Learn the rules for silent letters!

Good morning everyone!

Last week I published an entry introducing silent letters. Remember that they are letters that are written, but not pronounced. Today, and as promised, I post a few rules that will help you spot them!

At the end of the entry you can find some practice to see how much you can remember!

LETTER <B>

• B is not pronounced after <m> at the end of a word: lamb, climb, plumber, thumb, tomb, limb, dumb, bomb.

• B is not pronounced before <t>, usually at the end of the word: debt, doubt, subtle, doubtful.

LETTER <C>

• C is not pronounced in some cases where it is combined with <s> and <sc>: scene, scissors, scent, science, scenery, sci-fi, scepter, muscle.

But be careful because normally this combination is pronounced <sk>, as in scorpion, scar, scope.

LETTER <D> 

• D is not pronounced in the following common words: handkerchief, Wednesday, handsome.

• D is not pronounced in the combination <dg>: pledge, grudge, hedge, dodge.

LETTER <E> 

• E is not pronounced at the end of words, and usually elongates / lengthens the sound of the vowel (check the entry on the magic E)!: hope, drive, gave, write, site, grave, bite, hide.

Check the magic E song!

• E can be silent in the middle of words: baseball, somewhere, someone, somebody, somehow, grateful, graceful, useful, useless.

LETTER <G>

• G is often not pronounced when it comes before <n>: foreign, sign, feign, design, align. 

Exceptions: magnet, cognitive.

LETTERS <GH>

• GH is not pronounced when it comes after a vowel: thought, drought, through, thorough, borough, daughter, light, might, sigh, right, fight, weigh, weight

Exceptions: GH is sometimes pronounced /f/: rough, tough, laugh, enough, cough, clough, draught.

LETTER <H>

• H is not pronounced at the beginning of 4 words of French origin: hour, honest, honor, heir, and words deriving from them: hourly, honorable.

• H is sometimes not pronounced in the combination <ch>. In the majority of cases, this combination has the sound in chocolate, but in some cases the <h> is silent and it is pronounced /k/: school, character, chaos, orchestra, choir, ache, stomach, anchor,, mechanic, architect, chemist's, monarchy, melancholy.

LETTER <K>

• K is not pronounced when it comes before <n> at the beginning of a word: knife, knee, know, knock, knowledge, knead.

LETTER <L>

• L is not pronounced in some very important words after the vowels <a>, <o>, <u>: calm, half, talk, walk, would, should, could, calf, salmon, yolk, chalk.

Exceptions: halo, bulk, sulk, hold, sold

LETTER <N>

• N is not pronounced when it comes after <m> at the end of a word: autumn, hun, column.

LETTER <P>

• P is not pronounced at the beginning of many words using the prefixes psych- and pneu-: psychiatrist, pneumonia, pneumatic, psychotherapy, psychotic, psychologist.

• P is also silent in receipt.

LETTER <S>

• S is not pronounced before <l> in the following words: island, isle, aisle, précis, depris.

LETTER <T>

• T is not pronounced in these everyday words: castle, Christmas, fasten, listen, often, whistle, thistle, bustle, hasten, soften.

LETTER <U>

• U is not pronounced when it comes between a <g> and a vowel: guess, guidance, guitar, guest, guild, guard.

LETTER <W>

• W is not pronounced at the beginning of a word when it is before the letter <r>: wrap, write, wrong, wring, wreck, wrestle, wrap, wrist.

• W is not pronounced in the following words: who, whose, whom, whole, whoever.

Now that you know all these rules, why don't you try and read these short fragments?? Underline the silent letters and then try to write your own paragraph!

Texts taken from bbc.co.uk

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Silent letters: why do they exist and where can I find them?

Hi!

Today we are going to focus on silent letters, those so common letters that are written but not pronounced, as in the <t> in castle, or the <l> in walk.

You may think they are not all that important if they're not pronounced, but actually they make a huge difference to the meaning of words and can even change their pronunciation (sit vs. site)!

But why do silent letters exist??

Well, you'd be surprised to know that English used to be 100% phonemic, that is, a few centuries ago words sounded exactly as they were written, as in Spanish! However, this began to change around the 15th century because of the influence of Latin and French.

Pronunciation started to evolve and continued doing so for centuries, but the old spelling was preserved by the printing press. Some authors defended that spelling should represent the sound of words, but the writers that came afterwards saw the futility of making spelling phonetic, since they realized that the pronunciation of words constantly evolved. Therefore, the basis for spelling was not pronunciation, but rather custom of usage.

This way, nowadays English is only 40% phonemic, and around 60% of words contain silent letters! See how important they are!

Where can I find them?

It would be impossible to list all the words that contain silent letters, but below I post a picture of the most common ones. You can also check the rules for silent letters to know how to spot them:

If you want to go a bit further, go to Silent Letter Words for another complete list of silent letters. You can listen to the words by clicking on them!

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Pronunciation dictionary for proper names - thanks to Roberto Romera

Hi everyone,

Today I leave you with this extremely useful website for pronunciation: www.forvo.com.

As you know, you can check the pronunciation of a word in a normal dictionary, but many of them aren't included, for example proper names. Well, in this website you can check the pronunciation any word.

Here I include an example: "Renée Zelweger"

I'm sure you will use this website a lot, for example in your presentations, where you include names that don't appear in the dictionary.

Thanks for sharing, Roberto!

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The Magic E

Hi!

Today's entry is devoted to the "magic E"! The "magic E" is that silent <e> that is not pronounced, but it magically lengthens the previous sound!

See the difference that the <e> makes in the following pairs of words:

Here you have a song which is used in schools in English speaking countries to show the pronunciation effect of silent <e> at the end of words.

It's a song for children, I know... But it's really catchy, you'll see! And it can help you too! :)

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Some pronunciation practice

Hi again!

Do you remember that at the end of unit 1 we saw the differences between the sounds /æ/ and /a:/? Well, here you have two videos to revise those sounds, and practise with some words!

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Pronunciation of -ed ending; used to

Hello everyone!!

I hope your weekend has started well!! Although the weather is miserable... I hope the wind goes away soon! :)

In the last two weeks we've finished Unit 9, where we talked about everyday problems, problems with neighbours, adjectives of feelings, how to make invitations, etc. We also revised how to pronounce -ed at the end of words. Remember the rule:

/t/: PoKaSH FiCHaS

/id/: Te Doy

/d/: the rest

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Strange jobs; /g/ vs. /d3/

Hello everyone!

How's the weekend going? Last week we had three days of class: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Monday we did a short activity to guess the meaning of some jobs (midwife, masseuse, tailor, plumber and trashman) and then we did a listening about some people with some very strange jobs! Then we did an exercise about word-formation with the suffixes -ion, -or, -ant, -er and -ment.

Finally, we listened to three different conversations where people had to apologise, give reasons and finally make a promise: I'm sorry I can't meet you tonight because I have to work, but I'll see you next Saturday. You practised these expressions with Leah on Wednesday.

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English and American English

Hi everyone,

How's your Sunday going? Here you have the usual summary after each week, plus some extra material. On Tuesday we corrected the unit on Indirect Speech -only two exercises left to correct-, and we worked with a handout about the differences between British (BrE) and American (AmE) English. We saw two different phenomena:

• Two words, same meaning: underground vs. subway
• One word, different meaning: bill exists both in AmE and BrE, but the meaning is different. 

Finally, I gave you a copy on the use of punctuation. Make sure you read it carefully at home, and, most importantly, check it if you have a doubt when writing a composition.

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The past simple / -ed pronunciation

Good afternoon everyone,

I'm sorry I didn't update (actualizar) the blog last week, but I didn't have Internet access during the bank holiday... So here you have the summary of weeks 21 and 22!

First of all, we talked about travelling, and we read a story of two friends who wanted to fly to Sydney, Canada, but they arrived in a different place...! We also listened to a couple filling out a complaint form because their holidays were not good. In fact (de hecho), they were awful!

About grammar, we saw the past simple of the verb to be, regular and irregular verbs. Click here for a very complete and clear explanation of the past simple. We did a lot of practise, but here you have some more. You can do all the exercises, or select the most interesting for you:

• Was or were?
• Exercise on past simple
• Exercise on questions
• Exercise on interrogatives with a question word
• Text about Chicago
• Text about Oxford

Remember that in regular verbs, the pronunciation of the -ed is very important. Raquel Marín, from Basic Level E, gave me this link (thank you). I hope it helps you!

We also read and listened to the stories of three girls that had a night out in Moscow, Beijing and Rio. Was your last night out similar to theirs? Would you like to post a comment telling us about your last night out?? :)

Finally, last Wednesday/Thursday we read a story about a murder... Can you remember who the murderer was?? I still can't believe it!! Then, in Basic Level D we played a very funny game called "Alibi". Basic Level E will play it next week!!

I hope you have a great weekend!

Ana.

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/i/ vs. /i:/; possessive adjectives & pronouns; at a clothes shop

Good morning (almost afternoon!)

As usual, here you have a summary of last week:

On Monday / Tuesday we continued talking about films and you read your summaries (which were very good!!). Then we did an exercise on pronunciation to learn the difference between /i/ and /i:/. For some of you this exercise was a bit difficult, so click here if you want to practise a little bit more.

About grammar, we revised object pronouns and we learnt possessive pronouns. We worked with a photocopy to revise how to express possession in English: possessive 's, possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns. Click here and here to do some more activities related to this. Remember to visit New English File online too and to complete the workbook :)

On Wednesday / Thursday we listened to two film critics talking about 5 different films. I know it was a bit difficult, but you did very well! So... congratulations!! :) We also learnt expressions to use in a clothes shop. Click here if you want to revise this.

Remember to bring the book England to class on Monday / Tuesday. Thank you.

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Consonant sounds; clothes; songs

Hello guys!

Last week we talked about the differences between men and women related to shopping and we learnt the pronunciation of the sound /ŋ/ - click here to revise some of the consonants we know. We learnt vocabulary about clothes and how to say what we are wearing. You can revise clothes here.

On Wednesday / Thursday we started to talk about films. We read a summary of the film Ghost, and we learnt "object pronouns", which are used to substitute nouns and after prepositions. Revise Grammar Bank 4C and practise with the Workbook.

Por último, dejo aquí tres canciones con un enlace al videoclip subtítulado y actividades para hacer online. Elegid la que más os guste, o haced las tres! :)

• "Change the world", by Eric Clapton

• "Sick of Love", by Robert Ramírez

• "1973", by James Blunt

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Past Simple vs. Past Continuous; stative & dynamic verbs; -ed ending

Hello there!

Here I leave you with some interesting material from the Internet to revise some of the things we covered in class last week. First of all you have an episode from The Flatmates, a series by the BBC where they focus on different aspects of the English language.

Click on this link and you'll be able to listen to it (you'll see that you can listen either with or without the tapescript in front of you). After you listen, click on the "language point", where you have an explanation of how the past simple and continuous are used in the same sentence. Then you can practise doing the "quiz".

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An Introduction to Pronunciation

Last week I asked some of you to try and transcribe a few words... I was utterly amazed when you told me you had never seen phonetic symbols in your lives! Well, we have to put a solution to that! In class, we'll see symbols little by little, normally in pairs or triplets. However, just for you to have a general idea of how pronunciation works in English, here I leave you with two videos I've found on the Internet.

The two main ideas in the first video are that:

• Good pronunciation is very important but... what do we mean by good pronunciation? Well, you don't have to sound like a native speaker. The only important thing is that your pronunciation doesn't impede communication. In other words, your pronunciation has to be clear enough for other people to understand.

• There are many English accents, and any model is as valid. I personally have a British accent, but if you prefer the American, Canadian or Australian, to cite but a few, that's perfectly fine!

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