-14/07/2017
Bell School Cambridge
It was about 15 years ago when I had the opportunity to take part in a formal college dinner in Pembroke College, Cambridge. It was a fantastic experience but it still seems almost unreal. Anyway, that was the moment when I wished I could be a Cambridge student one day.
Well, this summer I was and I studied in Homerton College for two weeks.
Two of my dreams came true this summer with the help of Erasmus +. I was a student in a Cambridge college for two weeks and I did a course led by Adrian Underhill, the pronunciation guru of the ELT world.
Homerton College
This is the room of a university student in West Hall in Homerton College.
As for the other dream, I have been using Adrian Underhill’s book ‘Sound Foundation’ and his pronunciation videos in my teaching for a long time. I love his approach to teaching sounds to EFL learners. No wonder, I had always wanted to meet him in person and learn from him.
The Great Hall - the beautiful neo-gothic dining hall
Adrian Underhill and his phonemic chart
It sounds far too good to be true, doesn't it. BUT, dear reader, do not be misled. ‘A dream doesn’t become reality through magic, it takes sweat, determination and hard work’ as Colin Powell says. That is how the Karolina School had successful Erasmus + applications in two consecutive years.
There were 14 of us on the course, I was together with Polish, Slovakian, Russian, Dutch, British, Brazilian, Belgian and Spanish teachers of English as a foreign language. All of us were eager to learn as much as possible from our brilliant course instructor.
Learning with and from each other.
During the first week Mr Underhill introduced us to his unique phonemic chart, showed us techniques and gave us tips on teaching the pronunciation of each individual English sound to our students. Here is the link to his pronunciation videos: http://www.macmillanenglish.com/pronunciation/videos-with-adrian-underhill/
Unfortunately pronunciation is considered to be ‘the Cinderella of language teaching’, as he put it. Most teachers forget about it, though it is significant not only for speaking but also for listening, writing and reading. It should be taught from the ‘point of purchase’, from the very first English lesson.
From individual sounds we went on to words and then connected speech. Word stress and sentence stress were the two key elements we played and experimented with.
Demonstrating sentences stress with Cusiniaire rods.
The second week was a fantastic “door-opener” for me, we worked on oral story telling. Each of the participants had to tell a story without notes at a ‘Story telling festival’ at the end of the week. Why was it a “door opener”? Because it opened doors in myself, towards others and in others. I realised that storytelling is a fantastic tool for the teller to discover his/her inner self, and for setting the listeners on an inner journey to discover what is in him/her.
Besides Mr Underhill’s thought-provoking sessions, I had the opportunity to take part in several other brilliant workshops and plenaries held by well-known trainers of Bell Education Trust.
The workshops let us have a glimpse of what students on other courses were doing and studying. I attended two workshops, one on contemporary English and another one on British Culture.
Contemporary English workshop
If you would like to follow the proverb ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ while you are in Britain, or you just simply would like to understand British films and books more, I recommend you the book ‘Watch the British’ by Kate Fox. It is a brilliant guideline to find your way in British culture.
Silvana Richardson, academic director of Bell teacher training, had a fantastic plenary on the evergreen topic ‘The non-native teacher’. It was especially reassuring as she herself is a non-native teacher of English.
Silvana Richardson
If you have any inferiority complex because you are a non-native English language teacher, please read ‘The Non-Native Teacher’ by Péter Medgyes. It is a wonderful book by our internationally acknowledged professor from ELTE.
Bell also cares greatly about the social lives of its students. There were a lot of fantastic evening programmes organised for us. However, it meant that I got really worn out by the end of the second week.
Here are some pics showing how busy I was.
Sightseeing in Cambridge Punting on the River Cam
Playing Croquet on the college green. By the way, Homerton College is the only college which allows students to walk on the lawn.
Pub night at the Flying Pig
Hamlet as part of the Shakespeare Festival at St. John’s College.
A formal college dinner which was followed by Mr Underhill and Mr Pugliese's Jazz concert.
British culture workshop