Fluency Trick - Try the One-Two-Three Punch (Guest Lesson)

I’m excited to share a special guest lesson on the blog today! This lesson was created by Todd Beuckens, who has been an ESL teacher for 25 years. He created the website elllo.org to provide free audio lessons and learning materials not usually found in commercial textbooks.

Todd offers a fresh approach to listening, fluency, and pronunciation with this engaging activity, and I hope you find it useful. Enjoy the lesson (click the link below), and let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Fluency Trick -- Try the One-Two-Three Punch!

The Benefits of Captions

 

Captions are the text that appear on videos, and they are a very powerful learning tool in many ways. (You can make captions appear by clicking the CC button on videos.)  

How can your English improve by using captions? According to elllo.org, there are many ways: 

Listening: When you access the captions, it is easier to see what people are saying. This makes listening more fun and you can catch more words.

Pronunciation: As you read captions, you can see how words are stressed, linked together and reduced.

Reading: Have you ever heard that when parents read to their children, they develop better language skills? It is true for you too. Captions help you develop faster as a language learner.

Speaking: Perhaps the greatest benefit of captions is that you can try to say what you read. For example, read the captions out loud with the volume off. This is a fun way to see if you can speak at the same speed as the speakers in the videos.

Try reading the captions in this video featuring Cheryl, who describes the best things about Guam: https://elllo.org/video/1451/1454-Cheryl-Guam.html

Choose, chose, choice

Knowing the correct use of choose, chose, and choice is a common confusion English learners have. 

Choose - (verb) to make a choice or selection
Chose -  (verb) the past tense of choose.
Choice - (noun) the act of choosing; a selection

- Davide couldn’t choose whether to attend Harvard or Yale University. - verb

- Edoardo chose to buy a home in the countryside because he loves nature. - verb, past tense of choose

- Lisa made an excellent choice by buying an electric car. - noun

The problem may be that chose and choice sound very similar, though chose is the past verb and choice is a thing, a noun. 

- In chose, the “s” is pronounced like a “z”; Click here for the correct pronunciation of chose. 

- Choice is a little different. Click here for the correction pronunciation of choice. 

The key to getting it right is memorization, so try your best and you’ll always make the correct choice. 

"A" or "an" before "H" words

The English language is certainly full of exceptions. There are rules, and then there are exceptions to these rules.

One rule that is hard-and-fast (fixed, strongly enforced) is with indefinite articles (a, an) before words:

• Use “a” before words that begin with a consonant, such as “a surf board,” “a potato chip,” or “a crazy person.”
• Use “an” before words that begin with a vowel as in “an exit,” “an avalanche,” or “an uncle.”

Simple, right? Then what about "H" words? Many letters of the English alphabet do more than one job. They are pronounced in some words and silent in others, so to use the correct indefinite article, the pronunciation of "H" words is key (very important).

• Use “a” before words with a voiced “H” such as “a hero,” “a holiday” or “a hangover.”
• Use “an” before words where you don’t pronounce the letter “H” such as “an herb,” “an hour,” or “an honest answer.”

Indefinite articles before words that begin with "H" are no problem if you know their correction English pronunciation.

Improving Pronunciation

Let me introduce a very special guest blogger, Lisa Postles, my sister and an excellent speech and language pathologist. She offers guidance on how to improve your English pronunciation:


People who are working to improve their English conversation skills often want to improve their pronunciation skills as well. Pronunciation means to say the sounds of speech. Most people make errors on the vowel sounds and need extra practice with those. One such vowel is the long /e/ (ē) sound as in "feed" and "me." It is over used by many individuals who are learning English conversation. For example, the short /i/ (ī) sound as in "miss" is said with the /ē/. Here are 3 examples:

1. Correct: I mīss my sister.
Incorrect: I mēss my sister.

2 Correct: I wīsh it would rain.
Incorrect: I wēsh it would rain.

3. Correct: I will bīd at the auction.
Incorrect: I will bēd at the auction.

Thank you to http://blog.improving-english.com for giving me the opportunity to be a guest blogger.

Lisa Postles, M.S, C.C.C,-SLP
Speech/Language Pathologist

Hard and soft 's’

I always think of a hissing snake when I see the letter ‘s’ but, when pronouncing words that end in ‘s’, it’s better to think of a buzzing bee. More often, when a word ends in an ‘s’, pronounce that final ‘s’ hard, like a ‘z’. Try it:

drugs, monsters, dogs, shoes, babies, vacations, words, trees, scandals.....

Of course there are exceptions when the soft ‘s’ sound is used, words which in their singular form end in these five consonant sounds /p/,/t/, /k/, /f/, and the voiceless (soft) /th/:

lips, fifths, picnics (the ‘c’ has the ‘k’ sound), gifts, laughs (‘gh’ has the ‘f’ sound), golfs

In most cases, pronounce that final ‘s’ hard, like a ‘z’, and you’ll be just fine.

Image: Golly Bard, Swarm of honeybees

"Th" and good English pronunciation

There are three levels of English pronunciation:

People don’t understand what you say.

People have to concentrate to understand you.

You have clear pronunciation and are easily understood.

I think that most people worry about how they sound when speaking a new language and I want to help reduce that anxiety for English learners.
I recommend listening to sound recordings whenever you’re in doubt and repeat, repeat, repeat. I like this online dictionary because it provides both the American and British English pronunciation of words. (The example word is thought.)
A lot of people have trouble with the ‘th’ sound in English words. Correct pronunciation requires placing the tip of your tongue between your teeth and then forcing air over your tongue and under your top teeth. Try it! Also, it’s important to know that there are two sounds for ‘th’: voiced and unvoiced.

Voiced: your throat vibrates as you say it (there, then, this, weather, northern).

Unvoiced: there is only the silent hiss of air as you say it (thought, south, with, math, thin).

Listen to the difference and practice it for yourself!