Unit 4 Amazing Plants and Animals Section A Pronunciation 教学设计 2025-2026学年人教版（2024）八年级英语上册

Unit 4 Amazing Plants and Animals-Section A Pronunciation This section focuses on pronunciation, aiming to help students master the pronunciation rules of specific letter combinations (such as /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, etc.) and understand the impact of sentence stress on meaning. The content is presented through a series of words and sentences, providing students with practical examples to practice and improve their pronunciation skills. It also lays a solid foundation for students' better understanding and expression in the subsequent listening and speaking activities related to amazing plants and animals. 教学目标 Students will be able to identify and pronounce specific letter combinations correctly, such as /eɪ/ (a, ai, ay), /aɪ/ (i, y, igh), /ɔɪ/ (oy, oi), /bl/, /cl/, /gl/, /br/, /cr/, /gr/. Students will understand the rules of sentence stress, knowing which words are usually stressed (content words like nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, interrogative words, and words for contrast or emphasis) and which are unstressed (function words like articles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, be - verbs, and auxiliary verbs). 教学重难点 Key Points Master the pronunciation rules of specific letter combinations. Grasp the basic rules of sentence stress and be able to apply them in simple sentences. Use the learned pronunciation knowledge to understand and express information related to plants and animals. Difficult Points Differentiate and accurately pronounce some similar - sounding letter combinations. Flexibly use sentence stress to convey different meanings and emotions in various communication contexts. Pronunciation of Letter Combinations /eɪ/: a in cake, make; ai in rain, train; ay in day, play. The sound is composed of /e/ (stressed) and /ɪ/ (unstressed), with the mouth shape changing from half - open to closed, similar to the pronunciation of the letter A. /aɪ/: i in bike, like; y in fly, my; igh in light, high. The mouth shape changes from open to closed, and the teeth change from fully open to fully closed. /ɔɪ/: oy in boy, toy; oi in oil, boil. It is composed of two vowel sounds, with the first vowel stressed and the second vowel unstressed. The lips change from round to flat, and the mouth shape changes from open to closed. /bl/: black, blue; /cl/: clock, clean; /gl/: glass, glad; /br/: bring, brown; /cr/: cry, crop; /gr/: green, grow. The consonant clusters are pronounced smoothly, with the first consonant and the second consonant closely combined. Sentence Stress Content words are usually stressed, which can highlight the key information in the sentence. For example, in the sentence “I visited the redwood forest in California several times.”, “visited” (main verb), “redwood” (noun), “California” (noun), and “several” (adjective) are stressed. Function words are usually unstressed. In the above sentence, “I” (pronoun), “the” (article), “in” (preposition) are unstressed. 教学过程 Warming - up (5 minutes) Greet the students and start a simple free - talk. For example, ask students: “Do you like animals and plants? What are your favorite animals or plants?” Encourage several students to share their ideas, which can activate the classroom atmosphere and lead to the topic of this unit. Presentation of Pronunciation Rules (12 minutes) Show the students the pronunciation table on the PPT, which includes words with different letter combinations such as /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /bl/, /cl/, /gl/, /br/, /cr/, /gr/. Play the audio for the words in the table. Ask students to listen carefully and pay attention to the pronunciation of each letter combination. Then play the audio again, pausing after each word for students to repeat. Divide the students into groups of four. Let each group discuss and add one more word following the pronunciation rules to each group. For example, for the /eɪ/ group, they can add “stay”; for the /aɪ/ group, they can add “dive”. After that, ask each group to report their added words and read them aloud. The teacher checks and corrects the pronunciation if necessary. Explanation and Practice of Sentence Stress (10 minutes) Present some sentences on the PPT, such as “I like bamboo because it grows very fast.” Write the sentence on the blackboard and mark the content words (like, bamboo, grows, fast) in red and the function words (I, because, it) in blue. Explain to the students the general rules of sentence stress, that is, content words are usually stressed and function words are usually unstressed. Play the audio of the sentence with different stresses. For example, first stress “I” (emphasizing the subject), then stress “bamboo” (emphasizing the object), and let students listen and feel the semantic differences. After that, ask students to imitate reading the sentences with different stresses. Give students some more sentences related to plants and animals, such as “The blue whale is the largest animal in the world.” and “People use bamboo to make many things.” Ask students to mark the stressed words by themselves first, and then check in groups. Finally, ask some students to read the sentences with correct stress in front of the class. Consolidation and Extension (13 minutes) Conduct a small competition. Divide the class into two large groups. Show a series of words and sentences on the PPT. The first group reads the words with correct letter - combination pronunciation, and the second group reads the sentences with correct stress. Each correct reading gets one point. The group with more points wins. Let students work in pairs. One student makes up a short passage about a plant or an animal they like, using at least three words with the learned letter combinations and paying attention to sentence stress. The other student listens and checks for pronunciation and stress mistakes. Then they switch roles. Select several pairs of students to share their passages in front of the class. The whole class listens and gives comments. Summary and Homework Assignment (5 minutes) Summarize the key points of this class with the students, including the pronunciation rules of letter combinations and the rules of sentence stress. Emphasize the importance of correct pronunciation in English learning. Assign homework: Ask students to record themselves reading a short passage about plants or animals, paying attention to the pronunciation of letter combinations and sentence stress. They can send the recording to the teacher through the learning platform. Let students find more words with the learned letter combinations in their English reading materials and make a list. 教学反思 After this class, most students showed great interest in learning pronunciation. Through various activities such as group work and competitions, students actively participated in class, which effectively improved their pronunciation skills of letter combinations and understanding of sentence stress. However, some students still had difficulty in accurately pronouncing some similar - sounding letter combinations, like differentiating between /eɪ/ and /æ/. In future teaching, more targeted exercises, such as listening discrimination and tongue - position demonstrations, should be provided for these students. Also, in the aspect of sentence stress, although students understood the basic rules, they still needed more practice to flexibly use sentence stress to convey different meanings in real - life communication. Therefore, more real - life - based speaking tasks will be designed in the following classes to enhance students' practical application ability. 2 / 37 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 $$