ESL Blogs

My answer to a common question

Phonetics; Learn the '42 sounds of the English language', a simple online search for these will supply you with learning materials and audio files too.

Vocabulary; learn as many new words as you can, try to use your new words in speech as soon as possible.

Try to focus on learning as many common phrases as you can, this is a great way to improve your English speaking.

For those of you at an advanced level, who wish to take their speech a step further, and for those of you who wish to make learning English speech that little bit easier for you in the future, you can not go past learning intonation, and English rhythm. The rythm of English is 'stress timed', there is ssentance stress and syllable stress.

Syllable stress: Not all syllables carry the same weight, some are stressed, and articulated clearly, others are not stressed, weaker and not as clearly articulated as the stressed syllables.

Sentance stress: Each sentence has a rise and fall, they have stressed words, and unstressed words. as a general rule, content words are stressed, and structure words are unstressed. However there are exceptions, you can even place stress on an otherwise unstressed word to change the meaning of a sentence completely. - Read all about it, the internet will be your best friend here.

If you feel you have the hang of syllable stress, then now is a good time to learn a related topic, one that can take you from advanced, to sounding fluent, 'connected speech'. If you can master connected speech, you will find yourself speaking faster and with confidence. GOOD LUCK!

 (poems and tongue twisters are a fun way to practive your pronunciation, and rhythm at home)