In Paper 5, one of the things students
are assessed on is their pronunciation of individual sounds.
It is important that students identify which particular
sounds they have problems with and work gradually to
improve them.
/ə/
This is the vowel sound produced when the
lips and tongue are not taking any particular position,
when they are in 'rest position'. It is the most common
sound in English. When speakers of English are hesitating,
this is the sound they make (e.g. 'er', 'um', etc.).
English is a stress-timed language:
speakers stress the important words in a sentence and skip
over the less important words. On the contrary, some
languages, known as 'syllable-timed', such as Spanish and
Japanese, stress each word equally.
One analogy of the system of
stress-timing could be with newspaper headlines: meaning
words are kept, but grammar words are generally
omitted:
MEANING WORDS
GRAMMAR WORDS
►
►
QUEEN TO VISIT POPE
THE /
IS GOING /
THE
(The Queen is going to visit the Pope)
It is important to mention here that
most vowel sounds in English reduce to the schwa
/ə/
in their weak form. Common examples of
'grammar words' which reduce to the weak form
/ə/
are:
►
ARTICLES:
a, an, the
►
PRONOUNS:
her, that,
them, us, you
►
PREPOSITIONS:
at, for, from,
of, to
►
AUXILIARY VERBS:
are, do, does,
has, have, had, was, were
►
MODAL VERBS:
can, could,
must, shall, should, would
In the exercises below you can practise
this grammar.
The words highlighted in
yellow in these two sentences have the same
vowel sound: the schwa
/ə/
in its weak form.
Click on the speaker, listen to the audio
and repeat both sentences.
1.
Five members
of a drugs gang who sliced open LP
records
to smuggle cocaine into Britain
have
been jailed
for a
total
of 72 years.
2.
Heavy snow
brought warnings from
the
police
that people
should stay indoors.
Weak
forms (II)
ACTIVITY 208:
Now prepare to do this
3-step activity: 1) Read this news item aloud.
Copy/paste or paint/drag the text into the blank
space below and put brackets () round the
words you will pronounce in their weak forms;
2) Click on the speaker and listen while you
check your work: 3) Finally, check the answers.
Five drugs smugglers
were convicted at a London court yesterday in
the wake of the most ingenious attempts to
transport cocaine ever seen by Customs
investigators.
Weak forms (III)
Finally, listen carefully to this conversation
between Sheila and Ralph. The words highlighted in yellow are pronounced
in the weak form, as a schwa /ə/
sound. Click on
the speaker, listen to the audio and
try to read it aloud afterwards.
SHEILA
You
mean
you don't read
a
daily paper?
RALPH
No, I haven't
the
time.
SHEILA
So how do
you
know what's going on?
RALPH
I listen
to the
news on
the
radio in
the
morning,
and
I watch
the
TV news
at
night.
SHEILA
And
you find
that
that's enough?
RALPH
Yes.
SHEILA
So tell me
about
the Prime Minister: what
was
he doing yesterday? Who came
to
see him? What
should
he
have been doing
at
3 o'clock?
RALPH
I know that ...
it's the story
at the
moment.
Some
foreign journalists
were
interviewing him
and
he didn't realise
that
he was
late
for Parliament.
Ha sido una estupenda sesión de
pronunciación de Mr. Grammar !!!
En la próxima página vamos a recordar algunos hechos históricos
...
