Listening… argh!
In today’s blog we’ll be looking at the very useful topic of how improving your pronunciation can actually help your English listening skills. Over the years, I’ve been told by so many of my students that they find listening in English really difficult. Listening to and understanding me when I teach them is fine (this is because I speak a little slower and more clearly with my students), but when they watch films, listen to music or overhear native speakers talking to each other, they’re lost.
As with any skill, listening takes time to develop and the more you practice, the better you get. But a lot of the time, the biggest obstacle to improving listening skills is not knowing the pronunciation of the word. Once you know this, however, it’s very easy to improve your English pronunciation, and therefore your speaking and also listening skills.
The English language can be a little bit confusing because different letters, usually vowels, can have a different way of being pronounced, depending on the combination and also word they are used in. In a lot of other languages, once you know how to say the sound of a letter, you can usually be correct in your pronunciation. Unfortunately with English, this isn’t the case.
So, how can I improve my English pronunciation?
What a great question!
You’ll be very glad to know that actually, it’s very straight forward. The first step would be to learn the phonemic chart, which is the alphabet for pronunciation. Once you know this, you can start to use this to learn how a word is supposed to sound.
Once you know the phonemic chart, you would notice that in words like ‘enough’ and ‘rough’,
| Word | Phonemic spelling of the word |
| enough | /ɪˈnʌf/ |
|
rough
|
/rʌf/ |
the ‘ou’ is pronounced with the sound / ʌ / as in ‘up’
(you’ll also notice that the ‘gh’ for both words are pronounced with the / f / sound)
In the word ‘though’,
| Word | Phonemic spelling of the word |
| though | /ðəʊ/ |
the ‘ou’ is pronounced with the sound /əʊ/, which is like the word ‘oh’, which you might say if you’re surprised. You’ll also notice that the ‘gh’ in this word is not pronounced at all.
And in the word ‘thought’,
| Word | Phonemic spelling of the word |
| thought | /θɔːt/ |
The ‘ou’ is pronounced with the sound /ɔː/, which is like the word ‘or’. And the ‘gh’ is also not pronounced.
When you know the phonemic spelling of a word, you would see that the word ‘castle’,
| Word | Phonemic spelling of the word |
| Castle | /ˈkɑːs(ə)l/ |
doesn’t actually have a / t / sound in it. The ‘t’ is needed for spelling, but it’s silent in the pronunciation of that word.
But how does improving my pronunciation help my listening?
It makes sense that improving your pronunciation can help you speak more clearly and be understood better when you speak English. But surprisingly, when you know how a word is supposed to sound, you’ll be able to recognise the word when you hear it.
For example, you might know and recognise the word ‘castle’ when it’s written down and know what it means. But if you think it is pronounced with the / t / sound, when a native speaker says the word correctly to you (without the / t / sound), you might not understand.
The great thing about improving your pronunciation is that it’s an easy way to improve your English speaking and listening. If you’re interested in taking your English to the next level, join me for a 4 week introduction course to learn the different sounds of the phonemic chart, starting Wednesday 1st June 2022. Sign up through this link here.
I’ll be holding more pronunciation courses later this year, so if you’d like to be the first to know about them, sign up to receive my newsletter.
