Every one of these vowel sounds is produced in a specific way. Of course, you don’t want to make your vowel sounds so long when you speak, but when you’re practising, this is a useful trick. If you can hold the short vowel sound, then you’re not pronouncing it correctly you’re probably making the long sound instead. When you say ‘bit’, the vowel sound is a single release of sound you can’t hold it: ‘bit’. Try it! When you pronounce the word with the short vowel, it should be impossible to hold the vowel sound. When you pronounce the word with the long vowel, you should be able to hold the vowel sound for as long as you want, like this: be-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eat. For example: ‘bit’ and ‘beat’, or ‘shut’ and ‘shoot’. But, how can you check if you’re pronouncing the sounds correctly? Take a pair of words which have almost the same pronunciation, except one has a short vowel and the other has a long vowel. However, the difference between short and long vowels is important. After all, native speakers don’t pronounce the same sounds in the same way. Often, it doesn’t matter so much if you pronounce a sound differently to native speakers. Tip two: focus on differentiating short and long vowels. Ignore the spelling learn to focus on the phonetics instead! In our experience, many students have difficulties with pronunciation not because they can’t pronounce the sounds correctly, but because they get confused by the spelling of the word. Phonetic script is clear and consistent, whereas written English is not. When you learn a new word, or you want to check the pronunciation of a word, look for the phonetic script. If you’ve learned one thing from this lesson, it should be that you can’t easily know the pronunciation of a vowel sound from the spelling. Although there aren’t many words like this, it includes some very common words and names, like ‘parents’, ‘Sarah’ or ‘Mary’. Less commonly, the /eə/ sound is spelled ‘ar’. Be careful, because some of these spellings can also produce an /ɪə/ sound, like ’ere’ or ‘ear’. The /eə/ sound also has many possible spellings it can be written with ‘ai’, ‘ere’, ‘are’ or ‘ear’. It can also be produced by the letters ‘ea’, as in ‘idea’, or sometimes by a single ‘e’ for example ‘zero’ or ‘serious’. The /ɪə/ sound can be produced by many spellings: ‘ere’, ‘eer, ‘ear’ and ‘ie’ are all possible.
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