Clear English Pronunciation

A Practical Guide

Dick Smakman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367366438
• eBook ISBN: 9781000752663
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Clear English Pronunciation provides students with the tools to effectively communicate in English without centring solely on native-speaker pronunciation models. The focus of the book is on individual pronunciation targets rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Divided into four sections, each featuring detailed articulatory explanations, sample sentences, and recordings to help learners improve their pronunciation, this book:

• introduces the phenomenon of pronunciation as part of a broader communicative realm;
• explains and demonstrates the melody and rhythm of understandable and natural English pronunciation;
• supports students in identifying and practicing their own pronunciation issues.

Supported by an interactive companion website which features recordings and expanded explanations of key topics, Clear English Pronunciation is an essential textbook for international learners of English who want to improve their pronunciation skills in diverse social settings.

For more resources on English pronunciation, visit: englishpronunciationcentral.universiteitleiden.nl

Additionally, you can find recordings of a wide range of speakers here: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/clearenglishpronunciation

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Chapter 1

Your pronunciation before the

course

The main reason for you to read this book is, hopefully, to improve your English

pronunciation. To measure your progress at the end of the course, let’s record

you speaking English before you’ve gone through all the information and

instructions.

Task 1.1

First study and then read out the text below, which is part of the first page of

‘Life of Pi’ by Yann Martel (2001). For inspiration, you could listen to one of the

speakers on the website who read out this text. Choose the speaker you want to

sound like. Record yourself while reading. After reading out the text, talk about a

random topic (something that interests you) for two more minutes in the same

recording.

1

My suffering left me sad and gloomy. Academic study and the steady,

mindful practice of religion slowly brought me back to life. I have kept

up what some people would consider my strange religious practices.

After one year of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and

took a double-major Bachelor’s degree. My majors were Religious

Studies and Zoology. My fourth-year thesis for Religious Studies con-

cerned certain aspects of the Cosmogony Theory of Isaac Luria, the

great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My Zoology thesis was a

functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose

the sloth because its demeanour – quiet, calm and introspective – did

something to soothe my shattered self. There are two-toed sloths and

there are three-toed sloths, the case being determined by the fore-paws

of the animals, since all sloths have three claws on their hind-paws. I

had the great luck one summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ

in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its

only real habit is indolence. It sleeps or rests on average 20 hours a day.

Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild three-toed sloths by

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2

Your pronunciation before the course

placing on their heads, in the early evening after they had fallen asleep,

bright red plastic dishes fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Your pronunciation before the course
• Part A: Second-language pronunciation
• Part B: Combining sounds
• Part C: Difficult consonants
• Part D: Difficult vowels
• References
• Appendix
• Index