How should my English sound? Lesson 1

How my English should sound? Lesson 1

Part 1: Introduction to letters and sounds.

In writing words are made of letters. In speaking words are made of sounds. But letters are not always the same as sounds. For example the words 'car' and 'key' begin with the same sound /k/, but they are spelt different. If we see them in using phonemic symbols, that are a kind of special alphabet for writing sounds, they would be /kɑː/ and /kiː/.

The following group of words have use different letters (spelling) but they have the same sound.

Buy – Bye
Week – Weak
Two – To – Too
Sun – Son
Weigh – Way
Write – Write

The modern English alphabet consists of 26 letters. In this alphabet we can find vowels (a,e,i,o and u) and consonants (b,c,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,t,v,w,x,y and z) and we use all of them to write any word in English. If we consider speaking, we also have vowel sounds and consonant sounds. The number of spelling consonants and vowels are not always the same number of phonetic consonants and vowels. A good example is the word 'calf': It is composed of 4 consonant and 1 vowel in spelling, but it has only 3 sounds – a consonant, a vowel and a consonant (CVC). If we compare the spelling with the sound we'll have: calf – /kɑːf/.

Let's practise a little bit:
1 – How many sounds are there in each word? Remember that in English the number of letter is not always the number of sounds.
1. dog
2. rabbit
3. frog
4. gorilla
5. snake
6. bee

2 – Now let's analyse the sounds according to the rhymes. Do they have the same first sounds? Do they rhyme? A rhyme happens when we group two or more words together and they have similar sounds. It is widely used to create, for example, cartoon names.

1. Phil the fox
2. Mary the canary
3. Ida the spider
4. Claire the bear
5. Polly the parrot
6. Deborah the zebra
7. Myrtle the turtle
8. Kitty the cat

Bibliography: HANKOK, Mark. English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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