Beyond Pronunciation: Why English Teachers Need Speech Training
Most experienced English teachers can explain a conditional sentence.
They can identify a relative clause, correct a tense error and probably produce an excellent lesson on phrasal verbs with very little preparation.
But ask them how to teach spoken English when a student's individual sounds are technically correct but they are still difficult to understand, however, and the conversation becomes much more complicated.
Is the student speaking too quickly? Is the rhythm wrong? Are the stressed words carrying enough weight? Are the vowels being reduced in unstressed syllables? Is the speaker running out of breath halfway through the sentence? Is the problem articulation, vocal energy, phrasing or simply the way the speaker is organising information through speech?
This is where traditional English language teacher training, pronunciation training for English teachers and even some TEFL professional development can become surprisingly thin.
Teaching English pronunciation is not just listing sounds
Most English pronunciation training begins with individual sounds.
The /θ/ in think. The difference between ship and sheep. The British (or American) pronunciation of a particular vowel.
These are obviously important. Vowels and consonants are part of intelligible speech and should form part of every English teacher's toolkit.
But spoken English does not happen one phoneme at a time. It happens in phrases. Clear English depends on stress, rhythm, weak forms, reductions, connected speech, pausing, pitch and intonation. Speakers organise meaning through the voice, not just the grammar. A student can pronounce every word in a sentence reasonably accurately and still be difficult to follow.
Experienced teachers recognise this instinctively. The challenge is knowing how to teach it properly once you have identified the problem.
The IPA is essential. But the IPA is not enough.
I am a strong advocate for teachers understanding the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - in fact, it surprises me even now when I meet TEFL Teachers and they tell me they either don’t use the chart or don’t understand it themselves (‘so how do you teach speech?!’)
For anyone interested in IPA training for English teachers, it provides a shared technical language for describing speech sounds accurately instead of relying on vague instructions such as, ‘listen to me and repeat’. (Check out my YouTube video about the IPA here if you’re interested.)
But transcription alone does not teach someone how to speak more clearly.
Knowing that a vowel is /ɪ/ rather than /iː/ doesn’t tell a teacher how to help a student who rushes through every sentence. Nor does it solve flat delivery, or explain why some sounds just disappear pear, or help the learner who reaches the end of every sentence with no breath or vocal energy left.
Speech is physical. This is one of the most important things I have learnt from working across English language teaching, pronunciation, speech and executive communication - the voice has to do something.
Advanced pronunciation teaching needs to become speech training
Executive communication coaching approaches spoken English differently. The first question is not:
"Is this grammatically correct?" But rather:
"What does the listener hear?"
Can the listener follow the speaker easily?
Does the speaker sound rushed?
Where does the important information land?
Does the voice support the message or fight against it?
This changes the way we think about teaching English pronunciation.
Breath affects pacing.
Stress affects intelligibility.
Rhythm affects listener effort.
Pausing helps organise information.
The modern goal of English pronunciation teaching is not to eliminate someone's accent. It’s to help speakers communicate with confidence and minimal listener effort. That requires teachers to understand not only English, but how speech works.
Many English teachers can hear the problem but cannot diagnose it
Excellent teachers often know that a student sounds unclear. They say:
"He needs to slow down."
"She needs to speak more clearly."
"Her pronunciation needs work."
"He sounds monotone."
Those observations are sensible, but they’re incomplete.
A speaker who sounds fast may actually need better phrasing.
A monotone speaker may need stronger sentence stress rather than more pitch movement.
Someone with "poor pronunciation" may have perfectly acceptable vowel and consonant production but weak articulation and ineffective connected speech.
If we diagnose the wrong problem, we teach the wrong solution. This is why advanced pronunciation training for English teachers needs to move beyond minimal pairs and isolated sounds. Teachers need practical listening skills.
The teacher's own voice matters too
Another subject rarely discussed in English teacher professional development is the teacher's own voice.
Teachers spend hours every day modelling spoken English. We explain, demonstrate, repeat, correct, encourage, present, and diagnose. And we do this whether we teach in classrooms or online. Our voice is one of our primary teaching tools.
Vocal authority does not mean speaking with Received Pronunciation (unless you want to.) But rather understanding how breath, pacing, stress, articulation, rhythm and vocal variety influence communication. If you’re teaching ESL:
Can you deliberately demonstrate sentence stress?
Can you exaggerate connected speech?
Can you control your pace?
Can you model clarity rather than simply describing it?
Those are all practical English teaching skills.
Practical speech training for English teachers
This thinking forms the basis of the Vox London One Day Intensive for English Language Professional Educators.
It is an advanced pronunciation course for English teachers, trainers and language professionals who want to become significantly more confident teaching spoken English. It is NOT a beginner's TEFL pronunciation workshop as it assumes you are already qualified and have some real-life teaching experience. The training combines practical IPA with techniques drawn from speech coaching and executive communication.
Participants work with:
pronunciation diagnosis
vowel and consonant production
connected speech
stress and rhythm
breath control
articulation
pacing
speech clarity
vocal authority
practical pronunciation teaching techniques
Teachers also receive ready-to-use lesson materials, classroom activities and practical strategies that can be used immediately with advanced English learners.
Continue developing your pronunciation teaching
The one-day intensive is designed as an immersive practical experience.
Teachers who want to continue developing their skills can also explore the English Teacher Toolkit (ETT), Mary’s growing collection of practical resources, lesson ideas and classroom materials for English language professionals. Together, Vox London and ETT aim to bridge the gap between traditional language teaching and modern speech teaching.
The future of English pronunciation teaching
English is now spoken internationally across accents, cultures and first languages.
As teachers, our role is no longer to help every learner imitate one particular accent, but to support them producing spoken English that is clear, intelligible and easy to understand. That requires more than teaching sounds.
It requires teaching speech.
If English language teaching has evolved, then pronunciation teaching for English teachers must evolve too.