EFL Pronunciation Practice
by use of
Limericks
On many occasions I've been asked by teachers and students to
recommend materials for pronunciation practice. I've rather despised
most of the feeble sentences I've seen offered in textbooks for such
purposes which packed in a large number of words containing a
particular sound but were completely boring and silly, like the ghastly
"rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain".
Some books have offered as such materials light verses or
nursery
rhymes but the latter especially have very often the disadvantage of
incorporating archaic or other unusual words, senses or grammatical
features or requiring abnormal pronunciations to make them rhyme or
scan.
The reading well of serious verse is an extremely difficult
thing to
achieve as witness the very few even very highly educated native
speakers of English who can manage to do so with success. It is
notorious that the authors of much respected verse very often read
aloud their own work quite badly.
Very few EFL students should ever be encouraged to attempt to
read
aloud
serious verse. On the other hand non-serious verse which has been
written with the sort of excessive rhythmic regularity which thereby
makes it bad as poetry can, I believe, be put to good use for the
encouragement of those who might benefit from practising material which
embodies English typical conversational rhythms.
With this in mind I produced numbers of limericks for rhythm
practice including a dozen or so which can be used to focus at the same
time on certain vowel contrasts that many EFL learners need to
cultivate. I shall give some of them below after a brief note on the
limerick form.
A limerick consists of a five-line stanza with, in all,
thirteen
stresses. The first two lines constitute a rhyming couplet with three
stresses in each of its lines. The two lines which follow it are also a
rhyming couplet but with only two stresses in each. The final clinching
line matches the first in number of stresses and also rhymes with it.
The rhyme scheme is thus aa bb a.
The best examples of the form may additionally incorporate
further
internal rhymes but these are not necessary defining features. The
typical content of a limerick is a potted story about a person who is
indicated at the beginning of its first line and usually accorded a
geographical attribution at the end of that line. Some limericks may
incorporate puns and many have
tended to be at least slightly improper as, you are cautioned, will be
evidenced below.
Some limericks for pronunciation practice:
Note that in the following first 13 limericks a first
vowel-type
occurs as at least every stressed vowel in the longer lines viz numbers
1, 2 and 5, and that at least every stressed vowel in the shorter lines
viz numbers 3 and 4 is a similar vowel often confused with it by EFL
learners. The remaining ones are offered for rhythm practice alone.
1) Vowel of see
versus that of sit