Listening practice – elision of t – the glottal stop.
The glottal stop An important feature of informal spoken English is the glottal stop. This happens when we tighten our throat and stop the air getting out. This means the / t / sound at the end of words is not pronounced.
Listening Exercise – natural speech
A Valentine’s Day Surprise - part 2 The story continues...It’s two days after Valentine’s Day, you are waiting on the train station platform on your way home from work and the woman standing next to you is making a phone call. Listening exercise with the transcript.
Listening exercise -elision of /t/
It's Valentine's Day, you are on the train on your way home from work and the women sitting opposite you is making a phone call. Can you work out what the phone call is about? You can only hear one-side of the phone call and there is background noise of the train as well.
The missing T in spoken English
In this blog post we are going to look at when the T sound is not pronounced in spoken English. This ‘elision’ happens most often with words that end in – t. The t at the end of a word is often not pronounced when the next word begins with a consonant.
Connected Speech – how to understand spoken English.
It’s Friday night….you have a message on your phone. Listen to my message and write down everything that you can hear. Remember – this is natural conversational speed English. It is fast. I am leaving you a quick message as I travel home from work. The sound quality is not great, everyday life is not usually silent in the background. You will not hear all the words, as I don’t say them all fully. What is important is to work out what the gist of the message is.
Everyday spoken English – listening exercise
Can you recognise the weak forms of words in everyday spoken English? Free listening exercise.
English connected speech – listening exercises.
Listening exercises to train your ears to understand English conversations. Discover the rules of connected speech in fast spoken English.
Missing words in English conversations.
If your goal is to understand native speakers when they speak in fast natural conversation, then the best way to improve your listening skills is to actively listen to English spoken in a normal fast everyday pace. New short exercise posted every week.
Connected speech in English Conversations.
This week we are going to look at two phrases that are very common in English What do you want to do? Do you want to…? These are two basic and very common phrases. I am sure you all understand what they mean. But when you hear these phrases in normal conversational speed English they will often sound very different to the way you might expect them to sound.
Stress and Anger in English intonation.
This week we are going to look at two more phrases that are very common in English, These are two basic and very common phrases. You will hear these phrases in any place that you can buy things, in shops, bars, restaurants, ticket offices and lots of other locations.