Date of Graduation

Fall 12-12-2025

Document Access

Project/Capstone - Global access

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

College/School

School of Education

Department/Program

Teaching English as a Second Language

First Advisor

Dr. Sedique Popal

Abstract

There is inadequate education and training for Adult ESL teachers on how to teach pronunciation, especially the essential suprasegmental feature of intonation. This leads to the perpetuated issue of lowered intelligibility amongst ESOL learners, which limits their opportunities in English-speaking settings. Through the provision of innovative curriculum and teacher training videos that share pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on the subject of suprasegmental phonemes, these issues can be addressed.

Any curriculum developed to teach suprasegmentals must consider the role of creative and engaging activities to inspire learners, comprehensibility and intelligibility, embodied pronunciation techniques, and the impact of explicit, communicative, and task-based curriculum. Additionally, the curriculum must fill two important gaps on how to teach suprasegmentals in context: (a) teaching learners how to connect with their breath (i.e. when to inhale in a thought group) to support and enhance their suprasegmental specificity and accuracy; (b) teaching learners how to hear and feel the difference between a high note versus a low note.

With my thesis I attend to these gaps by creating simple and efficacious visual aids for the most pressing suprasegmental phonemes, connecting breathwork and inhaling to thought groups, in order to sustain vocal power, relieve stress and anxiety of learner in public speaking context, and center their mental focus, and secondly interviewing experts in the field on ESOL teaching and pronunciation teaching. The curricular design includes six 90-minute lesson plans for adult ESL learners. Each lesson plan is equipped with a fully formatted Canva slide deck, worksheets, answer keys, audio files for listening activities, and teacher training videos including PCK on pronunciation teaching.

I recommend Adult ESL/EFL teachers incorporate and/or adapt this curriculum for the beginning of any semester to build small talk skills and rapport amongst their students. Providing the tools to stay calm and speak with clarity and confidence in only six lessons will save teachers time on lesson planning, prevent fossilization, and endow students with lifelong voice and pronunciation techniques to strengthen their communication skills far beyond the classroom.

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