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Pronunciation is not based on spelling hence each sound is represented by one or morę than one written letter. Besides it is important, as stressed by Tench, to remember “any letter of English represents morę than one sound, or it may not represent any sound at all” (1981:5). This phenomenon (i.e. lack of consistency between spelling and pronunciation) is well represented by the letter seąuence ‘ough’ in the following examples:

‘though’ - rhymes with ‘slow’

‘through’ - rhymes with ‘true’

‘thought’ - rhymes with ‘taut’

‘thorough’ - rhymes with ‘colour’

‘cough’ — rhymes with ‘off’

‘tough’ - rhymes with ‘stuff’

‘bough’ - rhymes with ‘now’

‘hough’ - rhymes with ‘lock’

Other examples of such discrepancies are numerous, take ‘sh’ spelt variously just as the examples suggest: ‘ship’, ‘passion’, ‘ration’, ‘Asia’, ‘conscious’, ‘Confucian’, ‘issue’, ‘machinę’, ‘luxury’, ‘fuchsia’; or ‘ee’ in ‘me’, ‘meet’, ‘meat’, ‘mete’, ‘people’, ‘grief’, ‘grieve’, ‘conceit’, ‘conceive’, ‘key’, ‘quay’, ‘machinę’, ‘pizza’, amoeba’, ‘mediaeval’. Various examples of the sort are abundant and it is the teacher’s task to make stunts aware of the situation and differences of this system as compared to learners’ mother tongue.

11.1.5. Focusing on difficult sounds

Words, as every learner knows, are composed of individual sounds, otherwise called phonemes. They are represented by various phoneticT'symbols; because “there is no one-to-one correspondence between written letters and spoken sounds. Thus the ‘c’ of ‘ćat’ is pronounced differently from the ‘c’ of ‘cease’ but is the same as the ‘c’ of ‘coffeewKl Different spellings can have the same sounds too: ‘piane’ and ‘gain’ both have the same vowel sound, but they are spelt differently” (Harmer, 1998:50).

There is, as a rule, no need to teach English sounds in isolation because leamers are capable of ‘picking up’ the sound system by listening to various input (teacher, tapes, native speakers) and thanks to practising words and structures. However, certain sounds do cause difficulty and then it could be advisable to practise such a sound or cluster to avoid trouble later on (based on Doff, 1988).

Look at the table below, taken from Doff Teach English: Teacher’s Workbook (1988: 44) as a possible procedurę to be adopted for such means:

Say the sound alone
Say the sound in a word
Contrast it with other sounds
Write words on the board
Explain how to make the sound
Get students to repeat the sound in chorus
Get individual students to repeat the sound

The teacher ought to decide which of these steps are most important and mark their answers in the spaces provided making use of them accordingly.

According to Doff (1988:114), no such thing as a single correct answer exists, but the following seem especially important:

—i to say the sound clearly in isolation for students to focus on it,

—    to say it in one or two words,

PS to make students repeat the sound as a group and individually,

—    in case similar sounds are confused, the teacher ought to contrast the sounds so that the difference is clearly heard,

—    to describe in simple terms how the sound is madę if leamers experience problems producing it,

pp- not to write the words on board, otherwise students might get confused and their attention will shift from pronunciation (which is the aim) to spelling.

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