If you're finding it difficult to improve your pronunciation and your listening comprehension in English,
then you are certainly not alone.
Hello and welcome everyone. This is Minoo at Anglo-Link.
English pronunciation is difficult to master for two main reasons:
firstly, vowel letters don't always produce the same vowel sound.
Take for example the letter 'e', and listen to how it's pronounced differently in these four words:
Secondly, English is a stress-timed language.
in a sentence, we only stress key words, not grammatical words.
Let's look at a sentence together:
Excellence is an achievable goal.
So, which words are the keywords?
The key words are: 'excellence', 'achievable', and 'goal', so they are stressed.
The grammatical words are: 'is' and 'an', so they are unstressed.
And each multi-syllable word also has its own stress pattern.
For example, which syllable in 'achievable' is stressed?
It is the second syllable: a-CHIEV-a-ble.
The problem is that word stresses are not marked, except in a dictionary.
And, the phonetic symbols that indicate the sound of each letter can be more confusing than helpful.
Although we can listen to words in an online dictionary,
it is difficult for our brain to remember foreign sounds,
especially if we have not heard them during our childhood.
I have recently been introduced to an excellent method
that helps us to remember sounds by using colours
and word stress patterns by using hand movements.
The creators of this method have also developed an app to help you to improve your pronunciation.
I will introduce you to this app at the end of this video.
For now, let me just explain the hand movement technique that helps us to remember stress patterns.
Aim for excellence, not perfection.
We have two multi-syllable words in this sentence:
'excellence' and 'perfection'.
In 'excellence', the first syllable is stressed: EX-cel-lence.
In 'perfection', the second syllable is stressed: per-FEC-tion.
How well do you think you will remember these in a few days?
So let's bring in some visual cues and hand movements to help our memory.
Now, let's put the two words back in the sentence:
Aim for EXcellence, not perFECtion.
Well, that was a quick demonstration of the hand movement technique.
Let me now introduce you to the Blue Canoe app,
which has been cleverly designed to help you improve your pronunciation
Some great features of this app include:
The helpful Colour Vowel Chart
Useful phrases to increase your vocabulary range
Advanced voice recognition and feedback software
I would highly recommend this app,
which you can get on your mobile device by using this QR code
or by clicking on the link below.
I hope this information has been helpful to you.
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