Do not do this:
'More'
Okay? Lazy! Don't do it!
In this English Pronunciation tutorial, you're going to learn to improve your English speech and speak more clearly
by learning a very subtle but important pronunciation point to be aware of that a lot of learners of English mistakenly do incorrectly, okay.
It's very important to learn this one tip I'm about to give you if you want to be easily understood when you're speaking English
and if you want to feel more confident and save people from asking you to repeat yourself again and again and again, okay?
So, welcome to English School Online!
I'm going to get straight into the video, it's just one short tip.
It's only going to take two minutes for me to explain it to you.
and then if you go away and practice this tip for the rest of the week it's going to make a huge difference to your English speech
and really help you to be confident and professional in the language.
It's so, so important for things like job interviews and developing your career and also just feeling good about when you're speaking English.
So, we're looking at two sounds: /​ɔː/ and /ɜː/.
Two long English vowel sounds /​ɔː/ and /ɜː/.
When you're making the /​ɔː/ sound as in 'walk,' or 'stalk,' or 'port,'
what a lot of people do is when they're making the long sound /​ɔː/, what you can see here is my lips are rounded.
/​ɔː/
And my lips stay rounded until I make the next consonant sound like this:
'ought,' 'orc,' '-orp,' 'orb.'
Okay?
My lips stay rounded the whole sound and only change when I make the next consonant.
The common mistake that I see a lot of people making is, they relax their lips through the sound
and they end up making the /ɜː/ sound instead of the /​ɔː/ sound.
So instead of saying 'stalk,' they might say 'stawk.'
'Stawk'
Okay?
Or instead of 'walk,' they'd say 'wawk'
'Wawk'
Which then sounds more like 'work', okay.
So it's a very subtle difference but, it's very very important to get this right, because whenever I hear people saying it I then have to think
"did they mean 'walk' or do they mean 'work?' " And we do not want that for your English speech.
So I'm going to give you five examples of two types of words, words are exactly the same
but the only difference is the /​ɔː/ and the /ɜː/ sound in the middle of the word.
And by giving you both of these two different types of words, you're going to be able to hear how the word sound when they either have the or sound in /​ɔː/ the /ɜː/ sound.
And by learning the two of them, that's going to enable you to train yourself to make the /​ɔː/ sound and keep it like this:
/​ɔː/
the whole way through, okay.
We do not want to go 'awe,' okay?
It's lazy and it's bad.
So, pair of words number one:
'Walking'
That's compared to:
'Working'
Do not go:
'wawking'
Okay.
You want to feel your lips-- the tension in your lips throughout the whole vowel sound.
/​ɔː/
My lips are feeling tension the whole time I'm making the sound, okay?
pair of words number two:
'Thought,' 'thirt.'
Okay.
'Thirt' isn't actually a word but 'thirty' is it's a number 'thirty,' '30,' okay.
The mistake that I hear people making is instead of saying for what they'd say 'thawt'
'Thawt'
Okay.
It's not that it's:
'Thought'
My tongue is moving to the next continent, the 'T' sound in this example, when my lips are still in the /​ɔː/ position.
That's very important.
'Thought'
If I open my mouth
'Thought'
I don't know if you can see my tongue is actually moving up in that position.
Pair of words number three:
'More'
That's how it should sound. The alternative word is:
'Myrrh'
Okay, that's another word.
Do not do this:
'Mawr'
Okay?
Lazy, don't do it.
Pair of words number four:
The first word, 'four'
'Four'
Okay, that's how you said correctly 'four'
The other word:
'Fur'
'We don't like wearing fur,' okay?
Do not do this:
'Faw'
Okay? Not good.
And pair of words number five, the correct is this:
'Lawn'
Okay. I'm going to the 'N' sound when my lips are still in this position: 'lawn.'
The other word:
'Learn'
Do not do this:
'Lorn'
Okay? That's wrong.
So there you've got it! One simple point to be aware of.
Five words there to go away and practice and improve upon.
Record yourself or watch yourself doing it in a mirror, like I'm doing here to the camera
so you can see exactly what you're doing and making it correct.
It's an essential part of English pronunciation.
If you want to speak English clearly and be easily understood and have confidence in your English speech
you must get this point correct, okay?
so that's your homework for this week.
If you found this video useful make sure to leave a thumbs up and comment below letting me know how you've got on with this tip.
It is difficult, a lot of people really struggle with this, so there's nothing wrong if you do struggle with it.
It's just a point to improve upon.
So let me know in the comments below how you're getting on, okay. Then I can see how you are getting on with it!
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