All content by Mark is listed below:
I got my first teaching job in 1984, working at a large boy's secondary school in El Obeid, Sudan. This experience made it very clear to me that there's a lot more to teaching English than just being able to speak the language!
Sunday - April 24th, 2022
Event date:
Sunday, April 24, 2022 (All day)
Delighted to announce the arrival of a new member of the PronPack family! Connected Speech for Listeners provides background tips plus a wealth of teaching ideas and materials for dealing in class with the pronunciation of natural spoken English. The main objective is to help learners improve their listening skills.
PronPack is an award-winning collection resource books to help teachers focus on English pronunciation in class.
Wednesday - March 30th, 2022
The letter 'g' is a hard sound /g/ in words like 'ago' but a soft sound in words like ages. It's usually soft before 'i' or 'e', but there are some very common exceptions like 'get', 'give' or 'girl'.
Wednesday - March 16th, 2022
A single letter 'e' typically has the same vowel sound as in the words 'best' and 'yes'. But there are plenty of exceptions. For example, it often has a different vowel if it's in an unstressed syllable, or at the end of a word, or before 'y' or 'r', or part of a vowel digraph like 'ea'.
Tuesday - March 8th, 2022
A single letter 'o' typically has the same vowel sound as in the words 'top' and 'stop'. But there are plenty of exceptions. For example, look out for a 'magic e' later in the word, for example 'home'. Or if there's a 'y' or 'w' or an 'r' after the 'o'.
Thursday - February 3rd, 2022
The letter 'u' has a long form as in 'tube', but this is usually spelt with a second vowel letter (in this example, the 'e' at the end). A single 'u' may be the equivalent short vowel sound as in 'push' and 'pull', but usually it's a different vowel sound altogether - the one found in 'up'.
Wednesday - January 19th, 2022
Funny letter, Y – sometimes more like a consonant, other times more like a vowel – as in this maze. Go from Try to Fly only if the ‘y’ sounds like ‘eye’. Easy!
Wednesday - January 19th, 2022
A. Where now? Moscow! B. Loads of snow? Moscow! Which rhymes for you – A or B? For me, it’s B, but for many American speakers it’s A. Ok, it’s not earth-shattering news, but the question is the tip of an iceberg when it comes to the pronunciation of the spelling OW.
Wednesday - January 19th, 2022
You have to get from house to out only stepping on stones with that same vowel sound. Trouble is, all of the words contain the treacherous vowel digraph OU, which has many other pronunciations apart from the 'out' vowel. So it's a phonic awareness game!
Wednesday - January 19th, 2022
This maze focuses on the single letter i, and how it's pronounced. Short vowel usually, but not when it's in a vowel digraph, a 'magic e', and 'r' and a few other oddities. Note that the 'magic e' rule doesn't work in the case of 'give', for some reason.
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