Here are the next consonant sounds we're
going to target: /h/ as in 'he'. /w/ as in 'we'. And
/j/ as in 'yes'. So in this lecture we're
targeting three consonant sounds. The
first thing I want you to notice is that
one of the sounds is unvoiced, two of the
sounds are voiced. Which one is unvoiced? Have a listen. /h/ /w/ /j/ That's right,
it's the first sound. The first sound is
unvoiced. Put your hand over your throat /h/ /h/
It's just air coming out of your mouth, that's it. We don't use our voice. The
other two sounds, however, use your voice. Use the vocal cords to produce a
sound /w/ as in we and /j/ as in yes.
So that's the first difference I'd like
you to notice. Now how do we actually
make these sounds?
How can you accurately produce them? The first sound /h/ the unvoiced sound, this
is a simple one. All we do is we lift our
tongue slightly and we reduce the gap in
our throat so that we can make a noise
as the air passes through. /h/ /h/ Can you hear that?
You have a go. /h/ as in he. OK, so that's
quite a simple one. You simply make a
narrow gap at the back of your throat to
push the air through so it makes a
sound.
Remember it's unvoiced. The second sound is slightly more complex.
/w/ as in we. It has two actions with the
shape of the lips. So notice my lips /w/
/w/ They start very very rounded and
then they become relaxed, which means
neutral. /w/ Can you see that? So it
changes during the course of the sound.
/w/ as in we or went. OK, so practice
that /w/ /w/. And the third sound
/j/ as in yes. This sound is produced by
first of all lifting the back of the
tongue up. So you're pushing the air around the back of your
tongue /j/ /j/. And secondly, on the
second part of the sound you're slightly
lowering your jaw, your lower jaw. You're
pulling it down very slightly. So look at
me and notice /j/ /j/ as in yes. So
that is how you produce these three
consonant sounds. Now let's move on to
the target sound practice for the first
consonant, the unvoiced sound. Let's have a look and notice that it's always the
letter 'h' so it's quite simple. This sound
is always represented by the letter 'h'.
Here we have the target sound practice
list. Listen and repeat each word after
me. He. How.
Hand. Happy. Behind. Horrible. Hotel. Horse.
Hospital. If you don't have the /h/ sound in your language, it's sometimes difficult
at first to produce the sound at the
beginning of a word, for example house or
hate. So you need to try to really force
the sound out and in some languages the
'h' at the beginning of a word isn't
pronounced, but in English it's always
pronounced. So you need to really
force yourself to push the air out of
your mouth because the /h/ sound is a pretty quiet sound. It's just air coming out of
the mouth, so you really need to try and
force the air out at the beginning until
it becomes more natural for you. OK, now
let's go to the second sound target
practice. Remember the second sound /w/ is a voiced sound. Start with very
rounded lips /w/ /w/ and finish with
relaxed lips /w/ as in we. So let's have
a look at the list. Listen to each word
and repeat once again. Win. Wine. Water.
Swim. Sweet. Quickly. Quiet.
Question. Tower. So did you notice the
spellings? Very often the /w/ sound is
represented by 'w' but it's also
represented by 'qu'. So the 'u' sound in the
'qu' spelling combination represents the 'w' sound, for example 'question'. Can you
hear that? So 'qu' in English, the sounds we make are
actually /k/ as in 'cat' and /w/ as in 'we'.
So question question or quiet. The
/w/ sound is represented by 'u' in the
'qu' spelling combination. So keep that in
mind. Don't forget to produce the /w/ sound when you see 'qu. Now, the next
target sound practice. The /j/ sound.
Remember this is also voiced. Use the
back of your tongue. Push it up in your
mouth /j/ and then slightly lower your
jaw on the second part of the sound. /j/ /j/ as in yes. Let's look at the word
list. Notice on the left the symbol of this
sound /j/. The symbol is, strangely, a 'j'.
Don't be confused by this. It doesn't
represent the // sound, this represents
the /j/ sound. This is the IPA
symbol for this sound. So don't be
confused by this. It represents this
sound /j/. Listen and repeat once
again. Yes. Yellow. Yesterday. University.
Student. Tube. Uniform. Europe. New York.
There we go. So the spelling for this sound is very
often 'y', for example yes /j/ as in yes
or yellow. But sometimes it's also 'u'
for example university. The sound is at the
beginning of this word /j/ /j/ university. And it can also be in the
middle of a word. When it's represented
by the 'u' spelling, it can be in the
middle. For example, tube T-U-B-E tube so after
the /t/ sound, the 't' sound, we produce the /j/ sound. Listen again: tube or student.
So this is also represented by 'u' very
very often. Now let's jump on to the
minimal pairs. We're going to do two sets
of minimal pairs because we have three
sounds. The first set we're going to
target are the sounds /h/ and /w/. So listen
to each pair and repeat them after me.
Hurry, worry. Hot, what. Hate, wait. Hell,
well. Hill, will. Hood, wood. So that's the
first set done. Let's go to the second
set. We're going to target the two voiced
sounds this time, the /w/ and the /j/
sounds. Listen to each pair and repeat
after me. We're, year.
What, yacht.
Wet, yet. Woe, yo. Well, yell. Woke, yolk.
I hope those exercises have helped
you to distinguish between the sounds
and to really start to notice how to
produce the sound as well. Now let's move
on to the last part, the target sounds
in use. Have a look at these three
sentences and repeat them after me.
The first one is targeting the unvoiced
/h/ sound. Harry and Holly bought a house in Hawaii. Sentence two is targeting the
voiced /w/ sound. We quietly walked in
the wonderful woods. And the last
sentence is focusing on the /j/ sound.
I'm a student of music at a beautiful
and huge university in Europe.
So there we go. Three consonant sounds
done. Remember, don't stop there.
Grab all the extra resources that I've provided for you in this course.
See you in the next lecture.