Getting pronunciation to the next level

Clear Pronunciation 2: The sounds in speech

Pronunciation is a key element of language acquisition. Not only is clear pronunciation crucial for getting meaning across - but when you know how to pronounce a word, it is also easier to recognise when it is said to you.

There are numerous resources out there to help you with the building blocks of pronunciation - the vowels, consonants and diphthongs that make up the 43 sounds of English (including our own Clear Pronunciation 1). But what happens next? How can you take the phonemes that you’ve mastered and turn them into natural, fluent and easily recognisable speech?

Think about it - changing the stress in a multisyllabic word could make it very hard to recognise, or even change the meaning:

• i-MA-gine vs i-ma-GINE

• PER-fect vs per-FECT

The same can be said about word stress in a sentence. No doubt you’ve seen the sentence with seven different meanings depending on where the stress is, floating around the internet:

“I never said she stole my money.”

Let’s look at a few examples of what the changing stress could mean:

I never said she stole my money - the speaker didn’t say it, but someone else could have
I never said she stole my money - the speaker is suggesting she got it some other way
I never said she stole my money - the implication is she stole something else

So you can see that the next level of pronunciation is difficult - and it is often overlooked. Students rarely get enough one-to-one time with teachers to drill down, practise and develop the elements that make up good pronunciation. It is challenging to do in a classroom setting and even more difficult to do alone. This is where Clear Pronunciation 2 comes in, helping learners build their confidence by bridging the gap from phonemes to full conversations.

Five Features of Fluent Speech:

We’ve identified five key features that learners can develop to achieve this goal:

Word stress, sentence stress, consonant clusters, connected speech and intonation.

Each of these is a unit, which is introduced by a teacher who breaks down the concept and explains its importance. This is followed by video and audio clips to allow learners to recognise the concept, and exercises to test their understanding. Finally, each unit encourages learners to repeat and practice what they have learnt with the built-in Clarity recorder.

Try out the demo version of Clear Pronunciation 2 here.