Teaching English pronunciation and intonation is a challenging job. And learning it is even harder. Part of the problem is that we are born with our first language intonation already programmed; we know that babies, by 6 months in utero, can already hear the intonation patterns of their mother and people around her. Those patterns are our first and deepest neural pathways for the sounds of language. They are not just second nature. They are first nature, so much so that we aren’t even aware of them. Like our skin, we aren’t conscious of them unless something is wrong. And the challenge is that it’s not possible to change something you’re not even aware of.
To develop skill in English pronunciation and intonation, a teacher must raise awareness in adult students, and give them opportunities to analyze and synthesize, to break apart and put back together. This awareness-raising stage isn’t so much about teaching micro-skills as much as it is about recognizing how English communicative sound signals differ from one’s “first-nature” communicative sound signals. Once adults are aware of what to change and why, they then need to know how to change.
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here’s the article, for a step by step how-to.