Ipa Symbols Sounds

  There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings, which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation, which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart we have our...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Many ESL teachers have never even heard of phonetics or phonology, yet they use these aspects of speech naturally when they speak. Phonetics and phonology are two areas of linguistics that study the sounds of language. Phonetics focuses on individual sounds, while phonology studies the features and combination of sounds (McMahon, 1-3). There are two reasons why ESL teachers need to know phonetics and phonology: first, it helps them to conceptualize English in a way that their students can understand; and second, it helps them to address their students' difficult pronunciation problems. Why Students Suffer from Pronunciation Issues? Lack of Subject Knowledge Sound Awareness Teacher as a Role Model Are you ready to take your TEFL course? Related...  [Read more]

  Here we have a set of five words, which all share one sound: the ?oh? sound, as in ?go?, ?show?, ?dough?, ?note? and ?boat?. They?re five different spelling patterns to tell our students so they can identify when to make the ?oh? sound. We can have a simple letter ?o?, ?ow?, ?ough?, ?o? with the magic ?e? which turns our vowel into what we knew as long sounds and the ?oa? as in ?boat?. Now, for a non-native learner, perhaps they can handle something like this. They remember that these spelling combinations help to produce the ?oh? sound and they can go about their business looking at the words and memorizing this knowing that these spelling patterns will produce the sound ?oh?. Now that?s okay until we get to a situation where we can also have words like ?to?, ?cow? and also...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Each student faces their difficulties when it comes to English pronunciation depending on their country of origin. This essay will focus on the pronunciation difficulties facing ESL students in France and will also propose some solutions to help students overcome these difficulties. French Sound System IPA Difficult Sounds The Dark /L/ Sound Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kerri M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The number of English vowel sounds greatly outnumbers those found in the French language. As such, French students will have to produce sounds that they have never produced before....  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Here's a useful word list with long vowel sounds to use with your ESL students.   Long vowel sound spelling patterns are quite difficult for students to learn. First they must understand that more than one letter can be used to represent one sound and then learn the various ways that the sound can be represented in print.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  The next thing we should look at is how our consonants are arranged for the top two rows we have P and F at the left side of our chart and G and J at the right side of our chart. They're arranged this way because if we analyze the way we speak we're using the front of our mouth to use these sounds as in ?p? and ?f? and I'm using my lips and my teeth to produce those sounds and as we move to the right on the chart slowly but surely we're making those sounds it towards the back of our mouth. We can use the examples of ?g?. The sound ?g? is produced further back in our mouth than ?p?. The next thing we'll notice about our chart is that some of our symbols are shaded. Notice that none of the symbols in the vowel sections are shaded but only a few are in the consonant section. The...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Here's a useful word list with long vowel sounds to use with your ESL students.   Long vowel sound spelling patterns are quite difficult for students to learn. First they must understand that more than one letter can be used to represent one sound and then learn the various ways that the sound can be represented in print.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Here's a useful word list with long vowel sounds to use with your ESL students.   Long vowel sound spelling patterns are quite difficult for students to learn. First they must understand that more than one letter can be used to represent one sound and then learn the various ways that the sound can be represented in print.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Here's a useful word list with long vowel sounds to use with your ESL students.   Long vowel sound spelling patterns are quite difficult for students to learn. First they must understand that more than one letter can be used to represent one sound and then learn the various ways that the sound can be represented in print.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Explore the challenges and strategies in teaching English language sounds and pronunciation across different age groups.It's widely known that students of various age groups exhibit varying learning capacities. Despite these differences and regardless of background or origin, learners of English (referred to as L2) often struggle with speaking and listening due to the language's heavy reliance on auditory comprehension. This article delves into the importance of addressing these pronunciation challenges, especially in the context of teaching English as a second language. Understanding Age-Related Differences Young Learners: Nurturing the Phonetic Foundation Navigating the Teenage Years: 12-18 Age Group Engaging Adult Learners: The...  [Read more]

  Alveolar sounds get their name from the fact that the alveolar ridge is being used. Again, that ridge is just behind the front top row of teeth. Here the tongue is on or very very near the alveolar ridge. It's typically the tip of the tongue or what's just behind the tip of the tongue, called the blade of the tongue. Here, we're talking about sounds such as ?t? and ?d?. If you say them at home, you can tell the tip of your tongue is on that alveolar ridge. Again, that's ?t? and ?d?, as well as sounds such as ?s? and ?z?. Again, the blade of the tongue is just near that alveolar ridge but it is very near nonetheless. The two other sounds that make it into this category is the ?l? sound, where the tip of the tongue is very clearly touching that alveolar ridge, as well as ?r? or the R...  [Read more]

  "As mentioned before our four words here all are similar in using the ?b? and ?t? sounds at the end. So we know that those phonemes will be used in spelling each one of those words phonetically. Now what we're left to do is assign a phoneme for our vowel sounds. So if we analyze the word, it's ?e? as in bet. We look at our chart, we see the phoneme which corresponds to that sound and that happens to be the standard ?e? that we all recognize. Here, bet phonetically looks very similar to bet in the Roman script. Now let's take a look at ?i? bit. Now we look at our chart and we see that this symbol represents the ?i? sound and that resembles a capital I not a lowercase I but a capital I and so we've arrived at bit. Now with ?but? we have to find the sound and that corresponds to this...  [Read more]

  Place of articulation deals with the placement of the vocal organs when producing a sound. Before we can cover the particulars of places of articulation, we'll need to take a look at the various vocal organs and their locations. Moving from the front to the back we'd begin with our lips. We can use both lips in order to create a sound or we can use one of our lips with one of our rows of teeth, usually the top, in order to produce another sound. We also have other sounds, which use both of the rows of teeth. Further back we have what's called the alveolar ridge. That's the bit of the mouth that may get burnt when we're eating a pizza that's a bit too hot and the cheese burns just behind there our top two teeth. That again is the hard bit just behind our top teeth, called the...  [Read more]

  In her ninth video diary instalment, Chantelle discusses unit 9 of her online TEFL course from ITTT. This unit covers lesson planning and the importance of being well prepared for your lessons. The unit discusses whether there is a need to plan lessons, how a lesson plan should be written and what should be included in a lesson plan. It also looks at ways to plan a sequence of lessons and how important it is for teachers to reflect on past lessons to help improve future classes. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Like we all know, the English alphabet has 26 letters. These 26 letters can make 44 different sounds or phonemes – 20 sounds come from the vowels a, e, i, o and u; and 24 sounds come from the remaining 21 consonants. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. The Vowel Sounds The Consonant Sounds Syllable Stress Without Jumping to Conclusions Listen to this blog post Are you ready to take your TEFL course? Related Articles: If we consider sounds made simply by the letter 'a' for instance, in the word 'apple' – it's /ae/, in 'car' – it's /a:/, in amount – it's /a/, and so on. This, consequently, makes English a non-phonetic language, which means that the pronunciation of a word is not...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In this blog post, we'll will delve into phonetics and phonology as described in George Yule's book, "The Study of Language." Phonetic and phonology are two branches of linguistics focused on the sound system. They are critical to understanding how speech sounds are produced, which, in turn, shapes language and communication. This discussion will explore various aspects of phonetics and phonology, breaking down the complex world of sounds in the English language. Phonetics and the Sound System Articulation Points Manner of Articulation Vowels and Diphthongs Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language Teaching Phonetics and Phonology In Conclusion Are you ready to teach English as a foreign language? Related Articles: Check...  [Read more]

  A better way to go about imparting how to make sounds or what sounds are utilized in a word, is this international phonemic alphabet. Now we have as mentioned one symbol being used in all the words which share that same sound. Now once we get a little bit more familiar with our phonemic alphabet we can also show how different our different sounds can be as in this symbol for ?ooh?, this symbol for ?ow? and this symbol for ?uh?. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas What is phonology? Most students have not even heard about it. Whenever I ask my students whether they know or have ever learned about phonetics, the same answers come out, "No, we don't know about it at all". It is no wonder they reply like this because there is no phonetic teaching lesson in English classes from KG to high school here in my country. As for me, I got to study about this only when I attended college. Even then, it wasn't taught comprehensively and I only learned very little. So I couldn't read nor write phonetic symbols very well. Thus I thought it was the most difficult part of studying English. Reasons to pay attention to phonetics Phonetics in the early years Benefits Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The purpose of my essay is to outline some of the most frequently occurred pronunciation mistakes made by Russian learners and share some of the teaching ideas based on a few sources and my own experience of teaching and learning English as a foreign and second language. State of the Problem Russian Phonetics vs. English Phonetics Choice of Activities Vowel Sounds Are you ready to teach English to ESL students? Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Olga R. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Teaching English phonology and pronunciation for Russian learners is always challenging as there are a great number of differences rather than similarities in the...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!   When you use more than one adjective, you have to put them in the right order or it will sound very strange. Do you say, "I want a big black cat" or "I want a black big cat?" Let's take a look at infographic below.   So, do you say, "I want a big black cat" or "I want a black big cat?" The first one is correct. Why? If "big" is size and "black" is color, then it should come first because size is number (2) and color is number (5) on the infographic above. You can use this chart for all orders of adjectives. A quick and easy way is to always place the adjective that is easy to change first. Number 1 (Opinion) can be changed more easily than number 6 (Origin: where something is from). It is easy for me to change my...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Sheneil J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Problems with Consonants Problems with Vowels Problems with Rhythm and Stress Problems with intonation Minimal Pairs Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: Chinese does not have either of the "th" sounds (like "that" and "this"). Most other languages do not have these sounds and they are problematic for most learners of English. The difficulty is the point of articulation- the tongue has to be between the teeth, not behind them. Many people say that English speakers look like they're sticking their tongues out all the time because of the "th" sounds. It...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences It is not a secret that pronouncing English sounds easily and correctly is a big challenge for non-native speakers. Of course, the complexity of English pronunciation consists not only of particular sounds but also of several other aspects such as intonation, stress, rhythm, and timing. I would like to analyze one of the biggest and most obvious pronunciation problems for Ukrainian speakers of English which, in my opinion, is sound differences and the way of pronouncing sounds. Sound System Articulation Aspiration Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Hanna H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are a number...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word catastrophic. This word is used as an adjective and means extremely tragic or horrendous. Some synonyms for catastrophic include tragic and disastrous. The word comes from the Greek word katastroph?, meaning to overturn. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! This unit talked about the way that words are pronounced and produced, both physically and...  [Read more]

  Our next methodology is called the silent way and it's accredited to Caleb Gattegno and was developed in or around the 1970s. This particular methodology moved on from the behaviorist stimulus response to what's called a theory of constructivism and this constructivist approach was very very different, very radical to anything that had been tried before. The background to this particular methodology was that there was a French mathematics teacher who found that his students were finding it very difficult to understand particular concepts. What he realized was that what they needed was a more visual representation of the information. So he came up with a series of colored rods to help with those concepts in mathematics. He gave his name to those rods and they're called Cuisenaire...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Weather and whether are a pair of homophones which means they sound the same, but they have different spellings and meanings. Here we explain how to use these words correctly.   WEATHER Definition and Examples Weather can be a noun or a verb. WEATHER Examples: WHETHER Definition and Examples Whether is a conjunction, which joins two words or phrases together. WHETHER Examples: Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  And now we have our nasal sounds. There are three nasal sounds and basically the pattern of air that's moving out of our vocal tract has to do with two big instances and that is a closure in the vocal tract. Except aside from the plosives and affricates, what we have is air escaping through our nasal cavity. These sounds include ?m?, ?n? and ?ng?. We're moving from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. First with the M sound or the ?m?, we're closing both lips and the air is escaping through the nasal passage ?m?. Next we have our N sound or our ?n? sound. There, the closure is inside the mouth but our tongue is closing up near our alveolar ridge and the air is escaping through the nose. Again that's ?n?. Finally we have our NG sound and the closure there is happening...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! This is a cloze test about the history of Halloween and in the text, you can find out the origin of Halloween, its traditions, and symbols more representative. The test consists in a video that pupils have to watch (the link is included in the text) and then they have to fill in the gaps in the text, and finally, they have to answer some questions about the video they have just watched.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! These 16 slang words are the perfect addition to your English vocabulary! Sound just like an English native speaker.     Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  When it comes to manner of articulation, we have six different ways in which our breath is produced in order to make our sounds. We have our plosives, our affricates, fricatives, the nasal sounds, our lateral sound and the approximants. Let's take a look at each individually and see how they differ from one another. First we have our plosive sounds. As the word might indicate we have basically a little explosion of sound with our breath. The plosive sounds are made through a three-step process. First there's a closure somewhere in the vocal tract. Second there's a buildup of air and finally there's a sudden release of that air like a little explosion. If we look at some of the sounds that are made this way we might better understand why they are called plosives. Examples are the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Daisy C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Grammar Pronunciation Japanese schools Japanese culture Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: One problem facing many Japanese students learning English is differentiating between countable and uncountable nouns. In the Japanese language, the same word is often used for 'much' and 'many'. In English, 'much' is used to describe countable nouns, and 'many' is used to describe uncountable nouns. A problem facing many EFL learners, especially Japanese learners, is idioms. The English language has thousands of idioms, which are used in everyday life. These are...  [Read more]