Schwa

Hello!

Today we learned more about stress in English words. We talked about three kinds of syllables. The author of my favourite pronunciation book calls them: stressed, unstressed and reduced. The vowel sound in a stressed syllable is long and clear. The vowel sound in an unstressed syllable is short and clear. The vowel sound in a reduced syllable is schwa. Schwa is very short and unclear.

We practiced listening to some words and crossing out the vowel that is reduced to schwa. We also practiced repeating many words like "America" and "Canada." There are three schwas in America and two in Canada.

Please note: some people pronounce America with only two schwas - the two As. Other people say it with three.

Next we spent some time on the Two Vowel Rule in multi-syllable words and the One Vowel Rule in multi-syllable words. We learned that the two rules still work in long words, but only in the STRESSED syllable. We looked at words like remain, repeat, arrange and so on.

Finally we played a little game in pairs with two sets of maps. Partner A had one version of a map where the names of some businesses were filled in. Partner B had another version of the same map with the names written in for the other buildings. In other words, each partner had missing puzzle pieces for the other person.

The instructions were to sit facing one another but hold your map up to your chest or behind a book so your partner could not peek. Then we practiced asking one another where things were using "Excuse me, where is the....?"

The tricky part of this game was that the street names were hard to pronounce correctly unless you followed the Two Vowel Rule and One Vowel Rule. There was Ceiling Street, Selling Street, Feeder Way and Fedder Way, Oater Road and Otter Road.

Most of you found the exercise easy or not too difficult.

I hope you enjoy your long weekend. Maybe you could watch TV or a movie and pay attention to the schwa sound.

See you Tuesday!

P.S. Someone asked if "schwa" was an English word. It comes from Hebrew.