By Ana Paula Biazon Rocha 

PronSIG’s Pre-Conference Event (PCE), Games and gamification in pronunciation teaching: Bridging theory and practice, will be held on 07 April 2025, both in person and online. This year’s PCE is a celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Mark Hancock’s Pronunciation Games, released in 1995 by Cambridge University Press. This resource book has become one of the fundamental texts for teaching pronunciation. It goes beyond the so-called ‘listen and repeat’ practices as it helps learners understand what they are doing, and learn pronunciation in a practical, meaningful and fun way. To help us prepare for the PCE, in this blog post, we will review Hancock’s book, especially two famous games from it, as well as meet our speakers. Are you ready?

1. Pronunciation Games (1995, CUP)

As mentioned above, Pronunciation Games was released in the mid-1990s, in the height of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which dominated mainstream English Language Teaching (ELT). During this period, pronunciation became less emphasised in the classroom, as many believed that students would ‘incidentally’ acquire it through communicative activities. This attitude was reflected in many of the coursebooks published at that time, where pronunciation was often confined to a small, isolated box within a lesson spread, separate from the main content. This placement reinforced the idea that pronunciation was an add-on rather than an integral part of the lesson. Within this teaching scenario, Hancock’s book quickly became one of the few available resources, and in many cases, the only resource, for teaching pronunciation. 

If you have never had the opportunity to have a look at Pronunciation Games, it is divided into three sections (A. Syllables and stress, B. Sound awareness and C. Connected speech). Hancock includes class instructions for each game, including student level, approximate time, preparation, game rules, answer keys, among others. These are easy to understand, and he always suggests that teachers can make their own versions of the games proposed. 

Regarding Hancock’s choice of using games to have students practise pronunciation, he argues that ‘they engage learners in a challenge and, at the same time, highlight an aspect of pronunciation’ (p. 1). He also explains that the book aims to raise students’ awareness of pronunciation, helping them become more independent learners.

The success of Pronunciation Games was certainly influential in Hancock’s later work, PronPack (2017), a successful collection of resource books for teaching pronunciation which includes puzzles, workouts, pairworks and poems. The most recent additions focus on pronunciation for listening, namely Connected Speech for Listeners (2022), Words in Action for Listeners (2023), and The Minimal Pair Collection (2024). I highly recommend any of these books to enhance students’ pronunciation practice in your lessons.

2. Two games from Hancock’s book

Two of my favourite games in Hancock’s book are as follows:

a. Stress maze (Section A, Game A10, p. 32-33)

This game is designed for pre-intermediate learners. In order to practise word stress patterns, they are given a maze with different words. ‘The object of the game is to find a path from the entrance in the top left side of the maze to the exit in the bottom right’ (p. 33). To do so, they should find words that have the same stress pattern, for example:
 

  • stress on the first syllable: hamburger, Saturday, regular, possible, yesterday, passenger, holiday, traveller, and so on.

This is a really clever way of focusing students’ attention on word stress, and they usually react quite positively to it. You can find a similar example of a maze for elementary and pre-intermediate learners to practise stress in two-syllable nouns here.

b. Pronunciation journey (Section B, Game B2, p. 35-36)

This game is designed for elementary learners to practise minimal pairs. Each student receives a map with numbered junctions and various destinations around the world. At each junction, they must choose to turn left or right. The left side represents one sound, for example, /ɪ/ as in ‘ship’, while the right side represents another, such as /iː/ as in ‘sheep’. The teacher reads a word, such as ‘sleep’, and students must turn in the direction that corresponds to the correct sound, in this case, right for /iː/. After hearing four words, all students should arrive at the same final destination:

  • 1. sleep (right), 2. milk (left), 3. fish (left), 4. meat (right) → Paris

This exercise enhances listening comprehension and can be used to practice minimal pairs as well as other pronunciation features. It is highly engaging and effective, especially when students arrive at different destinations and must retrace their steps to identify misheard sounds. You can find a similar example of a pronunciation journey for pre-intermediate learners to practise unstressed final syllables here.

3. PCE: Meet our speakers

In our PCE, Mark Hancock himself will tell us about his book: Pronunciation Games: The Making Of. This will be our first session of the day. Then, Wayne Rimmer’s presentation, Gamification: rewards and booby traps, will focus on the importance of a principled approach to gamification, where students play and have fun but also learn from it. Rimmer is a former PronSIG coordinator, and we are glad to see him again. Next, Victor Medina and I, both current PronSIG committee members, will critically analyse the use of pronunciation games in the classroom. Our session is entitled Pronunciation Games: The whole meal or just the dessert in pronunciation teaching? Finally, we will run a teachers’ tips session on using pronunciation games. Unmissable, right?! 

You can find more information about our PCE here. We hope you enjoy it. And stay tuned, because our April blog post will be about the highlights from our PCE.

For more discussions, ideas and tips on how to teach pronunciation, please check previous posts here. Don’t forget to leave your comments below and follow PronSIG on social media. 

References

Hancock, M. (1995). Pronunciation Games. Cambridge University Press.

Hancock , M. (2017). PronPack Volumes 1-4. Hancock McDonald ELT.

Hancock, M. (2022). PronPack: Connected Speech for Listeners. Hancock McDonald ELT.

Hancock, M. (2023). PronPack: Words in Action for Listeners. Hancock McDonald ELT.

Hancock, M. (2024). PronPack: The Minimal Pairs Collection. Hancock McDonald ELT.