Deposited Pronunciation

At ITTT (International TEFL and TESOL Training), we offer a comprehensive course tailored specifically for teaching English pronunciation. Our program is designed to equip teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively teach pronunciation to non-native English speakers. Whether you are a seasoned English teacher looking to enhance your skills or someone new to the field of teaching English as a foreign language, our course is suitable for all levels of experience. 1. Importance of English Pronunciation Effective communication in English requires not only a good grasp of grammar and vocabulary but also clear and accurate pronunciation. Poor pronunciation can lead to misunderstandings and hinder the ability to communicate effectively. By focusing on English pronunciation,...  [Read more]

  In this video we'll be looking at the international phonemic alphabet and how it's used in the classroom. There are other phonemic alphabets but this is the most popular and the system, which is most widely used. You may have seen some of these symbols before as any good dictionary will supplement standard English spellings with the phonemic spellings to aid in pronunciation practice. Here we have a situation where we have what are called phonemes and each phoneme represents a sound within the English language. How is this helpful? Well, what it does is help students understand how to say words rather than simply relying on the often archaic English spellings. To illustrate this point let's for a moment put ourselves in the shoes of our students when trying to understand how to...  [Read more]

  Whereas stress is typically concerned with one individual word, intonation is generally concerned with the variation in volume and pitch throughout an entire sentence. Intonation carries the message of a sentence. It's particularly important when questioning or agreeing, disagreeing and confirming statements. It's also very important when expressing emotions and feelings. The normal pattern for intonation is the rise-fall. Few examples would be ?I haven't seen him for a week,? or a simple word as ?okay?. With the falling intonation, we?re indicating that we're finished speaking. Again, ?I haven't seen him for a week? and ?okay?. A few more examples would be ?I'll see you at six then,? or a question of information ?How do you spell rough?? These are straightforward statements that...  [Read more]

  A better way to go about imparting how to make sounds or what sounds are utilized in a word, is this international phonemic alphabet. Now we have as mentioned one symbol being used in all the words which share that same sound. Now once we get a little bit more familiar with our phonemic alphabet we can also show how different our different sounds can be as in this symbol for ?ooh?, this symbol for ?ow? and this symbol for ?uh?. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the...  [Read more]

  Connected speech is also an important element of phonology and it's involved in joining words together in an effect to make our speech more efficient. Some might say it's a product of being lazy but nonetheless it's what we all do and we want all of our non-native speakers to speak as naturally as possible, so we have to be aware of these things. Here are a few of the more common examples. We have linking, dropping, changing and extra lettering. An example of each would be with linking, we link our words together so that they almost in effect become one word. Instead of saying ?What do you want to do,? we typically will say ?Whatdoyou want to do?? Then, we can also have dropping. Rather than pronouncing each and every consonant, we can sometimes, especially in certain accents,...  [Read more]

  The next thing we should look at is how our consonants are arranged for the top two rows we have P and F at the left side of our chart and G and J at the right side of our chart. They're arranged this way because if we analyze the way we speak we're using the front of our mouth to use these sounds as in ?p? and ?f? and I'm using my lips and my teeth to produce those sounds and as we move to the right on the chart slowly but surely we're making those sounds it towards the back of our mouth. We can use the examples of ?g?. The sound ?g? is produced further back in our mouth than ?p?. The next thing we'll notice about our chart is that some of our symbols are shaded. Notice that none of the symbols in the vowel sections are shaded but only a few are in the consonant section. The...  [Read more]

  Here we have a set of five words, which all share one sound: the ?oh? sound, as in ?go?, ?show?, ?dough?, ?note? and ?boat?. They?re five different spelling patterns to tell our students so they can identify when to make the ?oh? sound. We can have a simple letter ?o?, ?ow?, ?ough?, ?o? with the magic ?e? which turns our vowel into what we knew as long sounds and the ?oa? as in ?boat?. Now, for a non-native learner, perhaps they can handle something like this. They remember that these spelling combinations help to produce the ?oh? sound and they can go about their business looking at the words and memorizing this knowing that these spelling patterns will produce the sound ?oh?. Now that?s okay until we get to a situation where we can also have words like ?to?, ?cow? and also...  [Read more]

Our grammar expert Linda takes a look at the correct pronunciation of a range of English words that are often confusing for students. Our Ask Linda series is frequently updated so make sure you check for new additions on a regular basis.  [Read more]

  There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings, which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation, which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart we have our...  [Read more]

  Place of articulation deals with the placement of the vocal organs when producing a sound. Before we can cover the particulars of places of articulation, we'll need to take a look at the various vocal organs and their locations. Moving from the front to the back we'd begin with our lips. We can use both lips in order to create a sound or we can use one of our lips with one of our rows of teeth, usually the top, in order to produce another sound. We also have other sounds, which use both of the rows of teeth. Further back we have what's called the alveolar ridge. That's the bit of the mouth that may get burnt when we're eating a pizza that's a bit too hot and the cheese burns just behind there our top two teeth. That again is the hard bit just behind our top teeth, called the...  [Read more]

  And now we have our nasal sounds. There are three nasal sounds and basically the pattern of air that's moving out of our vocal tract has to do with two big instances and that is a closure in the vocal tract. Except aside from the plosives and affricates, what we have is air escaping through our nasal cavity. These sounds include ?m?, ?n? and ?ng?. We're moving from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. First with the M sound or the ?m?, we're closing both lips and the air is escaping through the nasal passage ?m?. Next we have our N sound or our ?n? sound. There, the closure is inside the mouth but our tongue is closing up near our alveolar ridge and the air is escaping through the nose. Again that's ?n?. Finally we have our NG sound and the closure there is happening...  [Read more]

  When it comes to manner of articulation, we have six different ways in which our breath is produced in order to make our sounds. We have our plosives, our affricates, fricatives, the nasal sounds, our lateral sound and the approximants. Let's take a look at each individually and see how they differ from one another. First we have our plosive sounds. As the word might indicate we have basically a little explosion of sound with our breath. The plosive sounds are made through a three-step process. First there's a closure somewhere in the vocal tract. Second there's a buildup of air and finally there's a sudden release of that air like a little explosion. If we look at some of the sounds that are made this way we might better understand why they are called plosives. Examples are the...  [Read more]

  Now let's take a look at how we go from traditional spellings into the phonemic spellings. The first step in this process is identifying each unit of sound or each phoneme within a word. Let's look at bet, bit, but, and bought. The only difference in each one of these words is in the vowel sound. We have bet, bit, but and bought. Each word simply uses three sounds. Now we have photo. That's four phonemes. Wow we have taxi. That's five phonemes. We have unite with a hidden phoneme in there being the ?y? sound before anything else. Those are five phonemes as well and now we have a longer word: chemistry. Let's give that a shot. That's eight phonemes used in the word chemistry. Now once we've isolated each sound we want to assign a phoneme for each one of those sounds let's do that...  [Read more]

  "As mentioned before our four words here all are similar in using the ?b? and ?t? sounds at the end. So we know that those phonemes will be used in spelling each one of those words phonetically. Now what we're left to do is assign a phoneme for our vowel sounds. So if we analyze the word, it's ?e? as in bet. We look at our chart, we see the phoneme which corresponds to that sound and that happens to be the standard ?e? that we all recognize. Here, bet phonetically looks very similar to bet in the Roman script. Now let's take a look at ?i? bit. Now we look at our chart and we see that this symbol represents the ?i? sound and that resembles a capital I not a lowercase I but a capital I and so we've arrived at bit. Now with ?but? we have to find the sound and that corresponds to...  [Read more]

  Alveolar sounds get their name from the fact that the alveolar ridge is being used. Again, that ridge is just behind the front top row of teeth. Here the tongue is on or very very near the alveolar ridge. It's typically the tip of the tongue or what's just behind the tip of the tongue, called the blade of the tongue. Here, we're talking about sounds such as ?t? and ?d?. If you say them at home, you can tell the tip of your tongue is on that alveolar ridge. Again, that's ?t? and ?d?, as well as sounds such as ?s? and ?z?. Again, the blade of the tongue is just near that alveolar ridge but it is very near nonetheless. The two other sounds that make it into this category is the ?l? sound, where the tip of the tongue is very clearly touching that alveolar ridge, as well as ?r? or the...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word "bellwether". This word is a noun and describes someone who takes the lead and sets trends. A long time ago, shepherds hung a bell around the neck of one sheep of its flock designating it the leader. Therefore, bellwether is a combination of the words "bell" and "wether", a male sheep that has been castrated. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Tests are the basic form of evaluating knowledge. There...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word "bunkum". This word is a noun and refers to foolish talk or nonsense. The word came into existence after a representative for Buncombe County, North Carolina, held a speech on an irrelevant subject in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820. Soon after, the word "bunkum" became known as a synonym for nonsense. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This lesson gave good details on how to help the...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word armada. This word refers to a large fleet of warships. The word has been in use ever since the Spanish naval forces lost against England in 1588. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. There is a science and a method to teaching children of all ages of the classroom. Ultimately, a teacher should try to be as engaging as possible to encourage students to practice their language skills. Without practice,...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word catastrophic. This word is used as an adjective and means extremely tragic or horrendous. Some synonyms for catastrophic include tragic and disastrous. The word comes from the Greek word katastroph?, meaning to overturn. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This lesson was about different types of lessons, theories, methods, and teaching techniques we can use for different levels of students and types...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word "belated". This word refers to something that happened later than it should have. A common use of the word is in the following phrase "Happy belated birthday," used by people who wish someone a happy birthday after the actual birthday. Synonyms for belated include late and overdue. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. I feel like this unit has helped me to establish the roles of a good teacher and...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word rejuvenate. This word is used as a verb and refers to making a person look or feel younger, as well as fresher, and more lively. Some synonyms for rejuvenate include revive, revitalize and regenerate. The word is a combination from re- ‘again’ and the Latin word juvenis meaning ‘young’. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Teaching equipment can be used to make my class interesting.There are...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word uxorial. This word is used as an adjective and describes things or habits relating to a wife. The word comes from the Latin 'uxor' meaning wife. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. From reading through the entire content of this unit (Teaching Productive Skills) and now that I am finished with taken the test for this unit (Teaching Productive Skills). What I personally learned from this unit is the...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word golem. This word is a noun and refers to a figure brought to life by magic in a Jewish legend. The word comes from Hebrew g?lem meaining ‘shapeless mass'. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This section we l learned about Modals, Phrasal Verbs and Passive Voice, which I find quite challenging, due to so many possibilities. I think and I feel that even if I pass this unit, I will still need a lot...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word assailant. This word is used as a noun and refers to a person who physically attacks another person with the goal of doing harm. Some synonyms for assailant can include attacker, mugger and assaulter. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. The exams, tests and the other evaluation methods are the most vital parts of learning English.The teacher has the most important role in evaluating students. It is...  [Read more]

  In this epidose, we cover the pronunciation of the word operationalize. This word is used as a verb and refers to the action of putting something nto operation. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Getting to know your students and establishing a rapport is one of the most important things you can do. it is important that your students know you and like you so that everything will be smooth sailing. as explained in the text, you can start out the first...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word swashbuckler. This word is a noun and describes a swashbuckling person. The word has been used since the 16th century and is a combination of the words 'swash' and 'buckler'. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Here we learn how to draw a lesson plan and its various forms which could include detailing out on a piece of paper,jotting on a piece of paper or even on the margin of the text book.However,...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word quay. This word is used as a noun and refers to the platform used for loading and unloading ships. Synonyms for quay include wharf, pier or landing stage. The spelling of the word was influenced by the French spelling quai. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. by far one of the hardest units I've come across this far. I will need to go back and review this again to get a better understanding of it. I...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word dross. This word describes something that is seen as junk or rubbish. Some synonyms for dross are trash or garbage. This word comes from the Old English 'dr?s' and is also related to Dutch droesem and German Drusen meaning dregs. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This unit served as an excellent introduction in how to teach writing and speaking in an TEFL classroom. I was happy to learn that...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word kismet. This word is a noun and means fate or destiny. The word comes from Arabic ?ismat meaning 'division'. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. This unit elaborated further of some of the different students and levels covered in Unit 1. Going deeper into each level it gave clarity on approach and pitfalls, also this unit gave excellent information and reassurance regarding teaching Business English...  [Read more]

  In this episode, we cover the pronunciation of the word thorough. This word is used as an adjective and means being careful about detail. The word comes from the Middle English word thorow, which came from the Old English thurh. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. There are so many ways to keep lessons interesting and to use many different forms of activities in teaching. This keeps excitement and interest in the students as well as the teacher. Variety...  [Read more]