PRONUNCIATION: final -s

Pronunciation final -s & -es by LauGalindo

Pronunciation /j/

The sound /j/ appears in words such as yes, yellow, young, university, use, etc.

The usual spelling for this sound is the letter "y" or the initial "u".

Watch the video to practise your pronunciation.

Pronunciation / /dʒ/

The sound /dʒ/ appears in words such as in just, change, enjoy, age, etc.

The usual spelling for this sound are the letter "j" and the consonant cluster "dge", but it can also be found with the letter "g".

Watch the video to practise your pronunciation.

Sentence Stress (2)

The other day we practised sentence stress and we used  this conversation as an example.

A: Where were you  at six o'clock in the evening?
B: I was at work.
A: What were you doing?
B: I was having a meeting with the boss.

Keep practising at home and remember to pay attention to intonation and rhythm. Try to apply the rules to other conversations and think about it when you practise speaking in class.

If you want to know more about sentence stress go to my previous post

Clothes (collocations, grammar & pronunciation)

Clothes 4A

Pronunciation: vowel sounds

Today in class, we worked on five different vowel sounds and we organized the letters of the alphabet according to these five sounds.


Go to my previous posts to practise the different sounds:

/ei/

/ai/

/əʊ/

/e/

/ɑ:/

/u:/

/i:/

Here you can also find the alphabet with the phonemic transcription.

The alphabet with phonemic transcription

English Alphabet

Pronunciation /əʊ/

The diphthong /əʊ/ is a very common sound in English, it's easy to pronounce. It's usual spelling is -o- as in open, -oa- as in coat, but you can also find it in words like snow or although.




Some examples are:

Watch the video and practise your pronunciation.

 

Pronunciation /ai/

The diphthong /ai/ is found with the following spelling -i- as in item, -y- as in shy, -igh- as in sights, but you can also find it in words such as buy, height, eyes.






Some examples are:

Watch the video to listen to the sound and practise it.

Pronunciation /ei/

The diphthong /ei/ is a long vowel sound and its usual spelling is -a- as in change, -ai- as in trainers, -ay- as in pay, but you can also find it in -ea- as in break, -ei- as in weight, -ey- as in they.

Some examples are:

Watch the video to listen to the sound and practise it.

Pronunciation /e/

The sound /e/ is a short vowel and it's very similar to the Spanish "e". Its usual spelling is the letter e, but you can also found it in words like friendly, weather, sweater, any, said.



Some examples are:

Watch the video to listen to the sound and practise it.

Pronunciation /i:/

The sound /i:/ is a long vowel and its usual spelling is -ee- as in feel, -ea- as in teach and -e- as in we but we can also find -eo- as in people, -ey- as in key or -ei- as in receipt.

Some examples are:

Watch the video from the BBC to listen to the sound and practise it.

Pronunciation /u:/

The sound /u:/ is a long vowel and the usual spelling for it is: -oo-, -u- and -ew, but it is also found with the spelling -o- as in do, -ui- as in suit, -oe- as in shoe, -ou- as in through

Some examples are:

Watch the video to listen to the sound and practise its pronunciation.

Pronunciation /ɑ:/

The sound /ɑ:/ is found with the spelling -a- and -ar-, it's along vowel not too difficult to pronounce.


You can find it in these examples:

Watch the video to listen to the sound and practise it.
 

Sentence Stress

INTONATION, STRESS & RHYTHM

Using the right intonation or tone helps you to sound friendly and interested when you speak English. Stressing the right words in a sentence helps you speak with a good rhythm.
Intonation + stress = the music and rhythm of English.

Which words do I have to stress when I speak English?

Because we said that "stressing the right words in a sentence helps you speak with a good rhythm" you can guess that there are some words that need to be stressed some others that don't.
There are some general rules that can help you. We usually stress:

• Content words: those words which carry the meaning of the sentence (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
• Words containing important information: in a negative sentence the negative adverb is crucial and therefore it will be stressed.
• Words providing new information: words bringing new information to the topic will be stressed due to their relevance.

On some other occasions we can stress words that would not normally be stressed if we want to point out a different meaning or to put the emphasis somewhere different.

Have a look at the three videos below and practise with the exercises proposed:

Connected Speech (1)

When native speakers of English speak they connect words and sometimes you can't recognize them because several words sound just like one word.

In order to be able to recognize connections when listening you have to be aware of them and you have to use them also to make them active in your mind.

Watch the video to listen to some examples.

Now practise with the sentences you worked on in class and pay attention to connected speech as well as sentence stress.

1. What are you going to do tonight?

2. Are you going to see a film?

3. I'm going to cook a meal for you.

4. I think it's going to rain.

5. We aren't going to have a holiday this year.

Vowels sounds: /3:/

Practise the sound /3:/ 







Some examples are nurse, stir, learn, refer...







Watch this video from the BBC, it will help you with your pronunciation

Now practise saying the sentences.

Shirley is a nurse.
I don't work on Thursdays.
I prefer a good Turkish meal.
My shirt is dirty.
Journalists work all over the world.

vowel sounds /ə/

The sound /ə/ is called schwa and it's a very common sound, actually it's the most frequent sound and therefore it's very important to pronounce it correctly. 




Watch the video so you can listen to it and practise.

Pronunciation: linking words

When award ends in a consonant sound and the next word begins with the same or a very similar sound, we often link the words together and only make the consonant sound once. This happens when a verb ends in /t/ or /d/, so want to is pronounced /'wɒntə/ and decided to is pronounced /dɪ'saɪdɪ
tə/.

In these cases the word "to" is not stressed and therefore it is pronounced with a schwa /tə/

Pronunciation: /ŋ/

The /ŋ/ sound in English is most often represented by the letters 'ng', some examples are English, song, hungry; but there are some other cases where we can find this sound.

Watch the video from the BBC to practise how to pronounce this sound.