Improve your English Pronunciation: The Ultimate Guide for IELTS

hello now today we're going to do some ielts speaking pronunciation practice and together we will take your understanding and practice of pronunciation up to a whole new level are you ready then come with me [Music] hi so my name is keith i'm from the keith speaking academy so today we're going to be practicing the key pronunciation features that you need to master to get a band 7 8 or 9 in ielts speaking i'm going to be looking at phonemes word stress sentence stress weak and strong forms connected speech and intonation now first of all why is pronunciation important well it is because you probably know pronunciation counts for 25 of your ielts speaking mark right now have you ever looked at the ielts speaking band descriptors uh oh uh sorry keith what what what are they well if you don't know them then you should go and find out you can go to my website there's a link be girl below go and look at the band descriptors right because this is where you can find out how the examiner evaluates you and what they're looking for now when we look at pronunciation it comes up all the time this phrase pronunciation features a wide range of a limited range of contr mixed control of pronunciation features what on earth are these pronunciation features right that's what i need to know well in a word here they are we've got word stress connected speech sentence stress phonemes intonation weak firms weak firms weak forms and strong forms in a nutshell these are probably the most important pronunciation features you need to know and to master and this is exactly what we're going to look at today one by one come on so this is exactly what we're going to look at today we'll look at them one by one so you understand what they are and we'll start getting you to use them correctly so let's begin with phonemes so phonemes are individual sounds including vowel sounds like a and consonant sounds like okay so these are your phonemes basically pronunciation exists on three different levels right you've got your sounds your words or your chunks and phrases right so sounds like words like cup put them together cup that's a that's a word phrases like cup of tea right putting all of these sounds together basically there are 44 sounds in english that's it no more everything you will ever ever say is just made with 44 different sounds and here they are this is the uh phonemic chart and created by adrian underhill and also thank you to macmillan education who um copyright this and here you can see the different kinds of sounds the 44 sounds in english the top half is just the vowel sounds right and these are divided into the single vowels and the diphthongs which are sliding vowel sounds then at the bottom we've got all the consonant sounds now what's interesting with this is that the sounds go from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth right and from the top of the mouth to the bottom of the mouth so you have at the start here for example and similarly if you look at the consonants [Music] going from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth right and from the top to the bottom very interesting organization and really really useful now if you want to practice these there is a very very simple mobile app that you can use so this is an app by the british council it's called sounds right and you can download it from their website there is a link down below and basically as you can see here you can click on the different sounds for example the vowel sounds and diphthongs to listen and try and repeat you can also click on the consonant sounds again and repeat and you also get example words with the different sounds so you can see the kind of words that are using those sounds too now a really important thing about pronunciation is it's not mental it's not thinking and analytical it's not like grammar looking at patterns or vocabulary it's physical it's more like playing football or basketball right or dancing where you have to train your body to move in a certain way same with pronunciation you have to train your mouth to move in a certain way so i think the key thing and the key message here right is that you need to train i should say retrain your mouth right because you have learnt to pronounce and to speak your mother tongue using the muscles you need to pronounce the mother tongue right now the muscles being the lips the tongue the jaw and the voice or the unvoiced sounds that's what you use to speak so it's very very hard to speak another language correctly with the correct pronunciation because you're using the familiar muscles and shapes that you've used your whole life what you really need to do is to retrain your whole mouth and i think it's really important when you're working on english learning to make pronunciation a regular part of your practice and to retrain practice training your mouth i'll be showing you a few examples in a moment have you ever tried something like a new sport you know i mean i remember when i tried yoga for the first time right and it was very difficult i remember watching the teacher who would you know she would do a perfect pose and then i would have a go and be like nowhere near close but the teacher of course would help me and would say well no listen when you're doing that you need to stretch your arms oh right okay like that and she said no put your shoulder down right and i go oh i see but it feels strange and she goes of course it feels strange you're using new muscles in new ways and it's exactly the same with pronunciation right when i first learned chinese i had headaches for days and days because i was trying to use the shape of my mouth similar to the way chinese people were and it's used in a very different way as with most languages right so we need to think about retraining your mouth there are different ways of doing this and i think probably the worst way is just to read stuff aloud because you're just going to repeat the bad pronunciation right second way is you can listen to audio now that's okay because at least you have the sound and you're trying to imitate the sound but you don't really know what's going on inside so it's you're kind of guessing and you're probably repeating your mother tongue pronunciation much better is video which is why i'm a big fan of video right because whether it's teaching videos or netflix or films because you can see what's happening much more you can see the shape of the lips the position of the jaw you can sometimes see the tongue so videos help a lot so long as you're paying attention to what's going on here and comparing to yourself so using a mirror to look at your own voice is really important right your own mouth but best of all is to have a coach or a teacher who can actually say listen you're doing this you need to do this and to show you and help you change the shape and use different muscles to get the right sounds and then working and working on those sounds for example let's take the word party right and imagine a spanish speaker for example would probably say party party and i would go no not party but party take the first sound you're saying but it's a per in english the per is aspirate there's like a there's like a voice or a wind coming out look the difference between and right you literally you're moving the paper so you need to practice the per sound right the second quite funny right so if you if you see spanish students going around the world going hello my name is pedro you know that they're my students oh hello yes is your teacher keith uh yes it is how do you know i'm just guessing yeah just for practice so that's the per but then there's the party so look at the shape of the mouth ah and now look at the english shape so you need to go from [Music] what happens the lips become much more central rounded and the jaw drops and then finally the tea the spanish speaker would probably have a party but the mouth you can see is much much closer so all together party of course the other difference is the spanish speaker probably has the party party they're doing this the sound if you take the shape of the front of the teeth and their tongue is going it's touching it in english there is no r in british english it's par t we don't pronounce the r at all so that the tongue must come back you don't even touch the teeth the tongue comes right back party by seeing the shape of the mouth and the jaw by understanding the position of the tongue a coach or a teacher can help show you how to change and to move and you can do this by looking and looking at videos and if you follow a pronunciation course you can learn lots and lots in this way i think if you're just working on your own a good thing is once you've got the sound to start to juggle and to practice so if you've learned that practice doesn't matter if they're real words you're just practicing the sounds right per pee pie okay and if you want to throw in your piece of paper per pee pie potato you can right same with the r r car ma tar paw don't worry about the words existing just practice those sounds it's the gym right you're training your mouth to make these new sounds just doing it once is not enough and just doing one sound is not enough you need to be putting sounds together because that's what's really difficult right yep i can train you to say all 44 sounds but if you can't put them together right up cup cup of tea that's what you need to practice so be juggling all the time as you learn these sounds you can use the app i showed you before practice those words and just make up your own right play play with sounds that is what it really is all about now coaches are not available for everybody but fortunately nowadays online you can find teachers and coaches all over the internet and some of the best and most you know trustworthy teachers that you can find are out there on cambly i'm a big fan of cambly and the work that they do and i would like to thank them again for sponsoring this video um if you don't know cambly basically they are a platform where you can go and find native english-speaking teachers you can have online classes one-to-one with your teacher where you can practice your english you can practice ielts questions and most importantly you can develop your pronunciation get feedback and help from a native speaker to really nail your pronunciation so that you can get that high score in ielts speaking the platform does have also um online courses that you can follow including some ielts courses lots of ideas to help you get materials to study and to practice with your live teacher when you go on the platform with cambly if you join um cambly have given us and you a code to get a discount on all of their packages just use the code you can see up here keith disc for discount um and with that code just put it in and you'll get the discount if you're a first time user that is so cambly great platform great opportunity to practice your pronunciation go and check them out right now let's get back to the content there is another app if you're interested on on practicing getting the individual sounds these are it's not an app sorry it's a playlist on youtube by the bbc learn english videos they go through all 44 sounds and there's a you can see the woman who is making the vow the the mouth shapes it's really a big help it's well worth investing a few days going all the way through it right next word stress now words are made up of different syllables as you may know a syllable is basically a unit of pronunciation that is well it's a vowel sound that may or may not have a consonant before or after it okay for example the word two right has one syllable two twenty twenty has two syllables um tomorrow tomorrow has three syllables right now it's very important to stress the correct syllable of course if there's just one syllable like hat it's easy but when you have more than one syllable like tomorrow to ma ro which one do you stress tomorrow in that case you stress the second one right take for example potato potato right we stress the second and notice what happens to the first sound po becomes per because when you stress something you have to unstress the sound next to it usually the sound before but not always so instead of po it's potato potato now if we put the stress in the wrong place in a word it can lead to confusion right let's put this to the test i want you to write down these words right to see if you know what i'm saying so go and get a pencil or a pen or you can note it on your um on your iphone or your android phone listen carefully and tell me the word i'm telling you okay listen carefully forget forget saturday saturday tomato tomato did you get them did you understand the words because i was putting the stress in the wrong place and if i change it you might understand so the first one should have been forget right not forget forget second one was not saturday it should have been saturday stress on the first syllable saturday the last one tomato what is a tomato oh you mean a tomato tomato so can you see it's so important to get the stress right in the word or you're gonna confuse people i mean imagine right if you walk into a green grocers in england a green grocer sells fruit and vegetable right and imagine you walk in and go hello i'd like a kilo of um tomatoes please and the shopkeeper goes a kilo of what tomatoes i'm sorry we don't have any tomatoes here no no really the red juicy ones no no no tomatoes here sorry oh come on you m everybody has tomatoes in the salad oh god what on earth is this person talking about we don't have any i'm sorry oh okay then well just give me some um potatoes potatoes great so be careful next time when you look at your word stress how do you get it right well you look in the dictionary and it tells you which is the word which is the syllable to stress and when you're making notes of words right always make a note of the stress the word stress you can do that by either just underlining like this right forget saturday some people just write the stress in capital letters you can write a little circle on top of the stressed syllable whichever works but just make a note right now as i said before notice it's important to unstress when you stress so instead of saying for get because you're stressing get it's forget that's how you make it work forget sa becomes saturday saturday tomorrow becomes too not too but very often the unstressed syllable becomes the schwa sound the uh it's the most common sound in english okay so that's it let's have a look at some of the very very common ielts words you need to put out to pronounce correctly um how do you say these words right okay so you tell me is this right or wrong photography it's wrong right it should be photography stress on the top photography the second one the second one right or wrong economics economics it should be economics economics not economics right economics if i say economist that's correct and so i think you're saying economist so notice these words of the same family often sometimes the stress the word stress changes whether it's a noun an adjective or a verb so be careful with these kinds of words there is another really important group of words um where a word can be both a noun and a verb like re record or record if the stress falls on the first syllable it's going to be the noun record if it falls on the second it's going to be a verb record record okay so when you see words like these below transport the stress on the first is when it's a noun if you say transport transport then it becomes a verb right the same with import we have a lot of imports imports that's the noun but if you put it on the second import import then it's a verb i'm going to import some cheese or some tomatoes from spain so that's a really good rule of thumb right a rule of thumb is a general rule if it's a noun stress the first syllable if it's a verb stress the second syllable simple easy peasy lemon squeezy let's move on right next up sentence stress sentence stress is where we decide which word to stress in a sentence in order to express our meaning or maybe to express emphasis as well right now i don't know if you've ever been to a casino right in the casino you can play blackjack craps um that you can play the penny slot machines casinos you know 90 of people who gamble lose their money in the casino in fact there's only one person who wins and that's the casino so be very careful if you go there but imagine somebody imagine i went to the casino i gambled and i lost all my money right i could say i lost all my money now if somebody asked me how much did you lose i say i lost all my money if somebody says whose money did you lose i lost all my money and if they say what did you lose keith i lost all my money can you hear that the word is stressed is different each time to give a slightly different meaning so it's really important to look at this and to understand how we use it in other languages you may use words to emphasize but we use stress to emphasize it's also worth knowing that english tends to be not always but tends to be a stress timed language rather than a syllable timed language so some languages are that the stress falls every syllable right in english normally the stress falls at the same time not on every syllable you'll notice if you listen to my videos i often say the stress always coming at the same time let me show you very very three simple sentences right listen he lives in a big gold house he lives in a big gold house he lives in a lovely old house he's been living in a lovely old house can you see the stress is the same every time but there's lots more syllables but we just squeeze the syllables in and this is the secret to english sentence stress right if you don't stress every syllable you stress the most important words in the sentence he's been living in a lovely old house living lovely house those are the key words right and in the same way do you remember with the tomato right the tomato in order to stress the ma we unstress the tu ta tomato it's the same with sentence stress the words that we don't stress are often contracted they become weak we tell we we say so for example this sentence i go to work at 9 00 a.m now many speakers who stress syllable have a syllable stressed language would say i go to work at 9 00 a.m but in english it's i go to work at 9 00 a.m i go to work we stress the go and the work and so the two becomes you almost swallow it becomes i go to work at at becomes at at at 9am i go to work at nine am what time do you go to work i go to work at nine am where do you go i go to work at nine am see sentence stress really important that's a quick overview let's move on okay i'm going to move on now and talk about weak and strong forms and this is very closely connected actually to the sentence stress do you remember i said in a sentence you stress certain words and therefore you unstress the others so when you unstress a word we use what we call the weak form so the words that we unstress normally are not the important words right so we're not talking about nouns adjectives and verbs we're talking about the other smaller words that kind of connect your sentences um so these are the main groups of words right where you have weak and a strong form so verbs like to be to have um can would should will prepositions like to at for from uh conjunctions like and but than pronouns like you your he she her him and so on so all of these words have a weak form and a strong form right for example two t o the strong form is two the weak form is ta and i'm often amazed at how many students don't know about the weak and the strong forms and yet it is the crux of english pronunciation it's so important right so let's take some examples to to make this clear for you um remember the the sentence before i go to work at 9 00 a.m right so we stress go and work so i go to work not to but work and not at but at at i go to work at 9 00 am you've got it all you've got the weak forms the stress and the dum dum dum i go to work at 9am i'll give you some more examples let's take um was was was was i was i was i was i was for for strong for weak to strong weak so let's have a look at this sentence right i was waiting for the bus to come which words do you think we will stress that's right yes waiting bus come they're the key words the verb the noun those are they carry the main meeting the main meeting the main meaning the other words that we unstress therefore and use the weak form are so the sentence is i was waiting for the bus to come okay break it down i was waiting for the bus to come all together i was waiting for the bus to come can you hear that weak and strong forms again we could look at all of the words and go through them but that's a complete pronunciation course this is just to give you an introduction so you're aware and you can start listening out for it i think it's really good if you can watch videos with subtitles or the transcript like the the ted ed or the ted talks are great because you can see the transcript so you can hear and be really listening for the for these words and picking out if you want to read oh that's where they're reducing they're using the weak form once you start listening out you'll start waking up to the real sounds of english and then once you can hear it you can also start pronouncing it and working on producing it okay great let's move on right now next up is connected speech do you remember we talked about three levels of pronunciation right we had the the sounds level kind of the phonemes the consonant and vowel sounds we then had the word level and we looked at word stress changing the stress on the syllable and then the third level is kind of the phrase or the chunk or the sentence level so we looked at sentence stress and another key part of that third level is connected speech many languages don't have this some do it to a different degree to english but in english it's very common we use it a lot we don't always have to do it but it's really good for use to start doing at least a little bit of connected speech if you're not doing any so basically this is where we have two words together and we link the sounds between the words so typically if a word ends in a consonant sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound then we'll connect them right for example wake it ends in a wake up the next word up is a vowel sound so instead of saying wake up we say wake up the k and the uh come together almost like way cup way cup wake up they're connected can you hear the difference between i wake up and i wake up you're making a chunk it's so much easier to pronounce um and it sounds so much more so much more natural okay other common examples we may see first of all first that will link to the o and the of the the remember o f watch the mouth vol remember first of all first of all so there's a default the best way to do this is to go backwards repeat with me vol devol first of all first of all a bit strange i know but that is linking another example on top of that same thing top of top of top of on top of that on top of that on top of that on top of that so the most common occurrence is when you know you have a word finishing in a consonant sound and the next one begins with a vowel you can connect but you don't have to again i think it's really good practice for you to start listening out for this um because once you start hearing it it'll become crystal clear it's extremely common in phrasal verbs write things like take out take count give up take con put away because most prepositions begin with a vowel right puts away toe way and the way to practice is separate that final consonant and put it together with the second word take off take off your coat put away your shoes give away your money why not so very nice that's connected speech now another very quick thing that you'll notice with connected speech it's not just linking there are also other strange and magical things happening we have um letters or sounds that disappear um letters and words that appear out of nowhere all sorts of things happen which i won't go into much detail but let me just tell you one where a sound disappears right and it's a very common one because it's one that a lot of students get wrong and it's the word must that finishes in a t right must so if we say i must go nobody speaks like that right i must go it's very very strange that t sound drops and disappears so it's actually i must go there is no t i must go you he must pay he must pay right forget the t it drops so if you've got must and the next word begins with most consonant sounds not all of them then things like i must go he must pay i must listen more that t disappears very good one to learn because it's such a common modal verb there are many more but not for today let's move on right last but not least intonation now this is one of the most challenging parts of pronunciation and it's all about that third level we talked about about chunk phrase sentence level intonation is basically the change in pitch or tone across a sentence to give meaning in many languages you have different tones for different words and it changes the meaning of the word right for example in chinese you have ma ma ma right and and others um and it changes the meaning of the word in english the the tone or the pitch changes on a word but it affects the meaning of the whole phrase or the whole sentence that's the important thing right so we have i guess three basic kind of pitches we've got rising [Music] falling falling rising and you can also have actually rising falling [Music] there are different kinds right i guess the main thing we're going to focus on is how these can be used to change the meaning of the phrase there are no strict rules for this right and that's what makes it really difficult um i'm going to give you some rules of thumb thumb a rule of thumb is a general guideline for certain ways of using them but really it comes from practice okay let me let me begin with a very very simple example right um imagine i've been to the casino what again yeah and i get home and i've lost all my money right and i tell my mrs my wife you know i'm really sorry but i've lost all my money all our money and she might say well that's great i don't think she's going to say well that's great because well that's great rising means that it's great it's very very good but the same words well that's great falling intonation means it's terrible very very bad so that intonation is key on expressing the meaning let's look at some rules of thumb first of all questions so generally we've got two kinds of questions we've got questions which are open like what where why who those open questions um have normally a falling intonation right what time are you coming who are you going with where are you going what are you doing usually those questions have a falling intonation um the close questions kind of yes no answer questions normally have a rising intonation are you coming are you sure do you want some do you have time can you hear that are you coming do you want some it's rising so those kind of questions right normally it's rising um what else we've got lists sometimes in ielts you might be giving a list of things and the very common intonation pattern is rising rising falling on the last one of the list right not always and you don't have to do this but it is a common recognized pattern right do you like animals yeah sure i like elephants tigers and monkeys [Music] right i like elephants tigers and monkeys do you like animals right exactly yes vegetables i like carrots bananas that's not a vegetable i add carrots potatoes and tomatoes some of you are saying keith tomatoes are fruit i know but not to worry this is a test of english not a test of nutrition so lists right that's very common to have that the other one is um conditionals so very often conditionals the first part goes up and the second part goes down right if you win you will get a prize if you win you will get a prize so notice the intonation happens on the last word but it's affecting the whole sentence win prize if you win you'll get a prize if i were rich i'd be very happy okay so this is quite common with can with many many conditional sentences again just to be clear this is not a rule that you have to follow intonation is super flexible it's just a rule of thumb it's a guideline of common ways intonation is used right as always there's not enough time to give you more detail but i hope i've given you a flavor of the importance of pronunciation and really what the pronunciation features are you need to be working on to get that band seven in ielts speaking it takes a lot of practice it takes a lot of time and it's all about training your mouth training your muscles your lips your tongue your jaw and the voice and unvoiced which we haven't talked much about maybe i should do a series maybe i should make a course on pronunciation i don't know but i hope this is going to give you incentive and motivation to start discovering more go and have a look at the apps i've shared with you today and get cracking start leveling up your pronunciation today okay all of this is based on a british model and that's because i'm british it's perfectly fine to use an american model um if you're a teacher's american of course or canadian or australian you're going to be adopting slightly different sounds do remember that accent is not important in ielts speaking right and it's not a british test it's international english it includes american english australian english right um all kinds of englishes um from around the world as you'll know when you've done your listening practice and the same for speaking it doesn't matter about your accent so long as your pronunciation is clear and you have control of these pronunciation features and you can now go and tell your friends i know what the pronunciation features are look keith has told us go and share the good news as always i'd like to thank our sponsors for today's video that's cambly cambly is an online teaching platform where you can find a native english speaking teacher to help you with your well with your pronunciation what a great opportunity um so go and check them out you can get a discount if you use the code the code here keith disc and with that you'll get a discount on their offers um for any or all of their packages take advantage go and check it out thank you very much kimberly i hope you've enjoyed this um video please do subscribe turn on the notifications share it with your friends and keep practicing i can't wait to see you soon if i haven't lost all my money down at the casino [Laughter] don't worry i don't gamble on a final closing note i haven't done a pronunciation course but i have done a fluency course and the fluency course focuses a lot on intonation and pronunciation actually so if you want to go and check it out it's up here it's fluency for ielts speaking um the links are down below there is a discount on at the moment go and check it out it might be right for you go and see take care my friends all the best now bye-bye [Music]

Channel: English Speaking Success

Views: 95,008

Keywords: ielts preparation, ielts speaking test tips, ielts pronunciation, pronunciation ielts, ielts speaking pronunciation, ielts exam preparation, ielts pronunciation practice, ielts pronunciation in english, ielts pronunciation guide, ielts pronunciation phonetic, ielts pronunciation features, ielts speaking pronunciation features, ielts speaking pronunciation practice, English pronunciation, improve pronunciation in english, british pronunciation

Id: R_UikSdjd7o

Length: 46min 55sec (2815 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021