Video-Task 2

Hello again. Welcome to another edition of a video task.

Today I’m going to talk about pronunciation, just in general. What’s so important about pronunciation. Well, pronunciation is a vital part of learning a language. It aides in the communication, certainly.

We can talk about two different kinds of mistakes really, there’s a kind of mistake that has to do with grammar, which you can see in the example of: My brother don’t speak French. OK, now, if you say, “My brother don’t speak French.” people will understand you. It’s a mistake, it’s a bad grammatical mistake because you should be saying “My brother doesn’t speak French.” but people will understand you because this is a non-impeding mistake.  It’s a mistake that people will understand.

Now, let’s hear a pronunciation mistake. “My brother has got a b—.” Well, I’m sorry but I just have to ask you to repeat that last word again. I did not understand. “Your brother has got a b—?” What?

No! ..a BOAT! Ah! Of course. A boat.

You see, this is an impeding error. This is a mistake that makes the communication breakdown.  And so we have to bring in other kinds of linguistic devices in order to understand each other. Well, communication is conveying messages and when you’re talking about spoken English, which is what I’m interested in, then the spoken English is through sounds.

Sounds are important. That’s the basic bottom line. Learn to hear the sounds, learn to make the sounds. So, you’ve convinced me. What do I need to do to improve my pronunciation? How do I study pronunciation? Well, like I said, you start with the sounds, the individual sounds. OK, the sounds can be represented in phonetics by the IPA, The International Phonetics Alphabet. These symbols should be learned. If you learn these symbols, they will come in handy for all the languages that you learn, not just English. They’re international.

You start with the phonetics. Then (and that’s an important THEN), you work your way to the words and the phrases and finally intonation. Intonation is also important. But it’s very, very, very difficult. Symbols, Words, Phrases, Intonation. There you go. That’s what you need to learn. That’s what will help your pronunciation, and the most important, the most important are the phrases because it’s the linking between the words that is so important.

Let me make you a practical example: “Don’t you like French?” What? Chew? What did he say? “Chew? Doen chew like French?” Here’s the spelling of this phrase.

Don’t you like French?

Now look at the phonetic symbols for the sounds of this phrase:

“Don’t you…” becomes “Doenchew”. That’s linking and that’s the way people speak English. That’s the way people speak naturally.

Okay, so you can help yourself with having the words and the linking. Its almost useless to study phonetics just for the words. If you want to speak English you have to have words and linking.

Okay, thank you very much for listening, watching and reading my video task. Good-bye.

Anthony Lombardi

Director
VirtuAule English Language System