Insessional Pronunciation Classes

Each week we will look at some of the features of English pronunciation and there will be an opportunity to
practise them. We may do some listening practice, particularly in terms of ‘training your ear’, i.e. improving
your awareness of natural speech.
There will also be an opportunity to discuss new vocabulary. We will explore pronunciation at
word/sentence/discourse level, looking at features of natural spoken English.
Examples of features are given below:

Word level pronunciation

The sounds of English
The phonemic chart
 E.g. distinguishing vowel sounds: walk /wɔːk/ vs. work  /wɜːk/

The relationship between sound and spelling

 E.g. homophones: aloud and allowed – different spellings but both pronounced  /ə’laʊd/

Stress and weak forms in words

 E.g. Changing parts of speech: record (noun) v record (verb)
 E.g. Shifting stress in word families: compare ‘photographer’ (stress on 2 nd syllable) and
‘photographic’ (stress on 3rd syllable)

Sentence Level Pronunciation

Sentence stress
Weak forms in sentences
 E.g. reduced forms of unstressed words: It’s nice to meet you. (main stress on meet; unstressed ‘to’
reduced to /tə/)
 E.g. contractions: You could’ve told me. (contractions, in this case, ‘have’ reduced to /əv/)
Sentence stress and meaning
 E.g. contrastive stress: I said she should get the job vs. I said she should get the job.

Features of connected speech

 E.g. elision: a late dinner (‘t’ is usually elided (not pronounced)
 E.g. assimilation: ten ͜ pin bowling (where the ‘/n/ in ‘ten’ and ‘pin’ become more like a /m/ due to the
/b/ and /p/ sounds following them.)
 E.g. juncture: ‘an apple’ or ‘a napple?’, ‘stopped aching’ or ‘stop taking’?
 E.g. linking: My mother ͜ is ͜ a doctor.(extra sounds occurring at word boundaries, consonants
linking to vowel sounds at word boundaries, etc.)
Discourse Level Pronunciation
Intonation
 E.g. predictable intonation patterns:
Compare: ‘Where are you going?’ (falling intonation on final word usual in wh-questions) with
‘Can you drive?’ (rising intonation on final word usual in yes/no questions)
 E.g. Changing meaning with intonation: ‘Sorry?’ vs. ‘Sorry!’

Speech units (chunking)

 Where the natural breaks in spoken language are:
Compare: I bought a ticket and got/ on the train //
I bought a ticket/ and got on the train //

We will often use an up-to-date text from the BBC to show these mechanisms in practice; alternatively, we
will look at film clips or other media.

We may refer to the following websites:

The phonemic chart:

http://www.macmillanenglish.com/methodology/phonetic-chart.htm
A good online dictionary with UK and US pronunciation:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
The BBC News Briefing site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007rhyn