How to Pronounce: Games with Vowel Sounds, Part 17

Hello! I’m John Russell. Vowel sounds are very important in American English. If your goal is to improve your pronunciation, you will need to develop a strong sense of the differences between vowel sounds. A nice place to start is to develop your ability to recognize vowel sounds. If you can’t recognize the differences between sounds, then you will be less likely to produce the different sounds in your own speech. So, let’s do a quiz. We will listen to a sentence and decide which vowel sound plays a more important part in the sentence. What are our two vowel sounds? /Ʊ/ or /u/ The first one is written like this in International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA): /Ʊ/ This vowel sound appears in words such as "good.” The second vowel sound is written like this in IPA: /u/ This vowel sound appears in words like “food.” So, we have our two vowel sounds: /Ʊ/ or /u/. You will now hear a sentence. Which vowel sound is more common in the sentence? /Ʊ/ or /u/? In June, we installed the new roof. Let’s listen again. /Ʊ/ or /u/? The answer is this: /u/ This vowel sound appears a few times in the sentence you heard. You heard it in: June new roof So, if we analyze the sentence “In June, we installed the new roof,” we can say that the vowel sound /u/ plays an important part. That’s all for today! Keep up the good work!