When it comes to pronunciation many people worry about their accent. However, if you can produce the sounds of English accurately, your accent should not be a problem.
As we all know through painful experience, English spelling and English pronunciation are often not connected. There are only 26 letters but 44 different sounds, or phonemes, in English.
Reading the word ‘island’ doesn’t tell you that the letter ‘s’ is silent!
This is why the phonetic chart is so useful. Look in a good /dɪkʃənəri/ and will see that all the words are spelt in letters AND in phonemes.
dThis means that if you understand the phonemes you will know how to pronounce a new word.
What’s even better, there are lots of free websites and apps to help you use this new alphabet. So, don’t wait for your course book, start practising your perfect pronunciation today!