I have been trying to decide how much we should focus on the individual vowel sounds. On Tuesday we reviewed all of the basic vowels. On Thursday we reviewed all of the diphthongs. But what should we do next? I have many ideas, but before I make a decision I want to hear your thoughts.
Please spend 5-10 minutes reviewing Units 3-10 in the textbook. Each unit covers 2 or 3 vowel and dipthong sounds. Would you like to review ALL of these units in class, one by one? Which units do you think we need to review the most? Which sounds are particularly hard for you?
Please respond to this post as soon as you can, and be as blunt as possible. As I said, I already have an idea for the remainder of the course. But I wanted to take your ideas into consideration.
I look forward to reading your comments.
4 comments:
Hi Anthony,
I read unit3-10,and I found some are difficult to distinguish.
let,men
head,nut
blender,blunder
peppy,puppy
leg,lug
door,
could
I hope I could answer your qustion.
Yuko
Hi Anthony,
Reviews of basic vowels and dipthongs we had this week were highly helpful for me. As we learned how to make them, I know that the only way to improve them is to practice them again and again by myself.
But still, I'm interested in practicing unit6,7, and 8 in class. Unit6 is for [ae], and unit 8 is for [⊃], and those two are unfamiliar and difficult vowels for me. Unit 7 is for "Vowels followed by [r]". As I still have difficulty in pronuncing [r], this unit would be valuable in order to aquire natural pronunciation.
On the other hand, I also think we have some consonants which should be practiced with a higher priority. For instance, I definitely need to practice especially unit14,16,17,18,and 19.
This is just my personal preference, and all of us would have different weaknesses. I hope the practice plan would be equally beneficial for everyone :)
Thank you for your kind consideration and respect to our ideas.
Have a great weekend!
Reiko
For me, vowels are harder to master than consonants.
I hear an English consonant sound and I can tell whether I do it right or wrong.
I can't do that with the vowels. That's why I prefer to work on them first.
That's a personal preference. The other area I am really interested is in intonation. I feel that, even if we pronounced all words correct, we may not sound native.
I am completely "blind". I would like to take all you taught.
I hope I can learn more about the pronunciation of /tr/ /kw/ and even /s/ /e(schwa)l/, etc
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