Expert English Pronunciation, Accent Reduction & Fluency
Effective pronunciation teaching always has these components 1. Raises awareness by helping students notice the difference when they hear it, and recognize when they produce it. For vowels and consonants, use tools like manythings.org/pp for listening recognition, and feedback loops Read More …
I use Audacity just about every week, to record myself and to record my students. Audacity is available for free, it is open software designed by volunteers and given to the world. It shows sound as spectrograms; I use the Read More …
First, go to the Sounds of Speech website: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english Find the front vowels, and study the /ae/ sound, noting what the jaw movement and back-of-tongue movement. This sound, /ae/, always occurs in stressed syllables. Then open http://m-w.com Type the word Read More …
You’ll just have to memorize them…. -ER spelling is pronounced -AIR as in [chair] inherit, inheritance, inherent, whereby, thereby, whereas, error, -ER spelling is pronounced -EAR as in [fear] coherent, coherence, criteria -AR spelling is pronounced -ER as in Read More …
Learn the pronunciation of the vowel in the stressed syllable, as well as how the ‘a’ in pronounced. I recommend using m-w.com to hear American pronunciation. The following words have at least one ‘a’ that sounds like the vowel in the Read More …
pronunciation-based listening exercises MINIMAL PAIRS (e.g. bet/bat or very/ferry) 1. Minimal pairs, identification: student sees a written pair; identifies which the teacher (or recording) says 2. Minimal pairs, discrimination: hear two words; tell if they are identical, or a minimal Read More …
A sounds like /uh/ as in [but] When letter A is the initial, and only, sound in multi-syllable word: (a/wake, a/gain, a/head, a/greed, a/go, a/way, a/long, a/round, a/cross, a/mount, a/lone, a/fraid, a/rrive) A sounds like /ah/ as in [hot, father] Read More …
When we learn to speak another language, we must acquire some new sounds and strategies. We may also have to reset how and when we employ stress and timing. These slides will accompany a webinar conversation between Peggy Tharpe, M.A. Read More …
Harvard’s Tsedal Neeley discusses our future lingua franca, and advises business leaders on ways to prepare for it. [bctt tweet=”Harvard’s Tsedal Neeley discusses our future lingua franca, and advises business leaders on ways to prepare.” via=”no”]
For a few years now, I have been doing empirical research in my one-to-one courses teaching English pronunciation. I discovered that certain specific gestures, mostly hand and arm, actually change and improve the pronunciation of my clients, and quicken their Read More …