English Pronunciation Practice – Sounding Natural, Helping learners of English improve their pronunciation, expression, flow and understanding of complex uses of English.
Course Description
Welcome to this course on sounding natural when speaking English.
I am a teacher of English as an additional language, working mainly with professionals whose English is good, but they want to improve their pronunciation skills to ‘sound more natural’ when speaking English, especially when they are attending meetings and conferences with speakers from a range of nationalities.
This course, hits some of the key ‘pain points’ students experience daily.
It is overview to raise awareness of issues, to help you understand some of the curiosities of spoken English an help you sound more natural.
If your focus is business English, I have made a series of lectures on attending and running meetings in English, and I also run group and individual tutoring.
The first part of this course is about pronunciation of words in English:
Use of the destressed vowel, or ‘schwa’
The pronunciation of regular past tense ‘ed’ verb endings
The sounds of ‘plosive’ letters – P,B,T,D,G and K and how they’re used
The second part is about the ‘flow’ of sentences:
Dropping letters in spoken English
Running words together in fast speech
The use of stress on key words improve comprehension
A range of uses for expressions in conversation, as openers, to attract attention to the speaker, and common expressions.
The third part is about using English indirectly, for humour, or to avoid saying impolite or awkward language. Sarcasm and euphemisms are common in English, but rarely addressed.
Whatever your level of spoken English, you’ll find something here to improve it.
