hello everybody my name is Steve Ford welcome to your English lesson today I
have a great pronunciation lesson for so many people who have difficulties with
certain words and I hope that this lesson will be fun and that you will be
able to practice pronouncing these words so that you will never ever again forget
how to pronounce them are you ready let's go my first question for you is
why is English pronunciation so difficult we know that it is difficult
and I know from personal experience it doesn't matter where you are from I
teach people from all over the world and it's the one thing that a lot of them
say that American pronunciation British pronunciation if you want to get that
exact pronunciation like a native speaker it can take many years for some
of the lucky few it comes easily probably you have asked that question
and the first one this is a big one for me maybe you haven't thought about it
maybe you have is that spelling does not correspond with pronunciation that's a
big one for the English language and I'm sure
that you know it it's like why do we pronounce it this way and spell it a
completely different way some people may be mixing British and American
pronunciation does that or has that happened to you it's common a lot of
people they started studying British English maybe a lot of their first
teachers we're trying to teach them a good traditional British pronunciation
and then after maybe you started watching American TV series maybe you
started to get some teachers that spoke with an American accent and it all mixes
together third one is that some people may be mixing pronunciation of English
with their first language so that can happen so sometimes the pronunciation
that you're using isn't coming from American English it's not coming from
finishing British English it's coming from your own language and
the way that you would say it in your own language that can happen too so
those are some things that I would like you to think about there are many other
reasons many other explanations about why pronunciation English pronunciation
can be so difficult I don't have too much time today and I don't want to bore
you with all the technical explanations for me doing is much more important and
practicing so we're going to be doing lots of that today last one that I
wanted to say is maybe that nobody corrected your mistakes and now it's
harder to fix your pronunciation this is something that happens to a lot of
people so you start pronouncing a word incorrectly and you're using it all the
time and nobody corrected you nobody said anything they thought that was good
enough and that becomes your English and incorrect English so is it possible to
break those bad habits yes yes it is and yes we can we can fix your English I
wanted to give you one example before I go into my lesson this was a story that
they were teaching the wrong pronunciation so here we have it that's
what it is and then here I want you to see we have all these sweets we have
chocolate bars and candy a lot of sweets now I remember that some students told
me that their teacher taught them that this here was sweet case sweet case
that's not a sweet case this is a sweet case something to hold sweets this is a
suit case so one little difference in the vowel sound the pronunciation and it
totally can change the meaning that's a true story so it's not sweet case it's
suit case and my question for you this is for people who are watching the video
live it's also for people who are watching a recording of this lesson
please post your comments below this lesson
which words are the most difficult for you to say I already know but I'm just
curious to hear it from you directly as we say to get it straight from the
horse's mouth relax and listen to the words according to each sound are you
ready let's go a 1 2 3 oh no although we're oh oh yeah ah God
daughter what ah ah ah laughs draft okay so we
finally made it through though although burro in case you don't know burro is
like is an old word for neighborhood there's a neighborhood in Toronto in my
city my hometown there's also a city or a borough in the UK called Scarborough
anyway that's oh oh and the next sound that we have is ah caught daughter but
aught COFF all of those have the same sound ah you want to open your mouth
more ah then we have ooh look at the formation of my lips here so we say
through and also aah laughs draft that those two last words laughs is a big
surprise for a lot of people also draft draft is a way of serving beer draft
beer also called beer on tap you will see more clearly in a second and what
we're going to do now is I'm going to show you these sounds in the context of
a dialogue and I would like you to practice these
after with yourself or with somebody else hi what can I get you
I'll have the sushi how fresh is the fish our sushi is made with fresh cut
salmon do you think two orders would be enough
for us three yeah for sure so two orders of sushi huh do you have any kinds of
draft beer we have stella artois Heineken and Guinness on tap well it's
it's a tough choice but since my buddy over there is driving
cough-cough wait what I thought you were the designated driver tonight bro don't
make me laugh I've been the designated driver all year
I'll have a Guinness on tap okay I love a coffee even though I was designated
driver two weeks ago that's the dialogue everybody very quick it incorporated a
lot of the ough words that we were listening to in the practice so what I
recommend that you do is try to find words that sound similar so that you can
group them together as I have and you can listen to this video again also you
can try and practice the dialogue so that you can get the exact pronunciation
of these words next week I will be working on the R sound in American
English and how certain combinations can vary and how certain combinations can be
very challenging for non-native speakers I hope that you enjoyed this lesson and
practicing these difficult words words that a lot of people find so impossible
to say in the context of a dialogue in music
I will be on this YouTube live my international channel next week next
Sunday hopefully a little earlier I tried to be here every week and for
those who are following me you know that I always am I do have a few spots left
for private lessons if you need English lessons you can contact me either on
whatsapp or on my contact page and I hope to see you in our next English
lesson bye everybody