Consonant clusters and word endings are important for achieving speech clarity and creating an impression of an educated person.
Consonant clusters can be quite difficult to pronounce for both native and non-native English speakers. The tip of the tongue needs to be tightly controlled in the following clusters: str, spr, scr, spr, spl.
Examples are below:
stretch, strategy, streets, strong, stranger
sprint, sprained, spring, sprouts
screaming, screeching, scrapping, screenplay
sprayed, sprinkle, sprout, Spring
splurge, splendid, split, splash
We recommend that you separate each consonant and make /s/ sound longer when practicing consonant clusters. Do not substitute consonant clusters with the sound /ʃ/ as “shoes”.
The second difficult speech pattern that most of our students struggle with is voiced and unvoiced endings for plurals and third-person singular: /s/, /z/, /ɪz/, /t/, /d/, /ɪd/. They are particularly difficult for Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. They tend to not pronounce the endings at all. This may create a rather bad impression because it can be interpreted as a lack of knowledge of the basic English grammar rules to create past tense and plurals. There are five rules in our app and book that you need to learn and practice to master these endings.
Below are a couple of examples with unvoiced /s/, voiced /z/ and /ɪz/endings:
1. Sticks(s) and stones(z) may break my bones(z) but names(z) will never hurt me.
2. Under certain circumstances, the accountant uses excuses for claiming excessive expenses.
Here are examples of /t/, /d/, /ɪd/ word endings that most of our students struggle with.
1. The mugger pummeled and punched his victim before he seized his wallet.
2. At the circus the children laughed and clapped at the clowns’ routines.
3. The old ladies chatted and knitted as they waited for their tea to arrive.
How can you master word endings? The most effective way is to book a few elocution lessons. When you practise without a teacher with the app and book please follow this strategy:
1. Make sure you understand well what voiced and unvoiced consonants are. You can learn about it in Lesson 2 of the book and app
2. Learn five rules for the word endings
3. Keep energy towards the end of a word and pronounce the ending properly
4. Record yourself noting the pronunciation of your word endings
All examples are taken from our book Get Rid of your Accent, Part Two Advanced Level and the accompanying app Fluent English Speech. To book elocution lessons email oriana_r@hotmail.com
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