THE BIG CHALLENGE TO PLAY AND LEARN

Remember you can practise for your exams using  the big challenge website. Look for it in USEFUL LINKS. On the right hand side.

PRONUNCIATION. How to pronounce words ending in S

[s]
Voiceless sounds that cause the plural “s” to be pronounced as [s] include:

[p], [t], [k], [f] 

[z]

Voiced sounds that cause the plural “s” to be pronounced as [z] include:

[b], [d], [g], [l], [r], [w], [m], [n], [v], [y]

[ɪz]

The sounds that cause the plural “s” to be pronounced with an additional syllable [ɪz] include:

[tʃ] [dʒ] [s] [z]

TEXT INTO VOICE

FOR THOSE WHO ARE PREPARING VIDEOS, LET ME HELP YOU WITH THE FOLLOWING RESOURCES THAT WILL PUT YOUR TEXTS INTO VOICE SO YOU CAN MAKE SURE YOUR PRONUNCIATION IS CORRECT.

http://www.acapela-group.com/

http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/

The next  one only allows you to write 250 characters at a time but you can download a program both for Windows and Mac that will allow you to include longer texts. 

http://www.naturalreaders.com/index.html

And next is a demo but allows you to  write 250 characters at a time and you can download  it to an MP3 file

http://www.readspeaker.com/voice-demo/

How to pronounce the final -ed in regular verbs.

3 Possible ways: /id/, /t/ or /d/

1. The /id/ sound

If the last letter of the word is spelled with D or T, the ED is pronounced as a separate syllable with an /id/ .

• wanted (sounds like "want-id")
• waited
• needed
• fold

2. The /t/ sound

If the last consonant of the word is voiceless (xorda), then the ED is pronounced as a T. Like in  “p”, “k”, “f”, “th”, “s”, “sh” and “ch”

• kissed (the S sound comes from the front of mouth so it would sound like "kisst")
• parked
• helped
• talked (sounds like "talkt")

NOTE: As an example, with the word "helped", if you say "help-id" as a two syllable word, then it is very likely that people will NOT understand the word or what you are saying. (It is pronounced like "helpt")

3. The /d/ sound

If the last letter of the words ends in a voiced (sonora) consonant b, g, v, z,  m, n, ŋ, l, r, s, w, y, z,and vowel sounds, then the ED is pronounced like a D

• played (sounds like "playd")
• closed (the S sounds like a vibrating Z so the word would sound like "clozd")
• opened
• lived

An easy way to remember how to pronounce ED words

The most important thing to remember is that there are two main divisions:

1. The words that end in T or D
   - the ED is pronounced as a syllable /id/
2. and the REST of the words
   - you can pronounce the ED as /t/ and people will understand.

In time you will learn when to pronounce the ED as /t/ or /d/.

TO IMPROVE PRONUNCIATION AND FLUENCY

Click on the following link. Try writing the text of your projects so you can hear it pronounced by a British person.

http://www.loquendo.com/en/demo-center/interactive-tts-demo/

SO, HOW IS "MONEY" PRONOUNCED????