Peace Week

Hello!

Tuesday was our day in the computer lab. Not many people showed up for our conversation class due to the Peace Week activities.

Today we finished our review of the front vowels, syllables and word stress. Then we played a game to review the phonetic symbols.

Monday we will start with a mid-central vowel!

Have a great weekend and remember: Peace - think it, say it, do it!

Front Vowel Review

Hello!

Today we started class with an pairs activity just to get you thinking about all five front vowels. I handed each pair a set of five cards. On those cards were printed the words "bet, bit, bat, bait and beat." Your job was to put them in order from highest in the mouth to lowest in the mouth. I told you that you would need to put your hands on your jaws to figure this out. Ina and Rose got it right the second time, once they moved the word "bit."

Pretty much everyone got the highest and lowest, but the middle ones were harder! I hope this exercise got you to thinking about how we pronounce vowels.

Next we did choral repetition with a 5-column chart of words. We practiced saying lead, lid, laid, led, lad and dean, din, Dane, den, Dan. And so on. This was an excellent exercise for seeing which sound you are having the most trouble with. We noticed that our Arabic speakers have trouble with the /I/ sound as in "sill." I'm glad Lina stayed after class to have me work with her some more on this sound.

For the next activity, we put a bunch of words into the correct column according to the vowel sound. Be careful, you can't always go by spelling. That's English, I'm afraid.

Finally, we listened to a dialogue. Then you had me read it, and then two pairs had time to perform it before we adjourned. Don't worry, we will pick up where we left off on Thursday.

Tomorrow is computer lab day, and Wednesday is our conversation circle. I hope you will work on your front vowels in the lab tomorrow. You could also work on sentence stress.

Cheers!

The Lowest Front Vowel

Hello!

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!

Sentence Stress

Hello!

As I said in class today, we have to take a brief break from vowels to talk about word stress. We talked about words that carry meaning and words that are only necessary for grammar. Words that carry the meaning are called content words. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, negatives, wh- question words, numbers, etc.

Then we have the other words, the little words that are not as crucial to meaning. These we call structure words or function words. They are words like a, the, for, but, I, him, etc. These are the prepositions, articles, conjunctions, pronouns and so on.

To illustrate this, we looked at a telegram or text that you are sending to your friend in Detroit to ask that person to meet your aunt at the airport and interpret for her. We pretended that to send the telegram or text will cost us $5 per word. We really need to save money, so what can we take out?

After we edited the text message, we put the words we kept and the words we took out into two columns. These were our content words and structure words.

Next we talked about the rhythm and timing of English. Unlike French, Spanish, Romanian and Japanese, English is a stress-timed language. What on earth does that mean?

To answer that, we looked at the sentence "Wolves eat sheep." Each content word gets stress. each stressed word is like a beat in music. How many beats are there in that sentence? Yes, three. We clapped it out to get the rhythm.

Then I put in a function word: The wolves eat sheep. Now how many stressed words? Still three. You said it with me and we clapped. What happened? We still only clapped three times. Why? Because "the" does not get any stress. It is very short and soft.

What about when I added another "the?" The wolves eat the sheep. How many stressed beats? Still three. And it takes a native speaker the same amount of time to say this sentence as it does to say the first one. Wow, eh?

Then I changed the sentence to: "The wolves are eating the sheep." Now how long does it take me to say it? How many stressed syllables? It's the same. Three.

This is the key to the rhythm of English!

So now we looked at our new dialogue (still using the /ey/ sound) and practiced saying it with the correct sentence stress. Everyone did a very good job. You are starting to sound more natural every day. Knowing the music of English really helps others to understand you.

The Front Mid Vowels

Hello!

Today we covered the other front mid vowel: the /ey/ sound. We started by talking about where in the mouth it is formed. We looked at a diagram of the mouth and compared it to the vowels we have already learned. It is lower than /iy/, but also has an off-glide, as does /iy/. We put our hands on our jaws and felt the jaw drop lower for /ey/ than for /iy/.

After some choral and individual repetition, we started our exercises with listening discrimination. Then we did some minimal pair and minimal sentence exercises. Everyone did great with the sounds in wait and wet, later and letter. I am noticing a lot of improvement in those of you who were with me the last time we covered vowels.

We listened to a dialogue and then practiced it in pairs. Finally we performed the dialogue for the whole class.

Contrasting the Front Lax Vowels

Hello!

Today we finished up our worksheet from Tuesday, which was about lengthening /i/ and /I/ before voiced consonants. We did some oral practice chorally and individually. I notice that you all like it when I listen to each of you separately and give immediate feedback.

We looked at a continuum of four words demonstrating how a final voiced consonant affects the length of the preceding vowel sound. Say bit, beat, bid, bead. The shortest vowel is bit and the longest is bead. But we hold the /I/ in bid longer than the /iy/ in beat.

Next we started a new set of vowel contrasts: /I/ and /ɛ/. We did some minimal pairs, listening discrimination and minimal sentences. We did a couple of rounds where you held up one finger or two depending on which sentence you thought I said. Then you each took a turn challenging me and the rest of the class to guess which one you were saying. With just a few tweaks, everyone who had a problem with these sounds improved their production of it quickly. We all agreed it was time to move on and do the dialogue.

After listening to the audio and answering some questions, we only had time for two pairs to perform the script. We will pick up where we left off on Monday.

Have a nice weekend! Do you think it will snow?