In this course, you will practise important elements of English pronunciation that make a difference to meaning, communicative ease and comprehension. You will learn about basic sound distinctions as well as the phenomenon of word stress. Through exercises with and feedback from your peers you will find out what pronunciation aspects to address. You will have the chance to tackle difficulties.

We will cover aspects such as individual meaning-changing speech sounds and how to pronounce them so that they actually sound different, but also how to give prominence to the right syllables in a word, which is needed because English word stress is fixed and enables a listener to identify a word as the one you mean. Connected speech, sentence stress, and intonation will also be practised. By improving pronunciation, your ability to distinguish sounds and understand speech will also improve. You develop phonetic awareness, apply rules for pronouncing English word endings, increase familiarity with varieties of spoken English, and adapt your pronunciation to different purposes of oral English.

Target audience

This course is open to learners and users of English from B2 upwards who want to know more about English sounds and stress patterns and improve their pronunciation, intelligibility and confidence.

Requirements and commitment

Attend regularly, participate in classroom activities, practise at home and speak aloud in class; join individual, pair or small-group work; do tasks & test pronunciation tools; keep a record of your work; no formal assessment, no credits.

Course content and teaching methods

Locating and using organs of articulation; the vocabulary to talk about different types of speech sounds and about features of pronunciation; English speech sounds that make a meaning difference; reading IPA symbols for English sounds and transcription in dictionaries; pronunciation dictionaries and using pronunciation features of online dictionaries; text-to-speech and speech-to-text options; noticing sound and stress differences in the same word family; variation in oral language use; different ways of pronouncing English; varieties of English; how to be intelligible.

You will listen and repeat, contrast minimal pairs, self-correct with a model, read aloud, dictate a text, give and receive feedback, record yourself, or test pronunciation tools and functions.

Objectives

Course aims and learning outcomes

To involve your body and your mind in making your spoken English sound clear and confident; target your pronunciation needs; develop strategies for learning and improving your pronunciation;

Materials

There will be a mix of class materials, self-study resources and links to reference tools such as good online dictionaries.

Target audience

This course is for participants whose level corresponds to level B2, C1 or C2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Please only register if your level corresponds to the course. Participants of our partner institutions and Unifr employees can contact us to take a placement test if they are unsure of their level. Unifr students are automatically guided to the placement test when registering for a course on MyUnifr.

Prerequisites

The General Conditions for Participation in Language Courses apply. 

Responsibles and speakers

Responsibles

• Schaller-Schwaner Iris

Dates and locations

Period	Location
18.02.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
25.02.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
04.03.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
11.03.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
18.03.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
25.03.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
01.04.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
15.04.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
22.04.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
29.04.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
06.05.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
13.05.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
20.05.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16
27.05.2026 from 10:15 to 12:00	MIS 10 1.16