Exercise 8-3: Bit or Beat? We've discussed intonation in terms of new information, contrast, opinion, and negatives. As you heard on p. 3, Americans tend to stretch out certain one-syllable words but which ones? The answer is simple when a single syl...
Exercise 8-2: Lax Vowels The lax vowels areproduced in the throat and are actually quite similarto each other. Let's practice some lax vowels. See also Chapter 11 to contrast with tense vowels. Remember to double the vowel when the word endsin a voic...
Exercise 8-1 : Comparing and Look at the chart that follows and repeat each word. We are contrasting the sound first column a strong, nonreducible sound, ooh, that is made far forward in the mouth, with the lips fully rounded with the reduced sound i...
Chapter 8 More Reduced Sounds There are two sounds that look similar, but sound quite different. One is the tense vowel , pronounced ooh, and the other is the soft vowel , whose pronunciation is a combination of ih and uh. The sound is located far fo...
Exercise 7-3: Tongue Twisters Feeling confident? Good! Try the following tongue twisters and have some fun. 1. The sixth sick Sheik's sixth thick sheep. 2. This is a zither. Is this a zither? 3. I thought a thought. But the thought I thought wasn't t...
Exercise 7-2: Targeting The TH Sound In order to target the TH sound, first, hold a mirror in front of you and read our familiar paragraph silently, moving only your tongue. It should be visible in the mirror each time you come to a TH. Second, find...
Exercise 7-1: The Throng of Thermometers I'm going to read the following paragraph once straight through, so you can hear that no matter how fast I read it, all the THs are still there. It is a distinctive sound, but, when you repeat it, don't put to...
Exercise 5-10: Dull versus Repeat after me. laid ladle lay dull To hear the difference between and, contrast the sentences, Don't lay dull tiles and Don't ladle tiles. lay dull ladle She lay on her linoleum and slid along the floor in anguish. A litt...
Exercise 5-9:Little Lola Now that we've done this, instead of L being a hard letter to pronounce, it's the easiest one because the tongue is stuck in that position. Pause the CD to practice the reading on your own, again, with your tongue stuck to th...
Exercise 5-8: Hold Your Tongue! You and I are going to read with our tongues firmly held at the roofs of our mouths. If you want, hold a clean dime there with the tongue's tip; the dime will let you know when you have dropped your tongue because it w...
