Pron-Puzzles

These are quick, fun pronunciation ideas. For fully worked up pronunciation lessons and downloads, try the materials section...

A grey-tie deer

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A grey-tie deer

Here's another phrasal homophone image to add to the collection. It's the homophone of 'A great idea!'.

Dangerous dictation no.5

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Pron-Puzzles - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/topic/pron-puzzles

What basic information question has been misunderstood in this picture? Answer = "What's your address?". Surprisingly, for many speakers, these two sentences are perfectly identical in sound. The S in "what's" and the Y in "your" combine to make an SH sound. This in turn joins the T in "What" to create the CH sound. That makes "Watch". The "Your" minus that first Y sound becomes "or".

Dangerous Dictation no.3

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Pron-Puzzles - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/topic/pron-puzzles
The sign should of course read "No dogs allowed". But since what's actually on the sign is a perfect phrasal homophone, a transcriber is perfectly entitled to write it either way. Notice what this shows us about the pronunciation of "are" as nothing more than a schwa.

Dangerous Dictation n.2

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Pron-Puzzles - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/topic/pron-puzzles
Dangerous Dictations are puzzles which depend on word-boundary confusions. For example, 'Bow Tie' sounds exactly like 'Boat Eye', because you can't be sure whether the /t/ sound is the end of 'Boat' or the start of 'Tie'. This could lead to dictation errors. The puzzle for your students is to identify and explain the error.

Dangerous Dictation n.1

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Pron-Puzzles - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/topic/pron-puzzles
Dangerous Dictations are puzzles which depend on word-boundary confusions. For example, 'The Great Ape' sounds exactly like 'The Grey Tape', because you can't be sure whether the /t/ sound is the end of 'Great' or the start of 'Tape'. This could lead to dictation errors. The puzzle for your students is to identify and explain the error.
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