Teaching Tips

Branching conversations

---

Abstract

This teaching tip focuses on a particular technique to make dialogues into guided activities by making them less controlled and more communicative, what I call branching conversations. In branching conversations, two learners work together to have a conversation that depends on understanding and interpreting the meaning of a pronunciation feature in a conversation that is structured through an information gap. Several different branching conversations are provided in this teaching tip, including those based on intonation, prominence placement, and –teen and –ty numbers.

Keywords: pronunciation teaching, dialogues, guided activities, information gap

How to Cite:

Levis, J. (2026). Branching conversations. In P. Trofimovich, A. Bodea, T.-N. N. Le, R. Suzuki, & C. Teló (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (pp. 1–12). Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, October 2025. https://doi.org/10.31274/psllt.21223