The Sounds of English Made Simple

Do you know the difference between the sounds in soup and soap? Pour and pure? Mat and mate? (Answers below.)

If you’re struggling to be understood, or just know the words but lack the confidence to say them aloud, this course will help you understand and say British English sounds clearly.

I’m a British English state-qualified teacher from London, who has been teaching students since 2000.

During this time, I’ve developed this tried-and-tested method of making your pronunciation clearer. It involves using clearly-spoken examples, along with helpful visuals and entertaining stories, to make the different sounds memorable.

• Listen to the sound, spoken by a native English speaker

• Look at the different ways it can be written

• Download a list of different ways it can be written

• Repeat the sound aloud in different words

• Listen to the sound in a story read by a native English speaker

• Practise reading the story yourself using a downloadable PDF

• Review the sound by identifying it in sentences

• Create a log of words you find difficult

• Research further words which use this sound

• Write your own sentences using the difficult sound/s.

Why focus on vowel sounds?

Vowel sounds are crucial to the clarity of speech. In the examples at the beginning of this description, you can see how changing the vowel sounds gives the words totally different meanings.

What’s special about this course?

My approach separates sounds more than the traditional approach to phonetics. (The study of the sounds people make in speech.) This is because I’ve found certain sounds particularly confusing for language learners, when they’re taught in the usual way.

For example, I teach YU, as in ‘nephew’ and ‘cute’, as a separate sound. (It’s often taught as the same sound as ‘grew’ and ‘June’, even though it needs a ‘Y’ sound added.)

Similarly YOR, as in ‘pure’ and ‘cure’, is treated as a separate sound in my course. (It is often taught as the same sound as ‘more’ and ‘sore’, even though it needs a ‘Y’ sound added.)

I’ve found this approach very useful for helping my students clearly understand the differences.

Can you tell me a bit more about the phonics approach?

The phonics approach was originally designed to help native speakers of English – usually children – learn to read. However, many adult learners of English come to me having skipped over learning sounds and straight to learning vocabulary. (Unlike natural language learning, where we learn the sounds first and then start putting them into words.)

This made it difficult for them to speak clearly. They never learned which sounds they’re actually trying to make.

Over the last few years, I’ve adapted phonics in a unique way which makes the sounds of English simpler and clearer for adult learners of the language.

It’s never too late to get those sounds right!

Like the original phonics, I place a big emphasis on a multi-sensory approach. These means using a combination of sounds, images and tactile, hands-on approach, to suit every learning style.

The course is designed for busy people, and is broken into small, bitesize pieces, so it can be easily studied at any time and can fit into the busiest of schedules.

It’s suitable for all levels, except complete beginners. An English level of at least Intermediate (CEFR B1) is necessary to access the vocabulary in this course.

Answers:

Soup is the long OO, as in food.

Soap is the long O, as in toast.

Pour is the OR sound, as in north.

Pure is the YOR sound, as in curious.

Mat is the short A sound, as in hat.

Mate is a-e, as in fate. (And no, you don’t hear the ‘e’. Find out more about Magic E in the course.)

Who this course is for:

• Do people often ask you to repeat yourself when you speak?
• Did you learn English, but skip over how to pronounce the many different, sometimes confusingly-similar vowel sounds? Would you like to go back and ‘fill in the blanks’ for greater speaking clarity?
• This course is suitable for learners of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), EAL (English as an Additional Language) or ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) who want to master British English pronunciation.