How to Pronounce: Isolation Game

Hello! I’m John Russell. We can use different kinds of listening exercises to improve our pronunciation. The idea is that if we can hear the difference between sounds, then we will be more likely to produce these sounds correctly. Let’s play a game. You will hear four words. Tell me which one of the words is different. Is it word 1, 2, 3, or 4? Let’s start. Question 1 The answer is 3: peat. It involved a different vowel sound. In International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, we write the vowel sound like this: /i/ On the other hand, pit involves the vowel sound that is written like this in IPA: /ɪ/ Question 2 Now let’s do another question. Which word is different? The answer is 1: pull. Pull involves the vowel sound that is written like this in IPA: /ʊ/ Pool, on the other hand, involves this vowel sound: /u/ If you had a tough time with these questions, be sure to watch our previous videos on the vowel sounds of American English. That’s all for today! Keep up the good work.