“Stressing English”
English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a “world language” of the modern era and while it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often studied as a foreign language.
The English language originated from the combination of dialects collectively termed as Old English. Modern English contains a very large vocabulary, with complex and irregular spelling, particularly of vowels. One of the biggest problems for language students is that English is not “phonetic” and words are not always pronounced in the same way that it is spelt.
The secret key to English is pronunciation! Students often find it difficult to understand native speakers, especially those speaking fast and the native speakers may find it difficult to understand them. This can often be due to word stress, and word stress is the magic key to understanding spoken English.
In English, each syllable is not pronounced with the same force or strength. For example, we pronounce PHOtograph and phoTOgrapher. For students, identifying each syllable and recognising which one(s) we pronounce more loudly (big, strong, important) all comes down to practice.
With this in mind, Maltalingua offers free additional classes, and the focus this time was pronunciation, in order to prepare its students to make conversation confidently once outside the school. We had a great turnout and focussed on individual sounds and word stress; by the end the improvements were already clear.
So, reMEMber, PRACtise is the KEY to imPROving your ENGlish and imPROving your proNUNciAtion!
written by Katrin Risiott
I really like the page…I hope I can be able to learn more ..more activities for grade 10 learners…on pronunciation…