Today we covered the last of the front vowels. This is the relative "a" sound as in "cat." Some teachers and books call this the short a sound.
We started with talking about how the sound is formed in the mouth. You really have to open your mouth for this one, don't you? We also looked at the Sammy Diagram to see how low this one is compared to the other front vowels.
Next we compared some word pairs like pen and pan, left and laughed, bet and bat. We did a short listening exercise and then learned some vocabulary by matching the words with the pictures.
Finally we listened to a dialogue. You were to put a check mark by the items described in the dialogue.
Next I passed out the text of the dialogue so we could check your answers. You wanted me to read the dialogue once before you all tried it, so I did. Then we had one pair of students read the dialogue for us.
It was a very big class today, so we made the best use of class time by practicing the dialogue with a partner.
Besides focusing on the vowel sound, we also took note of the word stress patterns in the dialogue. We have already talked about content words and structure words. We usually put most stress on the last content word of a sentence or phrase, especially at the beginning of a conversation. But then what happens? As we saw in the dialogue, then we stress the new information.
On Monday we will review all five front vowels. Have a great weekend!
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