Let us face it. Most ESL professionals are under the misperception that pronunciation is primarily and solely related to accent reduction work and/or to improving the learners’ intelligibility only after being deemed proficient in other areas such as grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, academic writing etc. Although pronunciation does indeed improve the learners’ speech clarity and […]
Most English teachers seem to consider good pronunciation as being intelligible. They view intelligibility as the ultimate goal of learning pronunciation. “If I can understand you, and you can understand me, then your pronunciation is good enough”. It has somehow been agreed upon in this industry that to be understood is just “good enough” because […]
I hear that question very often. What I would like to ask you though is, what are you are prepared to do about it? How far are you willing to go? I mean how badly do you want it? How badly do you need it? The truth is most English learners don’t. But first, what […]
Yes Yes I know, you think it’s impossible right? We all know, for many Japanese English learners, Katakana is the source of a lot of misery in learning English but sometimes, just sometimes, you can use it for your advantage. Let’s look at a simple example: What are you doing on the weekend? Okay, now […]
Achieving fluency and clarity in English requires plenty of time and hard work. Learners often need at least a year and sometimes years to achieve mastery in English speaking and listening. The problem is that most of them call it quits out of anger and frustration after they come to the realization that making further […]
That is a small but useful list of common English adjectives and some slang expressions with similar meanings to them. Naturally, you would have to find out first how to use them, otherwise, you might wake up one morning with a black eye. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions and I’ll […]
Right! I hear that question often. What I would like to ask you though is, what are YOU are prepared to DO about it? How far are you willing to go? But first, what is native-like English? Is it just good pronunciation? Is it accent? Is it fluency? What is it exactly? Well, let us […]
It is a common mistake when English learners pronounce America as AA-MEE-RII-KAA. It is too long and very unnatural. Let’s break it down, shall we? A-ME-RI-CA so that’s 4 sounds (syllables) and the stress is on the second syllable oOoo. Now, the 1st syllable [A] is a schwa sound /ə/. What does that mean? That […]
Before I answer this question, you need to know about voiced and voiceless consonants, if you don’t know what these are, go to the Consonant page and study it, and then come back to this question. If you already have, there it is: There are basically 3 types of s pronunciation in English as follows: […]
Before I answer this question, you need to know about voiced and voiceless consonants, if you don’t know what these are, go to the Consonant page and study it, and then come back to this question. If you already have, there it is: There are basically 3 types of -ed pronunciation as follows: 1-/t/ (When […]
