Wadjasay? American English Pronunciation Practice

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Let’s do some more practice with the verb “to be”, and with contractions. Remember: Listen, listen, listen! 1. We write: “I am hungry,” but we say: “I’m hungry.” [“I’m” is a contraction of “I am”] 2. He’s thirsty. [He is —> he’s] 3. She’s happy. [She is —> she’s] 4. You’re late! [You are —> you’re] 5....

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! If you are a total beginner, my advice is simple. Listen and listen and listen. The more you listen, the better your pronunciation and accent will be later. But listening comes first. And a warning: English spelling is NOT phonetic. If you try to read English before you listen, you will create problems for your...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! So many prepositions, so little time. Today let’s practice sentences with ON and IN. Nobody can live in New York on ten dollars a day. The generals planned their attack on Berlin. Did you see that new science fiction show on television? Not yet. Is it on Netflix too? There are a lot of good science podcasts on...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! In this conversation a husband and wife are discussing a problem caused by their cat. Listen three times without reading the text below to see how much you understand. Then look at the notes for explanations of the vocabulary. There are also a few slang expressions in this conversation. After the third repetiti...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! In this podcast you'll practice with the words much and many , and when to use each one. The rules are simple: If you can count something, use many . For example: How many children does Mrs. Johnson have? Three, I think. Two boys and a girl. If it is non-countable, like water, sand, milk, etc., use much ....

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Here is some practice with ‘some’ and ‘any’. Note that ‘some’ is in positive statements and ‘any’ is in negative ones, and also usually in questions. I'll read all the sentences first. Just listen. Then I'll put in repeats. Listen to those and, as you feel comfortable, repeat along with me. Here we go...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! The “aw” sound in English is usually written with either “aw” or “au”. Here are two examples: “August” — his birthday is in August. “Squawk” — the ducks quacked and the chickens squawked. Let’s practice. I like to paint. Mary likes to draw . The cat was drinking milk from a saucer . Michael is studying law at t...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! This is a lesson about the pronunciation of some plurals in English, with a few numbers thrown in as a bonus. Listen: I have one cat. Mary has two cats. John only has one horse. I'm rich: I have (23) twenty-three horses. Sam has one cow. Sally has three cows. Listen to the pronunciation of the words as the...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! We use the preposition "for" in many ways. Here are another ten examples to listen to and practice with. Have fun! 1. Do you want to go out for lunch? 2. He folded a towel and used it for a pillow. 3. She ran for the door when people started fighting. 4. For what it's worth, I thought the acting...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Sometimes people will describe something that happened in the past using the present tense.  For example, let's say I see a car accident on my way to work. After work I want to tell my wife what I saw, but instead of using the past tense, I use the present tense. This makes the story seem more immediate an...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Let's continue our study of prepositions. (I'm confident we'll finish before my hundredth birthday.) In this lesson we'll work with the very useful preposition "at".  I'll meet you at Sally's house. It's at the corner of Pine Street and Sixth Avenue. She is always at...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! In this lesson we'll practice some sentences with the preposition "from". He got a phone call last night from his sister. She left this morning from New York. My first class in the morning goes from 9am to 10am. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest score, how would you rate your Engli...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! If I sound like I have a cold, I do.  The best way to learn English prepositions is to memorize lots of sentences which include them. After a while, you'll develop an "ear" for what sounds correct and what sounds wrong. Do NOT try to translate. What might be correct in Spanish or French or anothe...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! We learn to compare things at an early age. "She got a bigger piece of cake than me!" "He's taller than I am." "She's prettier than her sister." And sometimes we call things out as being the "top dog" [the best]: "Charles is the smartest student in his math...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! There are many expressions and idioms in English that use the word "chance". In this podcast I'll give you a chance to practice some of them. Let's begin. 1. I'm going to quit my current job and take a chance on that new job I was offered. [ = to try my luck at the new job.] 2. Can you...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! (www.deepL.com — a good website if you need to translate something.) There is a saying in English: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. This is certainly true for language students. If you know absolutely no English and someone starts to talk to you, you smile and shrug and say—in your own language—'So...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! I have never studied journalism but I vaguely remember one of my high school English teachers telling us that any well-constructed newspaper story would answer basic questions like these: What happened? When did it happen? Where did it happen? Who was involved? How or why did it happen? And so forth. For exampl...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Learning the forms of the conditional in English is not especially easy. In this podcast I'll share some sentences that give you a chance to practice the conditional. And because I personally am a big fan of repetition in language learning, I've repeated each sentence fifteen times. My suggestion is t...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Here are some more tongue twisters for your entertainment. They're supposed to be for children who are native English speakers. But don't feel discouraged if you find some of them difficult. I find some of them difficult, especially the last one. Have fun! 1. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ic...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Most of my podcasts are at least a little bit silly but this one is completely silly. It contains two tongue twisters which exist only to make you laugh at yourself and perhaps to help you with English pronunciation.  The first one is: Rubber baby buggy bumpers which you are to repeat three times as quickly as...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Let's start with a vowel warmup. Repeat each word after me. [ pure vowel sounds] Heat heat Hot hot Hut hut Hoot hoot Hit hit Hurt hurt Hood hood Head head Haughty haughty Hand hand [ dipthongs] Hay hay Rhyme rhyme Round round Boys boys Gold gold Hot dang! You just repeated all the vowels and diphthongs, wh...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! In this podcast you'll get a chance to practice with some expressions which are based on the verb "to get". And you will get a lot of mileage out of the verb to get. There are probably, maybe 150 different expressions, phrasal verbs, different things that use "get"—I don't even kno...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! I was thinking about cats today. And then I decided it would be fun to do a little podcast about cats. Or about the word "cat" anyway. Let's start with the sound:  CAT  /æ/  cat  cat cat  I have a cat. I have a cat. [æ = the phonetic symbol for this sound] Cat rhymes with flat. In England some pe...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Here are some sentences to listen to . I hope you'll like what you hear . The verbs to listen and to hear can cause confusion. So here's a quick lesson, a mini-lesson, with examples of each. We'll start with the verb to listen. Part One: the verb to listen 1 I will listen more carefully next time...

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks! Say or tell:  two verbs instead of one. Listen to these examples: My father says I should study more. My father told me to study more. Here’s another example. Uncle Fred said he was a great inventor. Uncle Fred told me he was a great inventor. In this lesson I will give you plenty of example sentences. Some con...