Hi, my name is Ashley Howard, and I'm the creator of English Pronunciation roadmap.com
and for the last 10 years I've been helping non native speakers to speak British English
more confidently and with more clarity.
And an age old question that I'm always asked is 'how do I get started, how do I work on
my speech and my pronunciation and intonation?'
And so I created this wonderful 5 day audio mini course, it's completely free and you
can download it from my website, and it gets to the heart of some of the most crucial elements
of pronunciation in British English and it'll really get you started so let's take a look
I'm going to show you round, so...
It can be a PDFs download that you can download and then download the audio with it or you
can download it as an embedded e-book which you can use on most mobile devices, both I-phone
and HTC and it'll have the embedded audio in it, but this is how it looks in the pdf
so here is your 5day audio mini course, and it focuses on the 5 most commonly mispronounced
consonant sounds, the z, the r, the ng, the th and the h and I've found in the last 10
years that these 5 sounds are the 5 sounds that really hold people back in terms of speaking
British English with clarity and confidence.
However, there's also a 5 day audio course for the 5 most commonly mispronounced vowel
sounds, which are ee, er, ar, or and oo and it's really great, and they're both identical
but they focus on these 10 very different sounds.
So let's have a look in the 5 day course for consonants.
So, for instance, day 1 looks a little bit like this- you focus on the ng sound, which
is a sound that a lot of people struggle with and there's audio that you can download and
if you've downloaded this as an embedded e-book then that'll be there and you can click that,
and I'll show you that in a second, there's the phonetic symbol which some people like
to refer to, there's also a picture which is very useful and a description about how
to make the sound.
But if you're more of a visual learner them you can click here which will take you to
my website and it'll show you a video about how to make the sound.
There's some music at the beginning so just ignore that, just a little bit of funky intro
music...
And that'll take you through all of the nuts and bolts about how to pronounce that sound,
and then once you're clear about how to pronounce the sound there are some common words that
you can work on and typical spellings, and that's really quite important because spelling
has a huge impact in terms of pronunciation.
And then some practice phrases, and then the 'today's 5 words'- so that's a technique that
I came up with- a lot of people struggled to really have to think about all of those
words that contained that specific vowel or consonant- instead I said, well why not focus
on just 5 for that day, or for that week, and that way you won't have to think about
every single word but you can just focus on those 5 key words and then maybe next week
or tomorrow you can focus on another 5 key words.
And then day 2 focuses on the th sound which again is quite an influential sound, how to
make it, there's another video, common words and typical spellings, practice phrases, and
there's a, day 3 is for the h, day 4 is for the r and day 5 is for the z.
So, that's a really great resource and you can download that on my website and, where's
that, here on my website 'engoishpronunciationroadmap.com' -it's the 5 day audio mini course- I'm going
to give you a link at the end of this video so you can go there directly and download
it, completely free, just put your details in, select your language and then download
the course.
But the step up from that, and this is where we really get serious and really get motivated
and we can really change your pronunciation, is something called 'The Habit Breaker' which
has really been a game changer for so many of my students, and it takes those 5 commonly
mispronounced consonant sounds, and again there's one for the vowel sounds, and it tells
you how to identify your habit and then how to break that habit.
So, it goes through this 4 step plan: step 1 'what do I already know about how to make
the sound, 'what is my habit', 'how do I change my habit' (step 3) and step 4 is 'practice
practice practice', and here there are also some coloured icons which is really great
because it'll tell you how long to set aside to work on that sound, it'll tell you how
to be guided in that section to the relevant parts that apply to you, and then some audio
icons and also when to record yourself which is a great strategy, so here's what one of
those work days looks like- so I've suggested you set aside 3 days to be thinking about
the ng, and again it goes through how to make the sound, but step 2 is 'what is my habit',
and it'll take you through all of the various and most typical habits that I've experienced
from working with thousands of people that I've worked with over the last ten years.
And once you've identified your habit, so here, for instance, if you're replacing an
'ng' with an 'n' sound it'll tell you why you're doing that and what it might sound
like and then it'll show you this green icon, and if you scroll down to the next section
'how do I change my habit' you're looking out on the left hand side for that same green
icon and there it is, and it'll tell you 'how do I avoid replacing an ng with an n sound
in ing suffixes' and it'll tell you how to do it and how to practice it.
And then right at the end, step 4 is ' practice practice practice' which is the most important
part and it'll give you some practice words, typical spellings and some practice sentences.
And that's what each of these sections looks like so day 4-6 focuses on the 'th' sound,
and it focuses on all of those various consonant sounds and as I said there's one for the vowels
as well and if you do download this as an e-book, either the 5 day audio course or 'the
Habit Breaker' then you'll be able, on you're mobile device, on your phone, or your iPad
or tablet, to click, there you go you can click the audio and you can hear all of the
audio for each sound and it'll give you the words...
So it's really great, so all you need to do is have this on your mobile or on your device
and you'll be able to listen and start working on your pronunciation.
So I hope that's really useful.
In the top right hand corner in a moment there's going to be some links where you can get hold
of both of these, and I hope to hear from you soon.