Lesson Topics: accents, pronunciation
Skill Focus: Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 2 hours
Lesson Plan Download: foreign-accent-lesson-upper-intermediate-062025.docx
- Foreword: Page two has a focus on pronunciation, centered on a famous paragraph used in linguistics. Step 1 of this activity should be fun for everyone (an accent quiz), but Step 2 might be challenging for teachers unfamiliar with teaching pronunciation, or it just might not be what you want to focus on in your lesson. If that's the case, delete Step 2 from the lesson. -MB
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about accents.
- Before watching the lesson's video, students preview four idioms and match them to their definitions.
- The video, at 2:21 minutes in length (AmE pronunciation), describes a bizarre phenomenon called Foreign Accent Syndrome. People who have this disorder tend to have a medical procedure (unrelated to speech) and then, to their surprise, wake up with a foreign accent. Though the video focuses on this bizarre condition, the remainder of the lesson focuses on accents in general.
- The video is followed by comprehension and follow-up questions.
- Next, students match vocabulary from the passage to definitions. Then students form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- The lesson has two debate prompts, including one about the effectiveness of accent reduction language programs.
- Next, students play a game trying to identify particular foreign accents. The game is offered by ELT Buzz and each speaker uses the famous Stella Passage, used in the field of linguistics. Next, as pronunciation practice, students analyze the word stress and connected speech components of the passage, and then try to pronounce it properly themselves.
- The first roleplay describes an authentic situation in the EFL field. It pits a teacher with a Scottish accent against the Director of Studies at a language school who only wants to teachers whose accents are popular with clients. The second roleplay is between a pop artist with a Mancunian accent (Manchester) and her agent who wants her to adopt an American accent.
- Next, students review three famous quotations and the lesson's collocations.
- Finally, students review vocabulary before discussing some final discussion questions. The lesson has one writing prompt as well.
UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2/C1) Lesson on Accents & Foreign Accent Syndrome
UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2/C1) Lesson on Accents: Warm-up
- Are there many accents of your native language? What kind of accent do you have?
- Are people who speak with certain accents treated differently?
- If you woke up tomorrow with a different accent, which would you want? (English or in your native language)
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.
Comprehension Question Answer Key
- ...
- She had jaw surgery to fix an overbite
- Very rare — only about 100 cases in the last 100 years
- People assume she is faking the accent or don’t believe her
- …
- She is doing speech therapy to try to regain her original (American) accent
Vocabulary: 1-through and through, 2-genuine, 3-syndrome, 4-the real deal, 5-freak out, 6-underwent, 7-hilarious, 8-refer to, 9-surgery
Collocations 1-d, 2-a, 3-b, 4-e, 5-c.