Dienstag, 2. Dezember 2014

Where am I now with my pronunciation in English part1

Listening to your own recorded voice is very helpful if you want to find out which are the English sounds you really struggle with. As I listened to the tape we recorded in class I could figure out easily were my problems are. I could identify that sometimes I tend to be negligent when it comes to producing the ‘th’ sound. This becomes even more challenging if it is combined with an ‘s’ before or after it. The ‘th’, however, is not my only problem with pronunciation. I have also noticed that words which are not very commonly used can be troublesome as well. This is especially true for English words were you can still discern well their latin, but also greek origins. They often include odd sequences of vowels which prove tricky. I am talking about demanding words such as ‘onomatopoeia’ or ’homogenous’. What matters is that you really know how to pronounce them as wild guessing usually does not take you a long way. In such cases it once more becomes evident how crucial it is to put considerable effort into pronunciation practice. This is particularly important as the Porter words are Academic vocabulary, which feature a high proportion of such words.
Here is a video which discusses the influence of Latin and Greek on English, and their importance for the academic language.



What else I found out about my pronunciations is that I have issues with words which hardly differ from one another. Disregarding small differences in the spelling of words, however, can lead to massive confusion. I should therefore make sure to account for theses small disparities, as narrow as they may appear. I definitely want to devote more time to making sure I know how to pronounce the words I come across. Therefore I will write them down as I read them in order to check their pronunciation. A good way of doing this is consulting online pronunciation practice pages. If you want to know more about them and my experience with the pronunciation of silent letters just feel free to return to my blog soon. 

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