A Pronunciation Coaching Experience
An invitation to a pronunciation workshop for ESOL teachers
Pronunciation Gold is one of Blue Noun’s high-impact language sessions.
These are carefully designed interventions that sit within our English holidays, helping guests make meaningful progress in a specific area of language. They aren’t separate from the holiday experience—they’re woven into it.
Most of these sessions are private, created around the needs of the guest taking the holiday.
This one is different.
The guest joining us this week is an English teacher. Rather than arranging a private pronunciation session, we decided to build something bigger: a workshop that combines expert pronunciation coaching with voice, creativity and boldness.
We’re also opening this session to a small number of fellow English teachers and coaches.
Some people think that if we pause to enjoy views and trees, that’s all we do, but we are more academically robust than that.
Pronunciation Gold is our newest high-impact language session.
A Quick Introduction to a New Way of Language Learning
Blue Noun exists because, for many people, language learning has felt rushed and uncomfortable for years.
People carry that feeling into real-life conversations. They begin to rush themselves. They answer before they’ve had time to think. They become wary of experimenting.
They never take risks with their English because risking feels so alarming.
One problem is that pronunciation work needs you to be vulnerable.
A Blue Noun ‘Bridge’
Bridges are our expert interventions. Shortcuts sometimes, they have a clear purpose.
Each bridge helps people get from a clear point A to point B.
→ What Are High-Impact Language Sessions?
Pronunciation Gold
This workshop grew from a simple question.
What would happen if excellent pronunciation coaching weren’t left to work on its own?
Can we amplify its impact?
Jennie Reed is an outstanding pronunciation coach. She doesn’t need a singer-songwriter or a creative English coach to teach pronunciation well.
But at Blue Noun, we’re free to ask bigger educational questions.
What happens if pronunciation coaching is supported by other disciplines that help people become bolder while they’re learning?
What happens if we add outrageous experiments with boldness before a pronunciation lesson?
Because, as I see it, that’s the challenge with pronunciation.
Even once learners know where their tongue should go, they understand the explanation, and they can mimic the sound with a coach; it’s a different thing to trust that noise in conversation.
The Teaching Team
Jennie Reed brings pronunciation techniques you can trust.
You can read about an earlier workshop we ran together here:
→ What Does a Pronunciation Workshop With Jennie Reed Feel Like?
One of Jennie’s speciality areas is teaching ESOL teachers the techniques for pronunciation help.
Lhamo Grace brings voice and story in her own beautifully gentle way.
Lhamo is outrageously bold in what she sings about and shares.
It’s not noisy music, it’s her heart on show. She’s one of the bravest people I know.
Lhamo played a gig at Blue Noun a couple of years ago; this is a short moment I captured.
I’ll be throwing in some creative action with activities that encourage experimentation, communication, and intervention.
Techniques I share in the Creative Workshops I weave into Blue Noun holidays, or as a private workshop for travellers.
As a former artist, making strange things happen was a speciality.
Feeling silly making noises is nothing compared to the things I put myself through as a maker.
JOin Us
Advanced English users and ESOL teachers, join us to strengthen your own pronunciation and discover practical techniques you can take straight back to your own learners.
Refresh your craft by being part of this one-of-a-kind experience of a different way of designing pronunciation teaching.
Only three public places are available.
More About Blue Noun
You can learn how I personalise and plan each holiday here:
→ How We Plan Your English Holiday
Many people hear the term team teaching and feel jaded. It is used as a convenience for many poor-quality language academies, and it can mean inconsistency and a lack of progress tracking.
Like many other parts of language education, I dismantle it to ask what its individual parts and components are, and how we can put them together in the most effective ways.
Team teaching should not be chucked out because it is frequently done badly. Team teaching can be redesigned.
→ About Team Teaching at Blue Noun
Teachers. We have a variation of our language coaching holiday to offer you, in which we pick a workshop theme to develop our resources and expertise, combined with your classroom goals.
See this example:
Further Information
Excellence in English Education, Jennie Reed
Looking for practical classroom ideas? Explore our growing collection of creative ESOL teaching resources, activities and workshops designed to bring more imagination into English lessons.
