18 English words that mean very different things in Britain and America As the old adage famously goes: you say tom-MAY-toes, and I say tom-MAH-toes. We should probably call the whole thing off, right? Ever since the might of the British Empire was expelled from the United States, ordinary folk from both sides of the pond have chuckled at each other's use of the English language and pronunciation. Here are several important examples you need to remember - simply to make sure no one gives you a weird look when you're off on your holidays. 1. A jumper UK: A woollen pullover worn in the winter US: Someone who commits suicide by leaping from a building or bridge 2. UK: An eraser for a pencil US: A condom 3. UK: Something a baby wears (noun) US: Frizzy or hairy (adjective) 4. UK: The floor above the ground floor US: The ground floor of a building UK: Flaps attached to a race horse's face to restrict its vision US: Indicators on a car 6. UK: Another word for jewellery box US: Another word for coffin 7. UK: Informal party wear, dressing up as a well-known character 8. 9. 10. 11.
Pronunciation skills: What accent should I teach? By Adrian Underhill ELT Pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill addresses your practical concerns on accents, RP and student identity. Practical concerns What accent should I teach?I suggest you teach your own accent. Whether you are a native or non-native speaker, teach the accent that you speak. What about Received Pronunciation (RP)? So, what is the best pronunciation target for my students? This means two separate pronunciation targets: a speaking/productive one and a listening/receptive one. Should students keep their own accent? Won’t changing my students’ accents change their identity? Practical ideas for the classroom 1. 2. Invite them to notice and play with the differences between accents. Twenty one accents One woman, 17 British accents Fun tour of American accents 3. 4. 5. For more practical ideas see my blog www.adrianpronchart.wordpress.com Accents and the L1 grip The interactive phonemic chart
33 ways to speak better English If you’re reading this, I imagine you want to speak better English and communicate in a more confident and competent way. When we communicate effectively we are able to express our ideas and opinions, share experiences, and build relationships with others. When we struggle to express ourselves, we feel unvalued and insecure. As human beings, we want to participate in group discussions and have an impact on the society around us. In the modern world, we communicate across borders. By speaking better English, people all over the world can hear our voice. Well, English teachers and English classes definitely help. What you need is to become a self-directed learner, somebody who takes responsibility for their own learning and creates their own learning programme to develop their English. Now, it’s certainly true that speaking is a social activity and is best done with other people. You can do the same with your English. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. I want to go for a drink tonight. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
How to Improve Your English Pronunciation to Talk Like a Native “What?” “Can you say that again?” How many times do you hear this when you’re speaking? Even if your vocabulary and English grammar are perfect, it can still be difficult for people to understand you because of your pronunciation. Learning to pronounce English words correctly can be one of the hardest parts of learning English. The English language has some sounds that your native language might not, so you will have to learn how to make completely new sounds. Plus, English vowels make it really tricky to know how to say a word. Ah! So that’s why we have eight tips for you, to help you pronounce English words better. 1. Before you learn how to speak, you’ll need to learn how to listen. There are many guides to get you started in learning to listen. The pronunciation practice at Many Things is really slick, especially its huge selection of lessons on minimal pairs. When you want to listen to authentic English instead of pronunciation exercises, you can watch videos on FluentU. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
The most difficult words to pronounce in the English language revealed – as well as the world’s favourite English tongue-twisters | Weird News | News “Worcestershire”. “Choir”. “Sixth”. For some, these words may seem relatively normal and everyday – but to others, they represent an unrivalled linguistic challenge. For almost two weeks, users of the online social platform reddit have been submitting what they consider to be “the hardest English word to pronounce”. After more than 5,000 submissions, the message thread has become a fount of difficult vocabulary, with users from across the world sharing their favourites and personal experiences. There are references to popular culture, some very creative tongue-twisters – and because of reddit’s points system, a rough consensus has emerged as to which are the hardest. Here are the top 10: 10 - Rural Submitted by user ‘mattythedog’, rural appears to cause problem particularly when repeated or put next a word with similar “r” sounds. One user says: “I cannot say Rural Juror - comes out rurrrerr jerrrerr and sounds like I'm growling.” Weather man nails pronunciation of 58 letter Welsh name
IDEA International Dialects of English Archive | free dialect and accent recordings for the performing arts 12 songs to practice the pronunciation of -ED endings - Luiz Otávio Barros As you know, the “-ed” endings of regular past tense verbs can be pronounced in three different ways: /t/, /d/ and /ɪd/, which is the one most students tend to overuse. Click here for an overview of the rules. Over the years, I have found that /t/ and /d/ are easier to notice and to produce if the verb comes immediately before a word beginning with a vowel sound: liked it – /laɪktɪt/dreamed of – /driːmdəv/ To help students get their tongues around the two sounds, I usually ask them to move /t/ and /d/ to the front of the vowel sound. liked it – /laɪk tɪt/dreamed of – /driːm dəv/ Out of all the ideas and techniques I’ve used in class, this has probably been the most effective. So I decided to put together a 7-minute video containing 12 song excerpts you can use to help your students notice how /t/ and /d/ are linked to the vowel sounds that follow. You will notice that the activities do not test whether students can choose between /t/ and /d/. Thanks for reading – and watching.
Intonation – Simple Conversation in Different Voices – The Canswedian English Teacher Right now, I am enrolled in an English Grammar course at a Swedish university. Teacher’s license in Sweden = more English. Go figure… There is this one professor that pre-records all the lessons so we can listen to them before the seminar. It takes ALL of my strength to stay awake during these pre-recorded lectures. Why you ask? Have you ever seen Ferris Beuller’s Day Off? Needless to say, I am big on making students speak with intonation, pauses and emphasising important words and phrases. So – how do I help them with this? Step 1: Put various words up on the board like Hey, Bye, what? Ask them how they would say the word “Hey” if they were happy to see someone. What about bye? This purpose of this warm up activity is to show/remind them that the overall tone and meaning of a word can change with the emphasis, intonation and drawing out of a word. Once you have gone through that, move on to the main course. Step 2: Give the students a very simple conversation. Person 1: Hello
BBC Learning English | Pronunciation Tips Teaching Diphthongs | Blog de Cristina It’s never easy to teach phonetics and even though I love teaching this skill, I don’t think my students share my feelings on this subject. Anyway,in case you find it interesting or useful this is how I’m planning to teach diphthongs . A diphthong is a sound made up of two vowels, or in other words ,a vowel sound that starts near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves toward the position for another.In RP (the approved pronunciation of British English) , there are eight diphthongs. An easy way for them to remember the diphthongs is by drawing a face such as this one and then eliciting the diphthongs in the head. You’ll get seven out of the eight diphthongs as you can see from the picture . face |eɪ| | boy /ɔɪ/ ear / ɪə/ eye /aɪ/ nose /əʊ/ mouth /aʊ/ hair /eə / What diphthong is missing ? Click here if you want to listen to the pronunciation of these diphthongs. ♥ Ask students to work in pairs and give each pair a different diphthong. Get ready for some funny sentences!
You've Been Saying These Country And City Names Wrong Your Whole Life No one wants to be labeled as a gawking, uninformed foreigner. Aside from wearing a fanny pack, one of the fastest ways to get yourself labeled as a tourist is to mispronounce the name of the city you are visiting. However, in defense of all those who confuse the proper pronunciation of Ibiza for a seriously strong lisp, learning the proper names of all the places in the world can be a tricky task. Let’s face it, spelling can be deceiving, especially if it’s in a language you don’t know how to speak. But luckily, Thrillophilia set out to find the most tricky cities and put an end to their mispronunciations once and for all. Thanks to this clever pronunciation project, you’ll never have to endure the embarrassment of looking like a total tourist or an illiterate idiot on your next journey abroad. Check out the photos below to learn the right pronunciations of the world’s cities. Melbourne, Australia Bangkok, Thailand Beijing, China Colombia Lafayette, USA Iraq Dubai, UAE Brisbane, Australia Niger Qatar
Ceri Jones - Pronunciation: focusing on sounds from day one For the last couple of years I’ve been teaching the Unknown Language component of the Trinity TESOL certificate course. This basically entails teaching four hours of a new language to the trainees in the initial stage of their course to give them a taste of what it feels like to be in a language classroom. I teach Welsh. This experience has really helped in the first few lessons with my new class and I’ve noticed I’ve transferred quite a few basic skills. With a recent English A1.1 class I did something very similar and it was only later that I realized that I’d brought it over from my Welsh classes. I don’t think I’ve ever given so much attention and importance to sounds in a first lesson before – this is definitely something I’ve developed since teaching Welsh. Other ways I've experimented with of looking at sounds and the "voice" of a language include: Maybe you have some more to add to the list?
Royals (Lorde) –[Multimedia-English videos] This was named the Best Song of 2013 by MTV News. MTV said: "She may never be 'royal,' but Lorde's chart-topping single will forever be enthroned in the collective cerebral cortex of the world." Ella Yelich-O'Connor is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. Inspired by her love for such royals as Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI of France, and the last Tsar, Nicholas II of Russia, she adopted the moniker of Lorde (The 'e' is pronounced silently). This song eschews an intro and starts right in with the verse "I've never seen a diamond in the flesh...". Since the song tells a story, this is a great technique for hooking the listener. "Royals" also gets to the chorus by leading up to it with a line that punches the title as the main instrumentation kicks in. IN THE FLESH= (usually referring to a person or animal) for real, in real life, in front of me. I'M NOT PROUD OF MY ADDRESS= I live in a poor area and I feel ashamed that people may know that. BLOOD STAINS= /blʌd steɪnz/ A mark of blood.
Sandy Millin: Advanced pronunciation | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC I have regularly taught advanced students who are extremely competent speakers, have a very wide vocabulary and a good knowledge of grammatical structures, but who have trouble understanding when native speakers produce fast speech. This was a particular problem when I was teaching in the UK, where some of my students were reluctant to speak to people in the streets when we did tasks such as interviews, as they were worried they wouldn’t understand and would have to keep asking for their interviewee to repeat themselves. To combat this fear and to improve students’ confidence, I think it’s important to focus on the features of connected speech with our students as early as possible. I’ve noticed that many of my students are unaware of features such as: Elision: the ‘loss’ of sounds. For example, the middle ‘e’ disappearing from ‘vegetable’, or ‘d’ disappearing in ‘black and white’.Intrusion: the ‘addition’ of sounds, following a predictable pattern. Further reading