The Hamburger Fun

You'd better learn that pronunciation fast!!

Probable mistakes with vowels- #3

The English mid-central /ə/, especially when stressed, has no counterpart in Portuguese, which causes the possibility of phonological error in words like but /bət/ and rubber /'rəbər/.
Also, its unstressed and reduced form, named “schwa”, is likely to become a persistent problem if we consider that Portuguese unstressed vowels are not normally reduced. Very likely Brazilian ESL students will be influenced by spelling in this area. Example: the word photographer might be pronounced /fô'tógrafêr/ instead of the correct /fə'tagrəfər/.

Here's a BBC video on it:

I personally think this is the main reason for what I like to call the strangeness In English, specially for Brazilian learners(syllabic timed language).
Without the knowledge of its existence, together with sounds linking  abilities, English learning proves to 
be  quite complicated when only focused on Grammar and Vocabulary.




For this reason, use your many different listening sources, including those found here, to try to identify the schwa sound and  its surrounding linking sounds!  

Present Like Steve Jobs

As promised to some students; here it follows a video on presentations:

Words and Their Stories: Number One

Guys have a look on this link:

Words and Their Stories: Number One

Have you ever listened for detail??




Try this:

STEP 1

Identify the auxiliary verbs ( do/does/did/don't/doesn't/didn't)

STEP2

What is its function(e.g. Makes the sentence negative and determines Simple Present)

Share you findings!!

"What is CELTA?"

It is an initial teaching qualification for people who want to teach English as a foreign language. 

CELTA is awarded by Cambridge University (ESOLdivision) and is an acronym for Certificate in EnglishLanguage Teaching to Adults. 

What does CELTA cover?

The CELTA qualification is the most...

Probable mistakes with vowels- #2

Another problem likely to occur is around the English /æ/a.  Both English phonemes /e/ as in egg and /æ/ as in pad ,will be perceived as Portuguese /é/, which is in fact a little closer to English /e/ than /æ/.  This will neutralize 
the contrast between words like:



bed /bed/ - bad /bæd/
beg /beg/ - bag /bæg/
dead /ded/ - dad /dæd/
end /end/ - and /ænd/
flesh /flesh/ - flash /flæsh/
gem /dzhem/ - jam /dzhæm/
guess /ges/ - gas /gæs/
head /hed/ - had /hæd/














Source:
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-voga.html


Another interesting English sound website:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html

Are you learning English???

  If so,  you can understand the joke,right?

  Phonetics, linking sounds, word stress and sentence stress are the others side of the coin. If you are not  having enough of these, enough to get the joke, maybe you should(a)!