Study Session- Obama’s in the House!

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Use your ears so that you can improve your own speaking skills

Here are the professional techniques that you can use on your own while using a YouTube video. Listen to the podcast here-

Study listening skills using YouTube

Let me introduce you to some behind the scenes techniques. If you are studying to learn to pronounce American English, be sure that you find a native American English speaker. Although to be honest, there are many English speakers that are not native to the US that will also be using this English melody that we are listening to today. Once you find the video that you would like to study from, see if there is a transcript.

Here’s a description of how to find the youtube transcript.

 

Copy and paste the transcript on a word doc so that you can read along and make notations.

 

Also, you may want to slow the speed of the speaking.

I recommend slowing the speaking speed down  one level to .75

At this speed, you will begin to hear

  • how words are grouped together,
  • pausing in-between these word groupings
  • how the words are linked together in each phrase group and
  • one word in each phrase, that is highlighted the most, usually directly before the pause.

This practice will help you comprehend what others are saying. If you need more ideas for finding good speakers, people enjoy playing English speaking TV shows such as the sitcoms (Friends) or movies. As long as there is a transcript.  Using your own listening skills and taking the time to study this technique, is an excellent way to personally understand what you can do to polish your own abilities.

 

Pronouncing Fractions

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There comes a time when we all need to pronounce a fraction or two in our lives! We speak of fractions when we are measuring for new kitchen blinds, cooking, ordering a picture frame and even when we are telling time.

Fractions requires multiple higher level pronunciation skills. Who knew, right? For some people, pronouncing consonant sounds at the ends of words is much different than what they are used to.

1. With fractions, we pronounce multiple consonant sounds at the ends of the fraction.  We add the plural /s/ for plural numbers (those are numbers when the top number is greater than one) For example 2/17 is “two seventeenths” /n/ + “th” + /s/.   WHEW!

2. Then, there is the article “a” that is used in place of the number one- for singular fractions beginning with a consonant sound. (hint: almost all of them) For example:  1/2, 1/3, 1/4.  “a half, a third, a fourth”

3. And pronouncing the singular article “an” for the number one that is used for singular fractions beginning with a vowel sound.  (hint: the number EIGHT).  For example:  1/8, 1/18, 1/80   “an eighth”, “an eighteenth” and “an eightieth”

Listen to Pam’s informational podcast and if you would like the complete transcript and a handy guide for pronouncing and spelling fractions  Email Pam  HERE –  and please write “FRACTIONS” in the subject line.

Comments or Questions? You can find the comment section right under the title of this blog. I’d love to hear from you!