Dialog for Vowel Practice

Hello!

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!

Sleep or Slip?

Hello!

Today Lena shared treats with us to celebrate her birthday. Happy birthday, Lena!

Before the lesson got under way, we chatted about our five days off. You told me about your Halloween and you asked me to tell you about my time in Toronto. I showed you the two new books I got for our conversation Wednesdays. I passed them around to see if you thought I had made good purchases.

Today we continued our journey through the vowel sounds of English with sound number two: the lax i sound. This is the second highest front vowel. We looked at a diagram of the mouth. The highest front vowel is /iy/, which we learned and practiced last week. The next highest is /I/, which is just slightly lower than /iy/. But there are other differences between the two, aren't there?

You told me that for /iy/, you use your facial muscles a lot more. That's true! The vowel sound in sheep is a tense vowel. You use your muscles to stretch your face into a smile. Also, it sounds longer. Then there is the vowel sound in ship. Your face and mouth can relax more for this one. And your jaw drops down just a tiny bit from /iy/.

We practiced some minimal pairs chorally and then individually. Most of you did perfectly, but some of you were saying hell instead of hill. This means you have dropped your jaw down too much. We practiced that some more. But don't worry, we will have one or two days when we just practice the difference between /I/ and /ɛ/.

Next we did a listening practice; you wrote S for SAME and D for DIFFERENT as I read out some pairs of words.

Then we did a minimal sentences practice. You held up one finger or two to tell me whether you heard the first or second sound. Most of you did really well. Then I let you test me and the rest of the class. You picked one of the pair to say and we held up one finger or two to tell you which we heard.

For our last activity, we played a few rounds of Pronunciation Journey.

See you tomorrow!

Syllables, Stress and More /iy/

Hello!

Today we took a short detour from our adventure with vowels to talk about syllables. We will do much more with syllables and word stress later. For now we just needed a brief orientation to syllables and stress.

I asked you what a syllable is and you first told me that it's a part of a word. Yes, it is! What else? Together we discovered that every syllable has a vowel sound. If every language has a certain music, then to learn the music of English, we must learn the rhythm of English. To do this, we have to learn about syllables and stress.

I handed Ahmed G. a large item covered in a big fabric case and asked him to open it. What was inside? It was my djembe. That's an African drum. Together we talked about syllables and passed the drum around so that we could beat out the syllables of different words.

I made four columns on the board and asked you all to give me some food words. Together we figured out where to put each word: column one for one-syllable words; column two for two-syllable words, etc.

Next we talked about stress. What is word stress? You told me that there is always one syllable that is stronger. That's right. The stressed syllable is longer. It has a clearer vowel sound. It also has higher pitch and is sometimes a bit louder.

With this new information, I asked you to look again at our handout from yesterday. In some words we hold the /iy/ sound longer than in other words.

For example, we hold it longer in: tea, bean, meal and three.

We don't hold the /iy/ sound quite as long in pizza, peach, repeat or meat.

What's the rule?

1. All vowels are longer before a voiced consonant.
2. All vowels are longer in a stressed open syllable.
3. Vowels are not held as long before voiceless consonants.
4. Vowels are not held as long in unstressed open syllables.

So now you know why I don't like to use the terms "short" and "long" vowels in our class. Those words are great for teaching little Canadian children about vowels. But you are not children. We are adults. The fact is that all vowels are longer before voiced consonants. So I will be using different words to classify the vowels.

After talking about the rule, we did some more practice with the /iy/ sound in words.

See you tomorrow in the computer lab. On Monday we will resume vowels with the /I/ sound.

Vowel Sound /iy/

Hello!

Today we did a quick review of voicing and then got into vowels. We talked about how many of your first languages have fewer vowel sounds than English. Spanish has five symbols and five sounds. Romanian has seven symbols and seven sounds (the same five as Spanish plus two more, Ina told us). I don't know how many vowel sounds Arabic has.

I asked you how many vowels English has, and you told me five: a, e, i, o and u. (And sometimes y and w.) But how many vowel SOUNDS does English have? Way more, eh? It's more like twelve, not counting diphthongs. Don't worry, we will study all of them.

Today we learned the first one: /iy/. We talked about how to form it in the mouth. We also talked briefly about the difference between English /iy/ and the /i/ sound of many other languages. We said that one big difference is the "off-glide." Don't worry if you didn't understand. We will be talking a lot more about the off-glide.

We practiced some words and then listened to a dialogue of three people ordering in a restaurant. After listening twice and answering some comprehension questions, we practiced the dialogue in groups. Once we had practiced enough, we decided to try some impromptu role playing using the same menu.

After two people declined to play the part of the wait person, Angela was brave enough to volunteer. Thank you, Angela. You did an amazing job! I especially liked how Angela said, "And you, sir?" That is exactly how the waiter or waitress would say it.

Enjoy your weekend. We will continue with /I/ on Monday, and we will contrast it with /iy/. Fun!

Potluck and Pronunciation Lesson

Hello!

There was no blogpost yesterday since it was just another lab day; we followed our routine of choosing among Ellis Master Pronunciation Course, Ellis Intro with Pronunciation Quizzes, or Internet-based pronunciation sites. Many of you have told me that you really like Ellis Intro.

Today we started class by clearing up an earlier confusion. I said I thought there was a caribou on the Canadian quarter, but one student said that in another class, they learned that it was a moose. So I brought in a picture of a moose and a picture of a caribou and let you decide for yourselves. Florin, Bashar and Federico decided it's a caribou. Wikipedia also says it's a caribou. However, many Canadians think there's a moose on their quarter. Maybe you should tell them!

A caribou is an animal like a reindeer that migrates in very large herds--south in fall, north in spring. The caribou are very important to the native peoples who live in their territory. They use every part of the animal from antlers to meat to pelt to hooves. Nothing goes to waste!

I gave you each a scavenger hunt sheet to help you review everything we've covered so far, and we went to the potluck. Unfortunately, there was some confusion around whether our whole class had been invited by Zakieh or only the women. I will do a better job of communicating with Zakieh next time, if there is a next time.

Wen finished the scavenger hunt page. She found a food with an alphabet vowel sound, a food with a relative vowel sound, a food that forms its plural with /s/ and one that forms its plural with /z/. She found a food with linking and one with each kind of consonant sound: voiced and voiceless. Back in the classroom by 12:15, we took up the answers together.

Hopefully Thursday will go more smoothly.

See you then!

Linking V to V

Hello!

Today we talked about another type of linking in English. This is the linking between vowel sounds. You remember the alphabet vowel sounds, right? They are /ey/, /iy/, /ay/, /ow/, and /uw/. We also have relative vowel sounds, but we don't need to talk about them because English words never end in relative vowel sounds.

Today we saw once again that English is not pronounced as written. We write "I am," but we say, "I yam." There is no pause between the two words. The little /y/ sound at the end of "I" acts like a bridge or link to take us smoothly into the next vowel sound.

We practiced vowel-vowel linking in some phrases together.

Next we practiced writing a tiny Y or W between words to remind us of the link. Then we practiced saying those word pairs out loud.

We also practiced a dialogue. First we found the links and wrote them on our papers to remind us when to link. Then we practiced the dialogue with a partner. Finally you each had a chance to perform the dialogue for the class.

For the last activity, we asked each other some questions. Did you remember to link your final and initial vowel sounds?

Tomorrow we will be in the computer lab. See you then!

Vowels and the Following Consonant

Today we learned that ALL vowels are longer before voiced consonants. Many native speakers of English do not know this! But if you give them the list of words and listen, you will see!

We looked at words such as:

bus / buzz

back / bag

buck / bug

ice / eyes

We did a lot of practice in pairs with sentences.

If partner A said "He wants peas," partner B said, "Not carrots?"

If partner A said "He wants peace," partner B said, "Not war?"

Some of us had trouble with voiced th, voiceless th and also with /v/. Don't worry, we will work on these soon. In the meantime, you can watch this funny teacher's video about voiceless and voiced TH sounds. Click here.

Have a great weekend! See you Monday!

The Vowel Sounds in Late and Let

Hello!

Are you at home relaxing? Checking your email?

Today we practiced the vowel sounds in late and let. We worked in pairs to help each other with the pronunciation of these sounds using minimal sentences such as "Put it in the shade" and "Put it in the shed."

A shed is a small, very simple building. A tool shed is a place in your backyard where you can store your lawnmower and tools.

We also practiced a dialogue about Jay Davis, who was waiting for a train at the train station.

During the last part of class, we asked each other these questions:

Are you usually early or late?

Do you know how to bake a cake?

When is your birthday?

Which do you like better, trains or airplanes?

Hey, nobody asked ME the questions! I am usually early. I know how to bake a cake. My birthday is July 22nd. I like both trains and airplanes.

Tomorrow we will learn something interesting about vowels. Next week we will start a new subject.

See you!

The Lax U Sound - /ʊ/

Hello, students!

Today was a scorcher, wasn't it? I hope we get more rain to cool things off.

Today we finished practicing our coffee shop dialogues from yesterday. Each student wrote a dialogue for ordering at Tim Horton's. Then we recited our dialogues aloud.

Florin used a useful phrase in his dialogue: "keep the change." He gave the server a tip.

During the second part of the class, we learned another vowel sound. This is the lax "u" in the words book, cookie, would and should. The phonetic symbol looks like this: /ʊ/

We practiced the sound using a variety of activities.

Finally, we practiced giving advice using the following phrases:

Maybe you should...

You could...

Maybe you shouldn't...

You should....

If I were you, I would...

Florin took the first role playing card. It said:

"I have a 16-year-old son. Yesterday I found cigarettes in his room. What should I do?"

We gave him some advice on that.

Wen took the next card. It said:

"My child learns bad words at school. What should I do?"

One idea was to call the school and talk to the teacher. The teacher could have a talk with the children.

Have a good weekend and stay cool! Don't forget to do the homework on the back of the coffee shop dialogues sheet.