Lesson 1: Organs of speech and phonemic symbols

This course aims to teach you how to improve your pronunciation of

English.
This has several benefits:

 You will have increased confidence.

 Your listeners will understand you better.
 You will speak more quickly, and in this way keep your listeners’
attention better.
 You will understand native speakers better.
 You will be better able to appreciate English theater, poetry and
song.

Phonology - the science of sound and meaning - deals with individual

sounds, but also with stress, intonation and rhythm.

The sounds of English are different from those of Spanish, but are
formed with the same set of speech organs:

Lesson 2: Vowels and consonants

Sounds can be divided into VOWELS and CONSONANTS
VOWELS are made be expelling air from the mouth. Changing the shape
of the mouth changes the vowel sound.

Spanish has five different vowels, but English uses about twelve.

DIPHTHONG:

A DIPHTHONG is a slide from one vowel to another

Vowels and diphthongs of English

CONSONANT:

CONSONANT sounds are made by restricting the air in some way. Either
completely, followed by a sudden release (plosive consonants) for
example P or T; or by creating a narrow space and forcing air out
(fricative consonants) for example S or F; or by releasing air through the
nose (nasal consonants) for example M or N.

CONSONANT sounds can also be classified by WHERE the air is

restricted, For example, by closing the lips (bilabial consonants) for
example B or M; by pressing the top teeth to the bottom lip (labio-dental
consonants) for example F; by pushing the tongue against the teeth
(dental) for example TH; by using the alveolar ridge behind the top teeth
(alveolar consonants), for example T, N or S; or by involving different
parts of the palate (palatal and velar consonants), for example SH or G.
Consonants of English
The third element to distinguish different consonants is VOICING, or
vibration of the larynx. This creates (in English) eight pairs of Voiced-
Unvoiced consonants.

The other eight consonants are all voiced, but do not form pairs.

To distinguish phonemic symbols from letters, we usually use to

slashes // to indicate the symbol.

So p is a letter, but /p/ is a phonemic symbol.

"Bed" is a word made of letters, but /bed/ is a series of phonemic

symbols. In this case, they look similar, but this doesn’t always happen.
For example, "judge" is /ʤɅʤ/ and "thing" is /θIŋ/.
Linguists, phonologists and language teachers use a set of phonemic
symbols which represent the sounds of English. Some of the symbols
look like letters, but some don’t. This course will introduce you to some of
these symbols, but it is not necessary to learn them all in order to have a
good pronunciation!