Pronunciation
Common Mistakes in English by Language Background
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[ Assimilation ] |
"Unless the teacher understands how the student is using his speech organs in producing a native language sound and what he should be doing to reproduce the foreign language sound acceptably, he cannot help the student beyond a certain stage of earnest but inaccurate imitation." [Wilga Rivers - Teaching Foreign Language Skills]
Can your teacher tell you how many phonemes there are in the English language and how to use your organs of articulation to produce these sounds?
Teachers who have studied the sound system of your language will also be in a better position to help you with common mistakes.
Practice materials referred to in the lists---------------------------------Practice exercises: minimal pairs
- English Pronunciation Illustrated: Student's Book and Cassette
- Ship or Sheep?: Student's Book and
Cassettes
Note: there is now a revised Student's Book which comes together with 4 audio CDs - Headway: Upper-intermediate: Pronunciation: Book and Cassettes
- Headway: Intermediate: Pronunciation: Book and Cassettes
- Headway: Pre-intermediate: Pronunciation: Book and Cassette
- Headway Pronunciation: Elementary: Book and Cassette
- Pronunciation Tasks: Student's Book, Cassette Set and Teacher's Book
- How Now, Brown Cow?: Student's Book and Cassettes
RSS Webfeeds
-- Published resources for English language learning and teaching (Ted Power's recommendations):
This RSS feed is intended for learners/teachers/Directors of Studies wishing to review or select books/CDs/CD-ROMs on English Language Teaching including areas such as teacher training, pronunciation, listening to spoken English, oral fluency, grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing (including handwriting & basic literacy).
-- English pronunciation for L1s: Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek or Hungarian
-- English pronunciation for L1s: Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Taiwanese, Thai or Turkish
The 20 English Vowel Sounds: 12 monophthongs (5 long & 7 short) and 8 diphthongs
I have added pages on the 12 English Monophthongs and the 8 English Diphthongs. The page on monophthongs shows the fixed tongue positions (the height of the front or the back of the tongue and the degree of retraction) for producing these sounds in Received Pronunciation. The tongue travels between some of these fixed positions to produce the diphthongs. Learners often find the 5 long English vowel sounds and the diphthongs difficult to produce, since learners' native languages more commonly feature most of the short English vowel sounds.
New material on Consonant Clusters
"Kissing Consonants" © Ted Power 2007---------Introduction
When there are three or more consonants together, native speakers do not always produce as many consonant sounds. For example, the final consonant cluster in the word "fifths" is usually reduced to the last two consonant phonemes. Good pronunciation materials need to include practice of elision (missing phonemes out) and assimilation (a change in the quality of the phoneme - perhaps to a different phoneme altogether!).
"KISSING CONSONANTS" practises final consonant clusters, since lists of initial consonant clusters can easily be found in a dictionary, and consonant strings at the beginnings of words generally cause fewer difficulties.
Full word lists (each link is a separate page)-------for consonant clusters beginning with:
| / m / | / p / | / b / | / f / | / v / | / θ / | / ð / | / n / | / t / | / d / | / s / | / z / | ||||
| / l / | / r / | / ʧ / | / ʤ / | / ʃ / | / ʒ / | / j / | / ŋ / | / k / | / g / | |||
Assimilation
Some English consonant sounds, including many alveolar ones, change into (or towards) different phonemes when followed by certain other sounds. Speakers assimilate to avoid awkward sound combinations which would lead to loss of oral fluency with utterances sounding broken up and clumsy. Some native English speakers, including those who have been to top schools, are ignorant of the differences between written and spoken English and attempt to speak as they write. The remedy is Assimilation Practice. The links below provide learners with short phrases where assimilation occurs:
- / t / changes to / p / before / m / / b / or / p /
- / d / changes to / b / before / m / / b / or / p /
- / n / changes to / m / before / m / / b / or / p /
- / t / changes to / k / before / k / or /g/
- / d / changes to / g / before / k / or / g /
- / n / changes to /ŋ/ before / k / or / g /
- / s / changes to /ʃ/ before /ʃ/ or / j /
- / z / changes to /ʒ/ before /ʃ/ or / j /
- /θ/ changes to / s / before / s /
Click HERE for practice in phonemic transcription - / ðɪs ɪz hɒt / !!!