10 Tips on Pronounciation

When the person first pronounces words often he tends to do so with the notion that the word stresses are similar and the phonetics are the same as in his own language. Sometimes he thinks that word stress is much the same as where the intonation goes within a word and he also thinks that all he has to do is concentrate on what he sees within a clear focus. Here are some tips on the correct pronunciation in the English languages that is vital for the teacher and learner.

1. Sentences have a phonetic pattern. This means that a question s going to sound one way and a statement another. This allows the student to know when he is listening to a question or an answer. A question will have an intonation that goes up at the end when as a statement won’t.
2. New speakers should be taught to abbreviate when they talk but if the abbreviated words are difficult to mouth than it is wise to have the new comer use the long form of speech first
3. Plurals are often expressed with the “s” at the end of the word. That letter has to be sounded. If I get a French speaker starting out, he will often let that slip but as time goes on he should be able to master that sound as it informs the listener that he is not referring to a singular item. More will be explained under a section on singulars and their plural forms.
4. The simple pasts for regular verbs have “ed” endings and the foreigner will often pronounce all those ending alike. The ending has a hard “d” sound for words that have a “t” or “d” before the vowel and the past tense form has two syllables. Other regular forms like “slipped” have one syllable and the “d” sounds like a “t”.
5. Many words, which end in “e”, will often modify the short vowel sound of the word before that vowel is added. Try this exercise with short three letter words containing a singular vowel and add an e at the end. So the “a” sound in rat is completely different from the longer “a” sound in “rate”.
6. The h is silent for some words and not others. Teachers should explain what those words are and assist the student in expiring before the rest of the word is said so that the “h”sound is natural.
7. The “e” at the end of words is silent except for those words that come from the French like matinee, where the word sounds like that spoken in the native tongue
8. Words are often syllabified differently from the French and other languages and the student should learn families of words to be able to note the commonality between the syllabications. Longer words will often have more stresses on parts of the word than a shorter word.
9. Slang should be avoided at least in the beginning so that the student knows what the language was before it was reduced or modified. If the student is concerned, I would approach him with the classical English form and explain how some words got clipped because of expediency or just plain laziness. So a word like “wanna” is actually two and should be explained as coming from “want to” where the t is clearly pronounced.
10. In regular speech vocal tones will fluctuate within a sentence and within a paragraph as vital information is stressed and smaller details are less so. It is up to the student to listen to how a speaker presents an argument before a committee to understand how one can indirectly determine the main points of a person’s discourse by the inflection of his tone.