Today we continued with our study of the two highest front vowel sounds in English: /iy/ and /I/. First we practiced some vocabulary words chorally. We did a quick gap-fill on the dialogue and then read it aloud. Then we performed the dialogue in groups of three, each of us taking one of the parts.
I noticed that many of you are saying "fifteen" and "fifty" so that they both sound like "fifteen." We talked about all the ways we can distinguish the "-teen" numbers from the "-ty" numbers. The stress is different (we talked about the exceptions). The quality of the /t/ is different, as well.
Next we did an exercise for practicing pronouncing the numbers. We also talked about when and why the stress sometimes shifts to the first syllable of "-teen" numbers.
Finally we looked at what happens to the vowel sounds in the words "bit," "beat," "bid," and "bead." Which vowel is held the longest of the four words? Which is held for the shortest time? Why?
This is why I don't like the terms "short vowels" and "long vowels" for our pronunciation class. As you can see, we hold the vowel sound in "bid" longer than the vowel sound in "beat." Instead of short and long, we will call them alphabet vowel sounds and relative vowel sounds. We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks.
Tomorrow is conversation day. See you then!
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