Hi there! Here’s video English sounds 5. In this video you’ll get to know about schwa /ə/ and /ɜː/ (making a sort of sound as if you were disgusted about something) . Why together? Well experience has taught me that both sounds are a bit difficult for Spanish English learners, but at the same time,…… Continue reading English sounds video 5: schwa /ə/ and /ɜː/
This is video number four concerning English vowel sounds. This sound doesn’t usually involve many problems for Spanish speakers, but a little practice is necessary to avoid making the sound too long or sounding a final ‘r’. This vowel sound is a feature that distinguishes rhotic and non-rhotic varieties of English accents, meaning by accents,…… Continue reading English vowel sounds: /ɑː/
If you have problems saying something like ‘Young rats in black hats’ or ‘The cat sat on my hat’ Then this video on phonetics will be handy as it will help you practise this open ‘a’ (ahhhhhhh!) sound. https://youtu.be/l3Y0jZY0d8g Serena’s blog
When you have a phonetic language like Spanish, for instance, it is quite easy to say the words you have learned from a book or a dictionary because if you know the sound of each letter, you can do quite well when speaking the language and everybody will understand you. But this is not the…… Continue reading Silent letters in English words
Here’s a video with the English alphabet for beginners. Here you can do two activities. First you can listen to the video and repeat the names of the letters and after, you can click on the quiz button below and do the sound quiz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fAnQZwPi4 Coming soon!
A great way to learn English is watching a film, but the thing is, how many of us have the time to watch films these days? I mean, I can hardly remember the last time I was able to relax on my settee with this intention, let alone watching one in a foreign language! Definitely, present-day…… Continue reading Learning English pronunciation with songs: I’ll Keep you Safe
Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem on animal rights and Christmas, is not only thought provoking, but is also put in such a humorous and clever way, that you actually can’t help admiring him as one of Britain’s top post-war writers. Zephaniah, a dub poet and Rastafarian, once mentioned that his mission was to fight the dead image…… Continue reading Listening Intermediate B1:Benjamin Zephaniah’s Talking Turkeys
One of the typical problems learners of English frequently come across is how to pronounce the endings in regular past English verbs. When I mean regular I mean all the ones that end in -ed/d like ‘walk>walked’, ‘study>studied’. There are actually some simple rules that will help students get this right almost all the times.…… Continue reading /id/ /d/ or /t/ in regular past verbs?
The sound /r/ is quite different to the Spanish /r/. The English /r/ is not articulated with the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth. Rather the front of the tongue (not the tip!) curls upwards and rises towards the top of the mouth cavity. Another big difference between Spanish /r/ and…… Continue reading Phonetics: English sounds /r/
/dʒ/ for job Words with this sound can come with: J like in the word jam /dʒæm/ g like in magic /ˈmædʒik/ dg like in judge /dʒʌdʒ/ dj like in adjective /ˈædʒektɪv/ /j/ for yes The spelling of this sound is: y like in the word yes /jes/ i like in onion /ˈʌnjən/ u…… Continue reading Phonetics English consonants /dʒ/ /j/
