D: Sound Reductions

With your learner, you may want to work on sound reductions. Sound reductions refer to the way a word (or series of words) is shortened or reduced in a sentence.

1. "I would have liked to see him there" might sound more like "I'd've liked dah see him there."
2. "Did you change?" will often sound like "Didya change?"
3. "I want to take this class" may sound like "I wanna take this class ."
4. "It is on the tip of my tongue" may sound more like "It's on the tip ah my tongue."

Sound reductions are very common in daily conversation and we often say sentences using reduced forms without even recognizing that we do so. One of the most common sound reductions in individual words is called schwa. Often, unstressed vowel sounds in a word sound different than vowel sounds found in stressed syllables.

Listen to the difference between the following words ⁴:

Canada             Canadian
Drama               Dramatic
Democrat          Democracy

In the first column, the first syllable of each word is stressed; whereas, in the second column the second syllable is stressed. The unstressed first syllable in Canadian, Dramatic and Democracy are all examples of schwa, or reduced vowels.

In normal speech, words such as to and do are often unstressed in sentences. The vowel sounds in these words are also reduced to schwa.

E: Fun Activities for Teaching Pronunciation

Varying your approach to teaching pronunciation is always a good way to keep your learner motivated. Here are a few ideas which may be of interest to you and beneficial for your learner. All of these ideas can be used with one learner or many!

⁴ Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich, Teaching American English Pronunciation. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994), p.65. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.