AIM

To address important pronunciation issues for healthcare professionals from non-English speaking backgrounds.

BACKGROUND

Clear pronunciation is crucial to communicating well. It combines with accurate grammar and appropriate vocabulary to communicate meaning efficiently. If your pronunciation is not good, then people will not understand what you’re saying, even when your grammar and vocabulary are perfect.

Good pronunciation does not mean you have to sound like a native speaker, but that you are able to make your meaning clear to your audience. Australia is a country of migrants and your patients and colleagues are likely to include non-native speakers of English.

This resource looks at different aspects of pronunciation:

• Sounds (vowels and consonants - the building blocks of pronunciation)

• Intonation (the rise and fall of the voice to create interest and meaning)

• Stress (includes both word stress and sentence stress)

• Phrasing (chunking into units of meaning, including pausing and linking)

Click on the links above to learn more about each component.

ACTIVITIES

Each case has activities that focus on pronunciation.  Choose one of the pronunciation activities from the menu on the right.