PRONOUNCING ENGLISH VOWELS

Vowels are letters that are pronounced by forcing air over your vocal cords through your mouth. It is the shape of your mouth that decides which vowel sound comes out. There are many tape or video cassette lessons available from schools, libraries and stores which will help you with your pronunciation. You can also learn a lot by listening to the radio and watching television and films.

Information taken from the web page: http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/english/pronunciation/vowels.asp

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH CONSONANTS

Consonant Sounds are produced by completely or partially stopping the breath. Consonant Sounds can be voiceless (VL, no vibration of the vocal cords) or voiced (VD, vibration of the vocal cords) and often come in sound pairs.

Information taken from the web page: http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/english/pronunciation/consonants.asp

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Here is a chart with all the English consonant and vowel sounds so you can practice them.

*Chart taken from the web page http://club.telepolis.com/phonetics/tablea.html

Exercise - Odd word out - Phonetics

Read the following groups of words. Which word in each group has a different sound? - Fill in the blanks in the following exercise with them:

- time - pattern - castle - spelt

- wears - does - loves - knocks

- stayed - looked - pulled - weighed

- look - good - blood - foot

- dead - mean - bread - head

- rented - landed - assisted - opened

- thought - around - sound - house

- York - born - Ford - Oxford

- lives - reads - writes - begs

- kissed - smiled - studied - agreed

- day - days - say - says

- agrees - makes - stops - cooks

- though - brought - ought - thought

- night - fifth - sight - climb

- museum - use - music - busy

- moon - food - foot - poodle

- jeans - steak - sea - weak

- studies - runs - wishes - goes

- played - helped - laughed - walked

- beard - dear - heard - hear

- lion - million - billion - millionaire

- personal - personality - reality - Italian

- fruit - suit - juice - built

- horse - history - story - cord

- arrived - lived - needed - joined

- asks - rubs - sails - rains

- wanted - depended - watched - waited

- country - young - youth - couple

- daughter - fault - cause - aunt

- chalk - wall - calm - talk

- heart - earth - heard - search

- marry - dance - hand - sat

- worry - horror - terror - mirror

- piece - ladies - niece - field

- half - have - has - ham

- oven - colour - son - gone

- hotel - hot - hotter - pot

- books - rose - same - kisses

- cheese - achieve - ache - beach

- soldier - drive - dry - sound

*Exercise taken from the web page http://club.telepolis.com/phonetics/afoneticodda.html