The following activity is designed to help Tina (sample A) to improve her pronunciation of diphthongs.
I would start off by explaining what diphthongs are - sounds formed by the combination of two vowels- and why it is important to pronounce them correctly - a lot of English words have diphthongs in them and, if we can pronounce them correctly, people will be able to understand us better.
There are some vowels in English that do not exist in Korean such as “au”, for example, and this may create difficulties with the pronunciation of diphthongs.
I would focus on three diphthongs at a time. The sounds that I hear in her speech that are often pronounced incorrectly are - au, ou and ei.
I would write them on the board and read them out loud and then ask her to read them out loud with me.
After that, I would present a table with three columns. It can be simply written on the board or created digitally. Each column would consist of words with a certain diphthong.
/ ei / / ou / / au / Wait Oh How Wage No About Cave Most Now Same Phone Around
Place Open Mountain
First, I would read the words from each column myself. I would do it slowly, breaking them into syllables. Then, I would ask the students to read the words themselves and I would correct their mistakes. After that, I would ask the students to read the words themselves and try to self-correct the mistakes as they go. Self correction, in my opinion, is a great technique to help students memorize the correct pronunciation and correct themselves while speaking or reading in the future.
References
Tatiana Polushkina. ( April 6, 2013). IELTS Speaking Part 3 : Hobbies ( Band 3). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48yr93hwvCk&feature=youtu.be
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