PronPack 1-4 Review

Read the full review here. Here's an excerpt:

Hancock’s approach is strikingly innovative. For many years I’ve thought that an ELT classroom without a pron chart on the wall is naked. A pron chart or the pron chart? Well, Hancock has reconceptualised our pron chart brilliantly, using a hexagram to show the 19 vowels in standard UK and US English (Workouts Book, pp13–19), with an outer ring showing the long vowels and diphthongs, below which on the same pages are domino-like rectangles showing the consonants with open gates – for want of a better expression – between the voiced and unvoiced equivalents, /p/ and /b/, /f/ and /v/, etc. The stop consonants are placed together, the glottals, the friction consonants (fricatives), and so on. Rhotic and non-rhotic varieties are given equal prominence. If you’re scratching your chin by now, then you need to get this series of four books. And yes, you probably will need all of them. They’re reasonably self-explanatory once you’ve read the Intro in Book 1, and absolutely ready to use. At www.pronpack.com there’s more information and free downloads.