Pronunciation Post #2

Hey guys! 

As promised, this is my second post on pronunciation. I’ve found out further flaws in my pronunciation and in this post I will tell you how to get rid of them.

Rachel's English

Rachel is just great! She knows exactly what to pay attention to when pronouncing a word. Not only does she explain thoroughly how the tongue needs to be positioned, but also how to deal with intonation of every single word. What I particularly like about her is the way she sets up her explanations in her videos. She uses videos of every-day life situations like birthday parties, road trips or thanks giving preparations. In these videos, people are talking in every-day English and therefore use natural collocations and useful idioms. Rachel then takes out a phrase of what someone has just said and goes into detail about the meaning and the pronunciation of a phrase. Not dry at all and very informative! Awesome for practicing :-)
A great example: http://www.rachelsenglish.com/videos/how-say-happy-birthday

Amy Walker

As I’ve already in detail written about her in my previous post, I’ll keep myself short here. But as I still struggle with the “shwah”- sound, as Amy calls it, I like to watch this video over and over again. I hope I’ll be confident about the “shwah” in January, when I take the vocabulary and pronunciation exam.

Perception of Spoken English Test

I took the test some days ago. It is so good to have an “objective” opinion (even though it’s a test online) on how I pronounce words. As a German speaker it’s almost impossible to detect my flaws in pronunciation when I’m talking, so I am pretty glad that there are pages on the web like this one. The result of the test is really OK, I just have to be careful with differentiating k and g when used as final consonants, as well as p and b. At the beginning of a word, I sometimes had difficulties to distinguish the f and the soundless th.

Go and test your perception of spoken English here!

Minimal Pairs
In order to practice k/g and p/b, I do exercises on this page or- again- watch an Amy Walker video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuBQ-q_z_LM&feature=youtu.be 

This website also provides numerous helpful exercises.

TOEFL Test Preparation
In January, I take the TOEFL test. The test requires doing reading, listening and speaking sections. For the speaking section, I’ll have to talk about every-day situations, such as student life, hobbies etc. During the speaking section, I’m allowed to take notes for 20 seconds so that I can talk an entire minute about my chosen topic. I try to practice on a regular basis, so I get used to it and to acquire my strategy of taking notes in this short time. Additionally, I record myself and afterwards analyze what I could’ve done better.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this post! If you have any questions or suggestions, I would be glad to see some comments!

!!Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!