The use of tongue twisters for ESL teachers

No matter which language you study, pronunciation is always a challenge. Even though there are many popular ways to enhance students’ pronunciation, tongue twisters are not among them, as they are usually considered to be unserious and childish. 

However, Grade University professionals disagree. In this article, we are going to prove that American and British tongue twisters are powerful tools you should consider using.

To achieve their specific impact, they frequently use alliteration (which is a series of words that begin with the same consonant sound, for example: Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers), repetition, and unconventional word combinations.

Apart from being very engaging and entertaining, tongue twisters help to improve one’s articulation by testing the ability to see the difference between similar sounds and keeping the tongue from twisting :) 

Also, tongue twisters are great for building fluency. After overcoming such a challenge you can’t help but improve speech flow and reduce hesitations when speaking. 

Plus, there is always a chance your students will learn some new words and phrases and therefore expand their vocabulary.

Moreover, tongue twisters are an exceptionally great tool to explore a different culture. Many tongue twisters are culturally rooted and offer insights into English-speaking cultures. They can spark curiosity about language origins, idiomatic expressions, and cultural nuances, enriching learners' understanding of English-speaking societies.

A lot of people wonder how these amusing expressions appeared. Unfortunately, we cannot be certain. The most probable version sounds the following way: some clever poets and linguists created them to experiment with the boundaries of language and comedy.

Therefore, even the shortest tongue twister can turn out to be a ridiculously challenging case. 

Here is the list of our favorite short tongue twisters for adults and children.

If you think that tongue twisters are too complicated for kids, you are wrong! Children adore this fun way of practice. 

Moreover, tongue twister games make them much more engaged in the process of learning.

Here are some of our examples of easy tongue twisters for kids:

If you are interested in discovering more tongue twisters in English, you can use these YouTube creator’s ideas:

Teaching adults is not an obstacle to implementing tongue twisters in your lesson plan as many ESL teachers may think.

Here are some rather hard and long tongue twisters for adults:

• Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? – this is a tongue twister that would be really hard to reproduce with kids but is still perfect for adults. With the help of this tongue twister, they not only practice pronunciation (especially the difference between ‘pepper’ and ‘paper’) but also revise Past Simple and can even be introduced to Conditional sentences.

• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood. As a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood – this long and complicated tongue twister is a treasure for those who want to challenge themselves with both more complicated speaking patterns and grammar. If you have some daring students, you can always propose one of the hardest tongue twisters!
• How many cans can a canner can if a canner can can cans? A canner can can as many cans as a canner can, if a canner can can cans – I like this tongue twister because it requires not only accurate pronunciation but also close reading in order to understand what it is all about. This peculiarity makes the task even harder and more interesting!

This is a question that ESL teachers often ask. The answer is “Sure, why not?”

Creating your own tongue twisters is not as hard as it may seem. The only thing is to mind the following rules:

Think of the sounds

Then, pick up some words that contain a chosen sound. After, play with the sounds a bit and try to combine the words into a simple idea or even plot. It is a very funny activity you may even assign to your students for a change!

Here is what I have got while thinking of a tongue twister with a /b/ sound:

Make it memorable

Try to play with rhyme or create the main character who is engaged in some funny activity. You can also try to link your tongue twister to the focus topic. This simple manipulation will increase the level of both engagement and retention. Frankly speaking, everything depends on your creativity and goals!

Here is my idea of a tongue twister which is related to the topic of food:

Use AI-powered tools

You won’t believe how great an AI’s offer may be!

Here are a couple of my first tries with ChatGPT:

To sum up, tongue twisters are a great form of practicing pronunciation with both kids and adults. Another advantage is that you can implement them in offline and online lessons. 

Of course, online teaching often requires some extra preparation and adaptation of the material, but with our online TEFL courses your students will be able to practice their pronunciation online as successfully as they would do during face-to-face communication.