My Personal Favourite Posts on the Blog So Far...

As you might notice, I've started to post again.  I've also noticed that there are a few more people visiting the blog.  So to all the new readers - welcome!

If you are new to this blog and you don’t know where to start then I would like to recommend these 10 posts that are my personal favourites.  I think these 10 posts are the most useful and most helpful articles for learners of English.

1. What is Cohesion & Coherence? (Cambridge Testing Explained)

This is a very popular post which explains one of the things that Cambridge examiners are looking for in your speaking and writing.

2. Accent vs Pronunciation

This looks at the difference between the two and provides some advice and links to a wonderful resource for listening.

3. Cudunagonbeda

If you are having problems understanding native speakers with their fast talking, or you would like to improve your speaking, this might be of interest to you.

4. How much time do I need?

How long does it take to learn a language and how much effort do you need to be successful?  It is different for each person, but there are a few general rules here.

5. Anybody having problems with the Present Perfect?

This takes a poem/song to provide a little exercise for listening to examples of the present perfect tense.  You might find it useful, but I've added it here because it was fun to make!

6. Thinking about Superman a.k.a. Imaginary Situations (Conditionals)

Talking about things we wish were true makes up a lot of our conversations, so these grammar points are explained clearly and with lots of written and picture examples.

7. How Green is your Internet (Working with Numbers in English)

This is another very popular post that takes a two minute video and gives you a small listening task to help you practise listening to English numbers.

8. Learning and Forgetting Vocabulary & No Magic Please

Did you know that forgetting vocabulary is actually a very important part of building your vocabulary?  These two posts explain one of the best ways I know to improve vocabulary quickly!

9. Using Tongue Twisters for Your Pronunciation

I honestly feel that practising little tongue twisters is a great way to improve pronunciation in another language.  It is also very impressive to people when you get it right!

10. How Useful is Translation? (University Preparation Tip #1)

I love Google Translate and I think it had become a very useful tool to help language learners.  But it can't replace learning a language.  This article shows the problems of using too much translation.

Backchaining for Speaking and Presentations Preparation

“I sometimes struggle putting long sentences together. For this reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience.”

The sentence above can be difficult to say correctly the first time. When I give a presentation I certainly don’t know everything I’m going to say. However, there are some parts of a presentation that you need to practise a lot.

Usually, you want to know how you are going to start and finish your introduction and your conclusion. These are important sentences, especially the first sentence. If you present your first sentence well then you build confidence which helps you during the rest of the presentation.

So we don’t need to know every word we are going to say... but we do need to practise a few key sentences.

How?

Backchaining. Here is an example of backchaining:

audience. 

large audience. 

a large audience. 

to a large audience. 

present to a large audience. 

to present to a large audience. 

have to present to a large audience. 

I have to present to a large audience. 

when I have to present to a large audience. 

apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

this reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

For this reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

Research shows that backchaining is a great way to practice speaking and it is much more effective than starting at the beginning when you have a problem.

Here is another example of back'chaining:

Phonetically	Non-Phonetically
/ʃən/  /eɪʃən/  /reɪʃən/  /ɪəˈreɪʃən/  /rɪəˈreɪʃən/  /tɪərɪəˈreɪʃən/  /dɪˌtɪərɪəˈreɪʃən/	shun  ay-shun  ray-shun  or-ray-shun  ree-or-ray-shun  tia-ree-or-ray-shun  de-tia-ree-or-ray-shun

You've just backchained the word ‘deterioration’.

So you can backchain with whole words or, if you are having problems with a specific word, you can back-chain the word alone. This method really helps learners to get the right stress and the right sounds (especially if you focus on the phonetics).

Think about how you might practise these example sentences (I've also provided the phonetic script to help you):

“Unfortunately, the deterioration of the city in the 80s led to a number of social problems.”

/ʌnˈfɔːʧnɪtli ðə dɪˌtɪərɪəˈreɪʃən əv ðə ˈsɪtɪ ɪn ðiː ˈeɪtiːz led tʊ ə ˈnʌmbə əv ˈsəʊʃəl ˈprɒbləmz/

“Good morning. Welcome to this presentation. Today I’m going to discuss issues of international trade and its relation to social welfare in various countries.”

/gʊd ˈmɔːnɪŋ/
/ˈwelkəm tə ðɪs ˌprezenˈteɪʃən/
/təˈdeɪ aiːm ˈgəʊɪŋ tə dɪsˈkʌs ˈɪʃuːz əv ˌɪntəˈnæʃənl treɪd ənd ɪts rɪˈleɪʃən tə ˈsəʊʃəl ˈwelfeə ɪn ˈveərɪəs ˈkʌntrɪz/

If you really want a challenge, try using backchaining to improve your speed and pronunciation of a tongue twister.

Remember, in general, good presentations are about
expressiveness, intonation and audience involvement.
A lot of this comes from good pronunciation and
good pronunciation comes from lots of practice!

Accent vs Pronunciation

“Teacher, what should I do? I really want to improve my accent.”

No, you don’t. You want to improve your pronunciation.

There is a difference between pronunciation and accent and I think it is quite easy to explain. Pronunciation can be good or bad, but accent is accent and there isn't a good or bad accent really.

Everyone has an accent. Accents vary from country to country, city to city, and town to town. It is possible for an accent to change but it takes years, even decades for it to change significantly. However, what is most important is that it is not necessary to change an accent. French people speaking English will almost always have a French accent (unless they are totally bilingual), Thai people will always have a Thai accent in English, Chinese will always have a Chinese accent.

If you are learning English and you are worried about your accent, then don’t. However, what a lot of students need to improve is their pronunciation. Here is the difference between a strong accent and bad pronunciation in my opinion.

You have bad pronunciation if people often say: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying.”  “Could you repeat that?”  “Pardon?”  “What?”  “Sorry, what did you say?”  “What’s that?”

You have a strong accent if people often say: “Where are you from?”  “Oh, are you from X?”  “I love your accent. Where do you come from?”  “How long have you been here?”

Hopefully, you can see that you have a pronunciation problem if people don’t understand you. However, it is possible to have a strong accent that people understand perfectly. If you are still not sure here are a few different examples of the wonderful variety of accents in English.

21 Accents

First of all, this is a video of an actress doing 21 different accents, some of them are from English speaking countries and some of them are not.  Here is a task for you while you watch this video:

Listen and write down the city or country of each of the accents.

Something to notice is that some of the most difficult accents to understand are native speaker accents. Believe me, this doesn't mean they are ‘better’ accents because they are more difficult.

I.D.E.A. (International Dialects of English Archive)

Now, you could also listen to some passages from the International Dialects of English Archive. I've selected a few different recordings, all non-native speakers of English, all speaking English with ‘foreign’ accents and all of them are completely understandable and clear.  The two texts that the people read are 'The Rainbow Passage' and 'Comma Gets a Cure' (you can click on the links for the transcript if you want to listen and read).

French Accent (The Rainbow Passage)

Ghana Accent (Comma Gets a Cure)

Iraqi Accent (The Rainbow Passage)

Japanese Accent (Comma Gets a Cure)

Korean Accent (The Rainbow Passage)

Mexican Accent (Comma Gets a Cure)

Polish Accent (The Rainbow Passage)

Accents are not something to improve, pronunciation is. But remember, if you have no problem with communicating with others in conversation, then you don’t need to worry about accent or pronunciation.

I love all the different accents I hear as an English language teacher, so please don’t try to lose them. :-)

What are your feelings on accents and pronunciation?  Comments anyone?

Sounds: The Pronunciation App (App Recommendation #1)

I've recently upgraded to an iPhone and it is BRILLIANT!  This the first proper smartphone I've had and I'm slowly learning about apps.

Therefore, I've made a new 'tag' for my blog - App Recommendations.  Just like my Blog Recommendations, Book Recommendations and Useful Website Recommendations, I will tell you about useful apps for learning English as and when I find them.

Today, I want to recommend Sounds: The Pronunciation App.  It helps you to learn the phonetics by providing a FREE interactive phonetic chart.

It takes this:

and makes it this:

I've found it very useful in the classroom and I know some of my students have already started to use it to improve their pronunciation.

If you are interested, follow this QR code (or visit http://www.soundspronapp.com/), download it and try it for yourself.

How do you pronounce your name?

I’m going to confuse you. Are you ready?

If you read my previous post then you will see I encouraged you not to use Google Translate and that a proper dictionary and learning the phonetics was better.

I still believe that... but now I want to you visit Google Translate to hear something interesting.

Let me explain what to do.

Listen to the differences.
Enjoy them!

1. Type in your name. 
2. Translate it into another language. 
3. Click on “Listen” 

Google provides different pronunciations for the same word (your name) depending on what the language is.

Take a look at this little demonstration of mine.

Why is this important?

First of all, it’s quite funny to hear your name pronounced in another language.

Secondly, if you put other names into Google Translate then you get some ideas about the important differences in pronunciation between languages.

Try out a few names and you might notice some big differences in pronunciation.  Here are the translations I showed you in the demonstration.

Gordon (English/Thai)

Gordon, David, Susan, Victoria (English/Thai)

Gordon, David, Susan, Victoria (English/Spanish)

Gordon, David, Susan, Victoria (English/Japanese)

Phonetics & Names, pt 1: Good for Business

Image from Flickr

I don’t normally deal with English for business. However, I’ve taught it before and business students can be some of the hardest working students I meet.

Students of Business English always need to know more than the language, they need to know the culture. Respecting the traditions of a culture and making sure you don’t make any embarrassing mistakes is very useful in make a first impression.

First Impression: what a person thinks about you after meeting you for the first time.

People in business understand how important a first impression is and that is why I think it is very important to know how to pronounce names.

Think about how much it annoys you to hear your name pronounced incorrectly. Think about how happy you are if somebody pronounces your name correctly first time! Phonetics and the phonemic chart can help you!

Here is a page from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. It has the most common English names and the phonetic spelling of the name. If you know how to read the phonetic alphabet then it works better than checking pronunciation with something like Google to listen to the audio.

Why? 

Better understanding of English sounds and how to say them will improve your pronunciation in general.

Phonetic Film Quiz #3

Here are the actors from a very popular movie that had two sequels. All the movies are from the 2000s.  Can you identify these actors from the phonetic spelling of their names?

/’dʒɔ:dʒ ‘klu:ni:/

/bræd pɪt/

/mæt ‘deɪmən/

/’dʒu:lɪj ‘rɒbɜ:ts/

/’ændɪ ga:si:ə/

Here are the answers.

Using Tongue Twisters for Your Pronunciation

Take a look at this tongue twister.

Betty Botter bought some butter,

“But,” she said, “this butter’s bitter. 

If I bake this bitter butter

It will make my batter bitter.

But a bit of better butter – 

That would make my batter better.” 

So she bought a bit of butter, 

Better than her bitter butter, 

And she baked it in her batter, 

And the batter was not bitter.

So it was better Betty Botter

Bought a bit of better butter. 

I think tongue twisters are great to help learners of English with their pronunciation. Just like you need to build your muscles to life heavy objects, you need to build the muscles in your mouth to speak a foreign language. Tongue twisters are like taking your mouth to the gym – lots of fun repetition to improve your pronunciation of those difficult sounds.

Here is a video to help you.



I think the Betty Botter tongue twister is great because it practises the most difficult part of English pronunciation – vowel sounds. Here are the similar words and the different pronunciations. Use this interactive phonetic chart to help you. Let me know how it goes.

Big thanks to Inna, who brought this tongue twister to class!

‘Betty’ /’beti:/

‘Botter’ /’bɒtə/

‘bought’ /’bɔ:t/

‘butter’ /’bətə/

‘bitter’ /’bɪtə/

‘batter’ /’bætə/

‘But a’ /’bətə/ (the same pronunciation as ‘butter’ when it is said quickly)

‘bit of’ /’bɪtə/ (the same pronunciation as ‘bitter’ when it is said quickly)

‘better’ /’betə/

Phonetics - Maggie Gyllenhaal, how do you pronounce that?

Maggie Gyllenhaal (Photo from Wikipedia)

One of my favourite actresses is Maggie Gyllenhaal.  She chooses some really interesting movies to be in and characters to play.

I was visiting my parents recently and they like her movies as well and during a conversation we had a question, “Actually, how do you pronounce her surname?”  We see it all the time in movies, on DVD boxes, etc... but we didn’t really know how to pronounce it.

My solution – Wikipedia!  The article displays the phonetic spelling of her surname: /ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/

The /dʒ/ like the beginning of the word ‘jeans’.

The /ɪl / like we say the word ‘ill’, a synonym for sick.

The /ən/ with the /ə/ sound, the neutral sound that is everywhere in the English language.  Often in literature you will see this work ‘Uh’ which is just a sound that we use to show that we are thinking and need more time to think in a conversation.

The /hɔːl/ like the word ‘hall’ or similar to /hɔːs/ like the word ‘horse’.

So there is her surname.  Gyllenhaal = /ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/.  I'm a native English speaker and the fastest way I found to get the pronunciation was by using the phonetics.  They can be useful for everyone.

Take a look at this interactive phonetic chart from Macmillan publishing to help you understand phonetics better.  I also recommend taking another look at this excellent short video that explains the phonetic chart.

Using the Phonetic Chart

Does the picture below scare or confuse you?

If the answer is yes, the you probably should watch this excellent video with Adrian Underhill that explains the phonetic chart.



For some more information about phonetics, see these previous posts about Phonetics & Pronunciation and my message written in phonetics to learners of English.  You could also try some of my Phonetic Film Quizzes.

And thanks to Adrian Underhill for making such a helpful video!  For more help from him you should read through his blog - Adrian's Pron Chart Blog.

Favourite Websites for English Practice, pt 3 (Listening, continued)

My first post about websites to help you with your listening skills gave recommendations for the BBC’s 6 Minute English, Videojug and Lyrics Training.  There are many more sites and I think it is time to share more recommendations with you from things I’ve found in the last few months.  I’ve divided these sites into levels of difficulty and given some suggestions about how you can use them for self-study.

For Low Intermediate students:

Spotlight Radio

Spotlight Radio has a huge (massive, very big) range of podcasts (about 15 minutes long) to download and you have the transcript (the text) that you can read as you listen.  Spotlight Radio is a great website if your listening skills are low – the speed of the talking is low and the pronunciation is very clear.  This is not very authentic (realistic), but it is good practice to start improving your skills – you can start listening to faster podcasts on other websites when you are more confident.

There is an amazing variety of topics to listen to: Drugs, Sport, History, Music, Health, Technology & Science, etc, etc.

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a podcast, for example ‘Stories for Wise People’.
2. Go through the transcript (perhaps copy it to Word or print it off) and highlight or circle words or phrases you are not sure how to pronounce.
3. Play the podcast and listen carefully for the difficult-to-pronounce words.
4. Vocabulary work – read through and identify words you are not familiar.  Write them down in a list and try to guess their meanings from context before you check in your dictionary or on Google Translate.  Remember that some new words might be repeated a few times so you will have plenty of context to help you.  Just looking up a word will not help you remember it – thinking about the word and guessing the meaning before you 'look it up' (which means to find something) will help you remember it much more.
5. Speaking practice – listen to the article again, try to read the words silently, moving your mouth like you are speaking.  This helps to exercise your mouth to make English-speaking sounds.  This sounds stupid but it’s really very useful, believe me. :-)

You can ‘like’ Spotlight Radio on Facebook.  Just click here.

ESLPod

ESLPod is another great archive of podcasts.  These are from the USA.   The podcasts are usually about 15-20 minutes long.  Each podcast has a short dialogue (conversation) between people and then analyses it carefully.  It works by first listening to a slow version of the conversation, and then most of the podcast is an explanation of various difficult words or common phrases and metaphors inside the conversation.  At the end of the podcast, the conversation is played again but at a regular speed.

Like Spotlight Radio, there is a wide variety of topics such as Competitions and Prizes or Wild Parties.  If you want to search by topic then you can search through all the podcasts in the left column of the website.  There is a Learning Guide for each podcast but you need to subscribe to download them and that costs $10 a month.

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a podcast, for example ‘Being Late for an Event’.
2. Read the transcript.  The new words and phrases are already in bold. Try to guess what they mean before you listen to the podcast.
3. Listen carefully and check if your guesses were correct when the words and phrases are explained.

For Intermediate/Upper Intermediate students:

Listen a Minute

Listen a Minute is a great site of short listenings – only about 60 seconds long.   The speech is clear but not as slow as Spotlight Radio or most of ESLPod.  Again, there is a wide variety of topics such as advice, clothes, credit cards and parenting.  What I really like about this website is that there are lots of interactive quizzes and if you want to print the transcript you will have a listening gap-fill, a word jumble, a spell checking exercise and even a writing assignment!

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a listening, for example ‘Gun Control’.
2. Print the transcript with exercises.
3. Listen to the mp3 (on the website or download it) and try to complete the gap fill.
4. Listen again to check for the answers.  You can obviously just look at the complete transcript but you will get more listening practice if you check the answers by listening again – remember the saying in English, “practice makes perfect” which means you get better and better with more practice.
5. Move on to the ‘Correct the Spelling’ exercise but hide the gap fill.  You can check your answers when you finish by looking at your completed gap fill.
6. Try the ‘Unjumble the Words’ exercise.  You can check the answers by looking at the transcript or, even better, listen to the mp3 again... practice makes perfect! :-)
7. If you are working by yourself, move down to the bottom and challenge yourself to do the writing exercise.  You can then ask a teacher or another English student to read it after you finish.

Listen to English

This is a wonderful website if you are interested in British culture.  I am from Britain and I learn things from these podcasts.  I really like these podcasts which are about 7 minutes long.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a convenient list of podcasts but you can improve your skim reading by looking through each of them to find one you would be interested in listening to.

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a podcast, for example ‘Old money, new money’.
2. Listen to the podcast while reading the transcript.  Some words and phrases are highlighted and you can click on the link to see definitions.
3. When you have finished listening you can read the comments that other listeners have posted and maybe leave your own comment about what you think about the topic.

You can ‘like’ Listen to English on Facebook.  Just click here.

Feel free to make more suggestions about websites you like to use to improve your listening.

Gordon

BTW, you can also ‘like’ Videojug and Lyrics Training on Facebook by following the links.

Cudunagonbeda

Well I was teaching today and the class couldn’t have gone better!

Oh!  That’s a difficult piece of language: “couldn’t have gone better”.   You might ask, ‘what does that mean?’  Well let’s look at it in two parts:

“gone better”

This is from the phrasal verb, “go well” which means if something is a success.  You want some examples?

“My IELTS speaking test went really well!  I think I probably got a 9.0!  Really, it couldn’t have gone better!”

“Portsmouth beat Manchester United 4-0!  What a result!  It was a brilliant game!  It couldn’t have gone better for Portsmouth!”

“couldn’t have”

This is the part that tells us it was basically perfect.  Think about it like this.

“It was a good party and it went well.”  (It was 80% but it wasn’t 90% or 100%)

“It was an excellent party and it couldn’t have gone better.”  (It was 100% and there is nothing better than 100%)

Okay.  Are we happy with this?  I will assume the answer is yes.  But how do you say it?  If you want to sound natural you certainly don’t say “it… couldn’t… have… gone… better”.  No, we say it like this:

“it couldn’t have gone better”

“it couduntav gonebetta”

“it cudunav gonbeda”

“it cuduna gonbeda”

“i cudunagonbeda”

These are NOT the spellings but how you should say it.  For those of you who know your phonetic alphabet, it looks like this:

/ɪˈcʊ̈dnəgɒnbedə/

For these more difficult grammar points (this is a present perfect modal of speculation or deduction) I think it is more important to know how to say it and use it than to understand the grammar of it.

You see the words, you see the context, you hear the sounds, and you produce!  Let’s look at some others:

“James had a job interview this morning but I saw him at lunch time and he looked pretty down.” (*pretty down = very sad)

“Oh dear, his interview couldn’t have gone well.”

Do you remember how to say it?  Practise the phrase five times before you continue reading.  Okay.  Let’s change the sentence.

“Oh dear, his interview must have gone badly.” 

Don’t worry, this sentence means almost exactly the same as the previous sentence.  But how do you say it?  How about this:

“must have gone badly”

“mustav gon badly”

“musta gon badly”

“musdagon badly”

In the phonetics, this ‘musdagon’ looks like this (well, it looks like this when I say it):

/məsdʌgɒn/

Okay.  I've done most of the work now.  I will leave you with a few situations and a few phrases.  See if you can see what the words are and build the sentence because I will only give you the modal + have + past participle (e.g. must + have + gone).  The situations and the speculations are in the same order.

Situations

Maria looks really tired.

Michael’s face looks bruised.

Benjamin isn’t here.

Andrew’s iPhone is missing.

Kathleen and I were talking on Skype but she suddenly disappeared.

Speculations

cudabeen = /cʊ̈dəbi:n/

mayabeen = /meɪʌbi:n/

mydamist = /maɪdʌmɪst/

mydaleft = /maɪdʌleft/

cudalost = /cʊ̈dəlɔst/

Good luck.  Let me know if it goes well for you.  Now with all the examples you saw, all the times you repeated those words and sounds, you have a lot of those necessary 75 times.  :-)

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Gordon

P.S.  Remember, if you are interested in learning more about the phonetic alphabet then go here where you can select the sounds and listen to examples.  Or just click here to download the small program onto your computer.

P.S.S.  I’m reluctant to put links to this song because American Country & Western music is NOT my cup of tea.  However, if you want to hear some examples of “couldn’t have”, you might want to listen to Johnny Duncan’s ‘It Couldn’t Have Been Any Better’.  If you want more reading practice then simply try doing a Google search for “couldn’t have gone better” or “must have gone badly” to see how people use it.  Alternatively, try the British National Corpus.

Pronunciation - Phonetics

Pronunciation in English.  Not very easy, is it?  The problem is that English is not a phonetic language because one letter in English can have more than one sound.

Just as an example; think of “through” and “enough”, both of these words have “-ough” endings but if I write them how they sound they look like this “throo” and “enuf”.

Another example is words with “-ed” endings.  Look at “worked”, “wanted” and “played”.  But a lot of learners are surprised (and annoyed) that the pronunciation is actually “workt”, “wontid" and “playd”.

English is a CRAZY language!  But it is the international language and lots of people NEED it.  So how do we learn about these different pronunciations?  Obviously the spelling doesn’t help.

This is why we have the phonetic alphabet.   /θru/, /ɪˈnʌf/, /wɜrkt/, /wɔntɪd/, /pleɪd/

Those are the five words, “through”, “enough”, “worked”, “wanted” and “played”.

Some of you will know this phonetic alphabet and some of you will not.

Some of you will like it and some of you will not.

Believe me, there is a similar problem with teachers.  Some teachers know the phonetic symbols and some don’t.  Some like to teach with them and some don’t.

One of the normal complaints about the phonetic alphabet (from students and teachers) is that it is another language that needs to be learned and understood.  Learning English is enough work without having another alphabet as well.  I have my own opinions about this but I want to know yours.

What are your opinions about this?  How did you learn English pronunciation?  Did you ever learn the phonetic chart?  How good do you think your English pronunciation is?

As always, I look forward to your opinions.  J

Gordon

P.S. If you do want to learn more about the phonetic chart, I recommend this little program.

http://www.macmillanenglish.com/methodology/phonetic-chart.htm

If you follow the page down you will see that it is downloadable and FREE! Always good! Here is the direct link to download the program if you have problems.

http://mediadirect.macmillan.com/media/macmillanenglish/phonetics/fullscreen/phoneticchart_fs.exe

P.P.S. If you are really interested in wanting to improve your pronunciation and you want more help to do it, try this website:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics

It will show you very clearly the shape of the mouth to produce different sounds. You will need to understand the phonetic symbols, but it could really help you.