-ed Endings for Spanish Speakers - Pronunciation

A discussion developing over at ELT World on how to get spanish speakers to properly pronounce the varieties of words in English that end in -ed. The three sounds - Ed, /d, and /t are all usually rendered as -Ed, as found in the words ratED, sportED,and dreadED.

The ELT World discussion.

Teresa Lopez begins:

I am preparing some lessons on the different sounds that the -ed ending can produce, but I was wondering if any one knows if there are any rules about when it sounds like ¨t¨, when it sounds like ¨d¨ and when it sounds like ¨ed¨. I have a class of Upper Intermediate students that stuggle with that and aside from going over lots of words and how they are pronounced I can´t come up with anything else. Well, I kind of figured out on my own that the -ed is more pronounced when the word ends in ¨t¨ or ¨d¨ because of the difficulty of the same, or a very similar sound, right together.

NCTBA offers links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-EC_kk0Lso

http://www.azargrammar.com/assets/intermediate/FEGTeacher-CreatedWorksheets/Worksheets2/FEGCh2PronunciationRegularPastTenseVerbs.pdf

Enjoy, Teresa! And always remember, Google is your friend!

Melee offers:

I'm not sure if its in the links already posted, but I have my students put their hand infront of their mouths and say a verb in it's base form
If they feel a burst of air at the end, they will put a /t/ at the end to make it the past. If they do not feel air on their hand they will put /d/ at the end of the verb. If the verb already end in a t or a d then they will put /Id/ at the end of it. You can use the words voiced and unvoiced if you want, or you can not use them if you think your students aren't interested in the metalanguage. I usually do use them when teaching at the university because I say something like "those of us who study language call this voiced" because my engineering students never seem to realize linguistics is a science, and I think they should.
Either way I always ham it up a bit. Tell them they shouldn't be feeling any spit on their hands just air, getting them to try to put the opposite sound on (its not easy to change from voiced to unvoiced at the end of the word--the whole reason for this in the first place.)

Old English File one has a lesson on this that I really like, about a woman leaving her husband. it uses all regular verbs and is arranged in three collums so the students can notice the sounds. And as an extention it uses the song Yesterday on the premise the husband is singing about his wife who has left him (Now you gone and it looks as if their here to stay...)

See the full discussion at the link above.