English Pronunciation Lesson #2: Vowel Sounds of English

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If you’ve had enough now with the English alphabet, let’s move on to the sounds of English.  Unfortunately, every letter in the English alphabet does not match every sound in English.  There are about 40 sounds in English and only 26 letters, so that’s why there is a problem when it comes to learning the sounds of English.  In English we have about 16 vowel sounds, but our alphabet only lets you see 5 maybe 6 letters (a, e, i, o, u, [y] ).  So let’s try to figure out what the common missing vowel sounds are.  Are you ready to learn all the vowel sounds of English?

1.  “iy” = green tree, [beat]

2.  “ɪ” = pink pin, [bit]

3.  “ey” = play baseball, [bait]

4.  “ɛ” = red dress, [bet]

5.  “æ” = black cat, [bat]

6.  “ɑ” = hot pot, [bot]

7.  “ʊ̈” = blue moon, [boot]

8.  “ʊ” = full pull, [bull]

9.  “o” = oh no!, [boat]

10. “ə” = uh huh, um, upon, and a [but]

11.  “ɑʊ” = ow! out house, [about]

12.  “ɑi” = I, my, pie, [bite]

13.  “ɔɪ” = oil, noise, [toilet]

14.  “ɚ” = turn, burn, first, [Burt]

15.  “ɑr” = car, far, [Bart]

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English Pronunciation Lesson #1: English Alphabet

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Abbotsford ESL Grammar Lesson #1: English Alphabet

Whether you are a beginner or an advanced student, you must know some basic English grammar.

This first English grammar point we will look at is the English alphabet.  Yes, it’s true, we are going to look at the lowercase and uppercase alphabet.  The reason for this is that I’ve personally had grade 12 high school students in Abbotsford and the surrounding cities not be able to write the English alphabet perfectly.  This should not be the case, especially since so much of our communication these days is in writing.  You should memorize the following:

Uppercase English Alphabet:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Lowercase English Alphabet:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s t u v w x y z

Practice writing both uppercase and lowercase using a pen or pencil and a piece of paper every day to keep the English letters fresh in your mind.  🙂

For the next lesson, we will focus on English sounds and the problem of why speaking English is so hard for students of English.

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