English Pronunciation Made Simple

“English pronunciation made simple” is a book designed to facilitate the learners of English with a proper toolkit for enhancing English pronunciation skills by means of providing you with all the essential topics related to English pronunciation skills. If you want to be understood by others without any difficulty, you need to pay a special attention to pronunciation skills.

To enhance your English pronunciation skills, you need to throughly study English phonetics and phonology and cover the most important topics such as articulation of words, functions of different mouth organs, consonant and vowel sounds and their types, intonation, stress, syllables, suprasegmental features, etc.

Your Problems with English Pronunciation

Before you jump into any solution, you’re required to know what problems you encounter with English pronunciation; that is, what problems you face while saying English words. There’s only one problem which is that you can’t pronounce English words correctly and mispronounce them, because there’s no correspondence between spelling and pronunciation in the English language.

Look at the word “colonel” which is pronounced as “kernal”, and not as “kolonel.” Thus, you will definitely find at least a bit difference between the spelling and pronunciation of a word in English. For example, pronounce the word “classes” which is pronounced as “klasiz”, and not as “klasez.”

When improving your English pronunciation skills, you not only learn the big differences between spelling and pronunciation but also pay attention to slight and subtle difference in a word sound which is recognized only when a close attention is paid to it with a prior knowledge of pronunciation rules.

Practical Tips to Improve Pronunciation Skills

Apart from studying the topics mentioned in the paragragh above, you need to do a lot of practice in order to improve your English pronunciation skills. It’s a fact that learning English pronunciation is in many cases different from learning grammar and vocabulary, because learning pronunciation requires a lot of practice and exercise whereby you will be training your tonque.

When you’re learning English grammar and vocabulary, you’re basically teaching yourself new knowledge. Learning grammar and vocabulary is more related to your memory, but the case with learning pronunciation is different. You teach and train your mouth to move in a totally new direction as you’re pronouncing a foreign sound. Here are the tips to improve your English pronunciation skills fast:

Take help from IPA chart.
Practice saying consonants correctly.
Practice saying vowels correctly.
Learn to correct mispronounced words.
Use an online dictionary for listening to word sound.
Study different accents of English.
Hire a mentor to give you feedback.
Table of Contents

Part 1: Vowels

Lesson 1 Pronouncing the Vowels of American English

Lesson 2 [i] as in me, tea, and bee and [ɪ] as in it and pin

Lesson 3 [eɪ] as in ate, game, and they

Lesson 4 [ɛ] as in egg, pet, and head

Lesson 5 [æ] as in at, fat, and happy

Lesson 6 [ɑ] as in arm, hot, and father

Lesson 7 Contrast and Review of [eɪ], [ɛ], [æ], and [ɑ]

Lesson 8 [u] as in you, too, and rule and [ʊ] as in cook and put

Lesson 9 [ʌ] as in up, but, and come

Lesson 10 [oʊ] as in oh, no, and boat

Lesson 11 [ɔ] as in all, caught, and boss

Lesson 12 Contrast and Review of [ʌ], [oʊ], [ɔ], and [ɑ]

Lesson 13 [ə] as in a, upon, and soda

Lesson 14 [ɚ] as in turn, first, and serve and [ɝ] as in father and actor

Lesson 15 [aʊ] as in out, house, and cow

Lesson 16 [aɪ] as in I, my, and pie

Lesson 17 [ɔɪ] as in oil, noise, and boy

Part 2: Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation

Lesson 18 Introducing Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation

Lesson 19 Stress Within the Word

Lesson 20 Stress Within the Sentence

Lesson 21 Rhythm

Lesson 22 Intonation

Part 3: Consonants

Lesson 23 Pronouncing the Consonants of American English

Lesson 24 [s] as in sit, basket, and kiss and [z] as in zoo, busy, and buzz

Lesson 25 [t] as in top, return, and cat

Lesson 26 [d] as in day, ladder, and bed

Lesson 27 [θ] as in think, bathtub, and mouth

Lesson 28 [ð] as in the, father, and smooth

Lesson 29 Contrast and Review of [s], [z], [t], [d], [θ], and [ð]

Lesson 30 [ʃ] as in shoe, nation, and wish and [ʧ] as in chair, teacher, and witch

Lesson 31 Contrast and Review of [s], [ʃ], [t], and [ʧ]

Lesson 32 [ʒ] as in measure, vision, and rouge

Lesson 33 [ʤ] as in jam, magic, and gauge and [j] as in you and yes

Lesson 34 Contrast and Review of [ʤ], [ʒ], [ʧ], and [j]

Lesson 35 Additional Contrasts

Lesson 36 [p] as in pay, apple, and stop

Lesson 37 [b] as in boy, rabbit, and tub

Lesson 38 [f] as in fun, office, and if

Lesson 39 [v] as in very, over, and save

Lesson 40 [h] as in hat and behind

Lesson 41 [w] as in we and away

Lesson 42 [l] as in lamp, yellow, and pool

Lesson 43 [r] as in red, marry, and far

Lesson 44 Contrast and Review of [l] and [r]

Lesson 45 [k] as in cake, car, and book

Lesson 46 [g] as in go, begin, and egg

Lesson 47 [m] as in me and swim

Lesson 48 [n] as in no and run

Lesson 49 [ŋ] as in sing

Lesson 50 Contrast and Review of [m], [n], and [ŋ]

Lesson 51 Pronouncing Final Consonant Sounds

Lesson 52 Pronouncing Consonant Clusters

Lesson 53 Pronouncing Past Tense Verbs

Lesson 54 Pronouncing Plurals, Third-Person Verbs, Possessives, and Contractions

Appendices

Appendix I To the Teacher

Breaking the Ice

Hearing the Sounds

Accent Analysis

Accent Analysis Sentences: Vowels

Accent Analysis Sentences: Consonants

Using the Manual for Classroom Instruction

Additional Communicative Practice Activities

Additional Auditory Discrimination Practice Activities

Appendix II Check Yourself Answer Key

Conclusion: English Pronunciation Made Simple

In summary, to better your English pronunciation skills, you need to study a lot of topics that are related to pronunciation and follow the essential tips mentioned in this post. After closely reading the article, you should be in a position to kickstart your pronunciation learning journey without any delay.

However, make sure that you use a handy complete easy to understand pronunciation guide in order to teach yourself English pronunciation. Therefore, we present to you this all inclusive pronunciation guide and save it to your system and ensure to give it a visit on a regular basis.