Welcome to the first lecture. In this
lecture we're going to focus on these
two vowel sounds: /eI/ as in 'game' and // as
in 'and'. So the first thing I'd like you
to notice with these two sounds is the
difference in length /eI/ is the first
sound. It's quite long /eI/ /eI/. And the second
sound // is very very short. It comes out
in a very short bursts: //
So listen to the two words that I gave
you first: /eI/ as in 'game' and // as in 'and'
So you can hear the difference in the
length. This is because /eI/ is actually two
vowels pushed together to make one sound.
/e/, /I/ becomes /eI/, so it's a longer vowel sound
than //. That's the first difference
between these two sounds. The other thing
I'd like you to notice is the mouth
shape. /eI/ the mouth is wide but it's not
so far open. /eI/ 'game' 'game' /eI/. However the
second vowel the mouth is much further
open // // can you see the mouth? It's
much much further open // as in 'and' 'and'
So these are the two main differences
between these two sounds. Now let's head
over to the target sound practice for
the first sound. The first sound
remember is /eI/
It's represented by 'e' and 'I' as you can see
on the left. These are the two
symbols that represent this English
sound /eI/. So I'd like you to look at this
word list.
Notice that I've highlighted in orange
the part of the word where the sound
appears. Notice that and repeat each
word after me focusing on the vowel
sound we are targeting. Let's start.
Repeat after me.
Hate. Mate. Say. Always. Grey. Eight. Jail.
Great. Cake. Very well done! So you can
notice the sound now. It's a longer vowel
sound.
Also notice the spelling that is used
for this sound. The spelling is very
often 'a' for example 'cake' C-A-K-E
This is the spelling that represents
this sound.
Another common spelling for /eI/ is 'a' 'y'
for example 'day' D-A-Y 'day'. So D-A-Y, 'day'
contains the target sound /eI/. It's very
simple. You need to start looking at the
spelling as representing these sounds.
Now let's go to the second target sound
of this lecture. Remember the second
sound is much shorter and the mouth is
more open. // as in 'and'. So let's look at
the target sound practice words.
You can notice on the left, this is the
symbol that represents the sound //
Don't worry too much about the symbols
but if you can remember them, it's very
very useful. Let's practice the target
sound. Repeat each word after me again.
Hat.
Mat. Plan. Bang.
Athens. Saturday. Android. Africa. Apple.
OK, excellent. Now did you notice the
spelling of all these words in this set?
The spelling that this sound represents is
simply 'a'. Now 'a' is sometimes represented
by the first sound /eI/ as well. For example
'cake' C-A-K-E is not pronounced 'kak' it's
pronounced 'cake'. This is the longer vowel.
But sometimes the letter 'a' represents
the shorter sound as in 'hat' H-A-T
'hat'. So this is the shorter vowel sound
that we just practiced. To make the
two sounds even clearer for you, so you
can practice more, we're going to look at
some minimal pairs. What are minimal
pairs? They're simply words, usually very
short words, which have exactly the same
sounds except for one sound. The one
sound difference is going to be the two
targets sounds. So look at this list that
I've made for you. These are called
minimal pairs. On the left you can see
the words
that have the /eI/ sound, the longer vowel
and on the right you can see the words
that have the shorter sound // and the
two words are exactly the same except
for this one sound difference. For
example, 'ape' 'app'. These two words are
the same except for the vowel sound. So
what I'd like you to do is listen to me
say each pair and repeat each pair after
me so you can clearly hear the
difference between these two sounds.
Let's get started.
Ape, app. Hate, hat. Plain, plan. Main, man.
Ate, at. Kate, cat. OK, now I hope you can
really see the difference and notice the
difference between these two sounds. The
longer one and the much shorter one.
Finally what I like to do is look at the
target sounds in use. This means simply
in a sentence. You can use the
sentence and practice the target sound
within a sentence rather than just
saying words. Look at these sentences.
The first one targets the /eI/ sound. Can
you see that I've highlighted in orange
each target sound? And sentence one
targets the /eI/ sound. I'd like you to
repeat the sentence after me. It's such a
grey day today. Sentence two targets the
shorter vowel sound //
Repeat the sentence after me.
Ann is planning to move to Amsterdam.
OK. Sentence three targets both sounds.
So look carefully and focus on the
target sounds. Repeat after me. The cake
tasted absolutely fantastic. And number
four also targets both sounds, so notice
the sounds and repeat after me. The man
wearing the hat looks strange.
That's the end of lecture one.
Now what I'd like you to do is go to video two, and you'll be able to see me
saying all the words we practised in this video close up.
You'll look at my mouth and be able to see the shape of my mouth
as I pronounce each word. You can model my mouth and model my pronunciation.
This is very very helpful. Secondly, make sure you grab the PDF file
which contains many many exercises for this lecture.
And lastly, most importantly, download the MP3 because the MP3 contains
lots and lots of target sound use, so that you can listen
and you can start to really, deeply understand the two target sounds.
So grab those right now. I'll see you in the next video.