‫Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another aout speaking lesson today we're going to look at pronunciation
‫for aout speaking.
‫Here are your lesson notes.
‫By the end of the lesson, you will understand what the phonetic alphabet is and how it is used.
‫We're going to quickly go over stress and contractions and understand how they're used in English.
‫But before we move on to those parts of the lesson, let's review the pronunciation ban descriptors.
‫Now, I think it's fair to say that many students are very worried about their pronunciation in English.
‫I do believe that there is no correct accent to use in the speaking test.
‫And it is true you are not marked on any particular accent.
‫The most important thing to remember is that you are speaking clearly and there are no difficulties
‫in understanding what you are saying.
‫The clarity of your pronunciation is without a doubt the most important thing in your speaking test
‫sentence.
‫Stress and pronunciation of vocabulary are super important and it's something that you need to work
‫on if you identify it as a problem for you.
‫And that brings me nicely onto my next point, which is identifying weaknesses.
‫Think about which types of sound that you find most difficult to pronounce.
‫These are the areas where you need to spend time practicing your vocabulary pronunciation.
‫Now, I'm going to show you some examples of common pronunciation errors for non-native English speakers.
‫And I don't mean to pick on any particular country, but I want to show you some common examples that
‫I often see from students that I teach Korean English speakers often struggle with the F sound and replace
‫it with the sound.
‫Now, that's because in their native language, they don't have this F sound.
‫So I would advise Korean English speakers to work particularly on that sound.
‫Spanish speakers often extend the show and make it into an E, a word like net may become neat.
‫Now, these are just common examples of errors that I see in the classroom, and I hope I haven't offended
‫anyone showing you that.
‫But it does go to show that if you really consider what areas you find difficult, then it's easier
‫to understand where you need to improve.
‫I'm now going to show you a resource which should help you learn how to speak standard English.
‫And it is called the phonetic alphabet.
‫I'm aware that some of you may already use this resource and if you are, that's brilliant.
‫But if you are currently not aware of it, it's definitely something that you can use to help study
‫for pronunciation.
‫So the international phonetic alphabet shows pronunciation for standard English, and it is widely used
‫by teachers and students across the world.
‫It was actually created over 120 years ago jointly by the British and the French to help with pronunciation
‫for French English speakers.
‫It's something that I believe you should definitely learn and use when learning pronunciation of words.
‫It's commonly seen in book dictionaries or online dictionaries.
‫To the top section is the vowel sounds and the bottom sections are consonant sounds.
‫For a quick example, let's look at the first box, which is C, this vowel sound is E or you can also
‫call it the long E sound.
‫The next box is the short E sound, which is it.
‫Or set.
‫As I showed you in the example before, Spanish speakers often mix these two vowel sounds around.
‫And if you're aware that that's something that you do often, the phonetic alphabet will definitely
‫help you.
‫So let's move on to sentence stress.
‫The words that you stress in a sentence can actually change the meaning of what you are saying.
‫Take a look at these examples with questions and answers.
‫Who is playing the guitar?
‫David is playing the guitar at school.
‫So here, as the question was, who I make David the stressed word in the sentence as that is the most
‫important word for answering the question.
‫Let's take a look at another example.
‫Where is David playing guitar?
‫And here I would change the stress to the location.
‫David is playing the guitar at school.
‫You can hear that.
‫I emphasized the key words when answering these questions.
‫But sentence stress doesn't have to be just for questions and answers.
‫I guarantee this course will help you improve your child's school in this example, I want to emphasize
‫that I guarantee the course will help improve your child's school.
‫Now let's take a look at a feature of English pronunciation that is often used by native speakers,
‫and that is contractions.
‫Contraction is something that is made shorter or smaller.
‫In English, we sometimes miss sounds from words, and that's because it makes it faster and easier
‫to say.
‫So here is an example.
‫Black cat has two common consonant sounds with the cur at the end of black and at the start of cat.
‫It would be difficult to fully pronounce all the sounds in these words black cat.
‫So instead we take away one of the common sounds here.
‫I've shown you from the end of black, it turns into black cat noticed that I didn't include the sound
‫for black.
‫Let's take a look at an example sentence.
‫I was really very worried.
‫My black cat, Sarah, had been missing for two whole weeks.
‫So there you can see that common sound is only sounded out once.
‫Let's take a look at another example here.
‫We have good day, which is pretty much the same sound that does sound and instead will only say it
‫once, which is good day.
‫Let's take a look at an example sentence.
‫My friend's wedding was quite special.
‫That was a very good day.
‫Try and look out for where words share common sounds at the end and start of the words.
‫Going back to the phonetic alphabet, I just want to stress that this could be an excellent resource
‫for you and improving your pronunciation, so I highly recommend spending time learning this chart.
‫That brings us to the end of our lesson on pronunciation for Alt's speaking practice.
‫Speak in English as much as you can, and I'm sure your pronunciation will improve.