Conclusions

Cinthia Amador

    To begin with, in my opinion, having an intelligible pronunciation should be one of the most important goals we should pursue as foreign language learners. Although, we have to be aware that perfecting this skill takes time and that along the way we are going to make some errors. These are part of the learning process, so they should not be taken as a failure but as an opportunity to get to know ourselves better and learn. Personally, I learned a lot about pronunciation by detecting the errors that Spanish speakers make. For instance, the influence of the L1 has a lot to do with the errors in pronunciation that we make. In addition, we are generally not used to thinking in another language and lack of practice or exposure to the target language causes us to make errors.

    Definitely, this assignment helped me to learn many ways to identify pronunciation errors, for that reason, I have no problem identifying them. However, finding ways to solve the problem was difficult, because I can identify the problem from my experience making those kinds of errors. Thus, I had to search and read a lot about pronunciation errors to identify what kind of activities can be used to solve the errors in question. Finally, I must say that I enjoyed doing this project because it helped me to increase my knowledge and find ways to improve my pronunciation. Moreover, what I liked the most about making this blog, were the games we developed here, we enunciated each activity with very clear instructions and purposes, so people can go for the activity they need to improve their pronunciation error. Besides, I loved the design of our blog. It is clear that I am going to use this tool to keep practicing and improving my pronunciation and of course I plan to share this material with my future students as well.

Kenia Zambrano

    First of all, I would like to say that through this experience I have learned to understand in a better way the reasons why Spanish speakers make errors when speaking English as a second language. And when speaking a second language, the key point should be to pronounce correctly what we want to communicate, sounding like a native speaker is secondary and is only acquired with a lot of practice and effort. Making errors is not wrong, what is worse is not working to correct them and making the error part of our pronunciation. In this blog, we identified four of the most common failures that make it difficult for native Spanish speakers to communicate clearly and effectively. It was not so difficult to design the exercises that can help us strengthen our speaking skills, because as students, we know exactly which mistakes we often make and that our teachers correct us in the classroom.

    Finally, in doing this project I really enjoyed working with my partner and discussing our opinions about activities that will help improve our English pronunciation. I think it will be very useful for people who are looking to increase their language proficiency independently. As a future teacher, I would like to apply these games in my classes because they help learners to have a better understanding of different topics. I believe that the important thing about teaching is to gain the student's trust by doing group activities where they can help each other and have fun during the learning process. Learning a language does not have to be boring, it just depends on ourselves to practice to reach the goal and communicate effectively.