Stress and Vowel Quality

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

Since we had only a four-day school week and Fridays are special, we didn't tackle a new topic. Rather, we focused this week on making our stressed vowels longer, louder / higher in pitch, and clearer.

We reviewed the difference between CONTENT WORDS and FUNCTION WORDS.

English is a stress-timed language.  We practiced the rhythm of many sentences.

Here is a great video on this topic.

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!

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!

Stress in Compound Words

Hello, students!

Today was fun, eh? We have two new students in the class: Federico and Tania. Welcome to Canada and welcome to the class.

We started off the class by listening to two sentences: Barack Obama lives in the White House. My friend lives in a white house. I asked you if you could hear a difference in how I said "white house" in each sentence.

Angela said she noticed that the stress is on the first word in White House. We also noticed that White House sounds like one word. That's right. The two words are said together without a pause between them.

We talked about two kinds of compound nouns. They can be made from noun plus another noun, like bookcase, lunch box, key chain, post office. They can also be made from other parts of speech plus a noun, such as adjective plus noun. For example: greenhouse, darkroom, yellow jacket, hot dog.

We practiced some minimal sentences aloud as a class and then in pairs. Our partners had to hold up one finger or two to indicate which they thought we were saying: the compound noun or the descriptive phrase.

Next we played a game. I put eight pictures on the board. There was a picture of the White House and a picture of a white house. There was a picture of a greenhouse and a picture of a green house. There was a picture of a wasp and a picture of a yellow jacket with black buttons. There was a picture of a warm canine and a picture of a frankfurter in a bun with mustard on top.

One person from each team came to the board and took a marker. Bashar said, "Show me the White House," and each player rushed to circle the correct picture. Florin also took a turn calling out the sentences.

For our last activity, I passed out glossy pictures from clothing and furniture catalogs and asked you to find compound words on the pages. But it was tricky, because I had some regular descriptive phrases mixed in. You all found some great examples of compounds.

In clothing, we found: bucket hat, sun glasses, sun hat, golf hat, tank top, halter top, trademark, etc. On the pages from an IKEA catalog, you found step stool, floor lamp, work lamp, coffee table, love seat, arm chair and more.

For the last few minutes, you made sentences about your pictures using the compound words. Federico said, "I need a step stool to change the light bulb." He used TWO compounds in the same sentence. Way to go, Federico!

Have a nice weekend. I'll see you all on Monday.

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.

Introduction to Word Stress

Hello!

During Wednesday's class we learned about stressed syllables. In every English word of more than one syllable, one syllable is the strongest. It has the most stress. This means:

• the vowel sound is longer
• the vowel sound is clearer
• the voice is a bit louder
• the pitch is a bit higher

We practiced saying multi-syllable words while focusing on longer vowel sounds in stressed syllables. We also practiced saying words while focusing on clearer vowel sounds in the stressed syllables.

We did an exercise with minimal sentences. First we practiced as a class, then we practiced this with our partners. One example was:

What's in the desert? Answer: sand

What's in the dessert? Answer: sugar

Everyone did really well with only a few problems to talk about.

Finally, we looked at acronyms. In acronyms, the final letter is stressed the most. We did a pairs exercise with a list of acronymns like BC, BBC, CNN. Then we thought of some more on our own, like YMCA, FBI and CIA.

On Thursday we will talk about schwa! Bye for now.