A reason to learn

One of the reasons why I love being a teacher at the Official Schools of Languages is that I have the opportunity to be in touch with students of all ages and learn from them, no matter how young or old they may be.
This post is especially dedicated to a group of young women I have the pleasure to share this year with. 
The beautiful song they recommended to me will help you revise the long vowels in English as all the missing words in the fill-in-the-gap activity below contain one of them.
Remember these long vowels are:

/iː/   

/uː/  

/ɑː/  

/ɔː/  

/ɜː/  

Now, you can listen to the song and try to complete the lyrics.

Sing a song

Spanish students usually find it difficult to pronounce the spellings 'ng' and 'nk' correctly as they tend to do so like our Spanish /n/ and not like the English sound /ŋ/.

/ŋ/ is a nasal sound, which means you have to pronounce it letting the air go out through your nose and not your mouth. You have to raise the back of your tongue against the palate while making this sound. 
Here you are a picture that shows the position of the tongue and a video which will help you identify and pronounce this consonant sound correctly.

Now, watch the video and do the fill-in-the-gap activity. All the missing words contain the consonant sound /ŋ/ and you can use the phonetic transcription in the 'Clue' to help you. You can check your answers clicking the KEY.

For or against?

The need to control people's right to own a gun has been an open debate in the US for years but since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, in which 20 kids and 6 educators were killed, it has been raging.
Barack Obama announced an initiative to reduce gun violence and has been backed up, among many others, by the mother of one of those fatally shot children. 
I've chosen her touching speech to introduce voiced consonants. These consonants are produced with the vibration of our vocal chords. You can feel this vibration by putting your fingers on your throat while producing the words 'zoo' /zuː/ and 'river' /ˈrɪvə/.
If you want to learn which  consonants are voiced and what they sound like, click this link.
Then, watch the video and do the fill-in-the-gap activity. All the missing words contain voiced consonants and you can use the phonetic transcription in the 'Clue' to help you. You can check your answers clicking the KEY.

Watch out your vowels!

I'm sure you sometimes think I'm making a fuss about nothing whenever I insist on you paying attention to the way you pronounce long and short vowels but, take my word for it, it may cause you real trouble to pronounce a short vowel instead of a long one, as you can see in the funny video below.
Click here to see some useful videos that'll help you learn the difference between /ɪ/ and /iː/, /ɒ/ and /ɔː/, or /ʊ/ and /uː/.

A hamburger?

I know! It's sometimes exasperating when there seems to be no improvement in our pronunciation, no matter what we do. That's why I'd like you to watch this video and realize that you're doing much better than him. However, don't forget to practise saying 'would' in front of a mirror as I told you !

Somebody that I used to know

Here we are, one more year, and I think it's about time to start working, isn't it? I'm glad to share the news with you all : I was lucky and got a part-time post in EOI Villaverde, a new school with new workmates among whom I've felt really welcome as they've been really nice to me.
To open this school year I've chosen a song I love and that I hope you'll enjoy too. Through it, we'll practise two English vowel sounds, /æ/ and /ʌ/, that Spanish students sometimes find difficult to recognize and produce.

• To pronounce /æ/ make a Spanish /a/ and in the middle change it to /e/ while keeping the front part of your tongue in the lower part of your mouth.Click the arrow in the audio reproducer to listen to this sound and some words containing it.

        

• To pronounce /ʌ/ make a short Spanish /a/ with the middle part of your tongue in the centre part of your mouth. Click the arrow in the audio reproducer to listen to this sound and some words containing it.

    

• You can click here to see a short video that'll help you pronounce /æ/ correctly and then here for the sound /ʌ/.
• Now, paying attention to these sounds, listen to the song  "Somebody that I used to know" by the Belgian singer Gotye. Then, listen again and do the gap-fill activity.

Kindness Boomerang

We are about to finish this school year full of hard work, disappointments, uncertainty and fight, but also of fun and unforgettable moments. I want to say goodbye to all my students and workmates raising my voice and asking for a ray of hope with a song and a video that we'll let you believe in the power of kindness and solidarity, even though it's just for five minutes. 
But as I can't help thinking as a teacher, I'll take advantage of this song to work on nasal consonants /m/, /n/and /ŋ/ which are pronounced letting the air go out through the nose with your mouth closed. 

• Spanish students find it especially difficult to produce the nasal sound  /ŋ/ which is represented by the spellings 'ng' as in 'sing' and 'nk' as in 'sink'. To produce this sound you have to stop the air flow through the mouth by pressing the back of your tongue against the soft palate. You can click here to see a short video that'll help you pronounce this sound correctly.
• Paying attention to these sounds, listen to the song "One day" by the American reggae singer Matisyahu.

 

 
• Now, listen again and do the gap-fill activity. 

Stronger!

Feeling stressed and a little bit down has become commonplace for many of us in these times. 
We can't avoid worrying about the world around us which seems to be falling apart and we experience a feeling of defeat; but do we realize what are the things that really matter in life? I guess we need to be reminded of. 

When I saw this video filmed at Seattle Children's Hospital, I felt so moved and touched! They are the true heroes, the ones who struggle no matter what life brings them! So this is a tribute to all those who keep putting up a fight with a smile on their faces and teach us a lesson of hope and courage.

"Stronger",by Kelly Clarkson, is not only a heartening song but also a perfect way to practise the weak vowel sound schwa /ə/ that we find in unstressed words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions and articles) and unstressed syllables.
Here are some examples:
He was feeling down                 /wəz/  
I can do much better                /kən/      /ˈbetə/ 
You have to put up a fight       /həv/    /tə/   /əp/     /ə/

Listen to the song and do the gap-fill activity. Click the key to get all the answers. 

If I were a boy...

Have you ever wondered how different your life would be if you were a boy and not a girl or the other way round?

Beyoncé has in this song which I'm going to use to make you think of the variety of sounds that can correspond with the letter 'o' in English. Do you pronounce the 'o' in  'broke' and 'shot' in the same way? If you want to know, see this short presentation before doing the listening task below.

You can check your answers with the key.

Start with yourself

Consonant clusters (a combination of two or three consonant sounds) may be difficult to pronounce, especially if it is a combination that is not common in our language.

Three-consonant clusters at the beginning of words always begin with s, e.g. scream /skriːm/.

Three-consonant clusters at the end of words are often plurals (girls /ɡɜːlz/), third person singular verbs (wants /wɒnts/) or regular past tenses ( asked /ɑːskt/).

To practise this combination of consonant sounds I've chosen a song that reminds us that the real change is inside ourselves, that we can't close our eyes and only see misery and poverty at Christmas time. Listen to it and do the gap-filling exercise while listening. All the missing words  contain a consonant cluster. Then, you can check the answers clicking the link KEY on the activity.

Did you say you needed a "pin" or a "bin"?

Let's face the truth, whether we like it or not being able to recognize and produce English sounds is key to understanding and being understood. 

Some pairs of consonants are pronounced exactly in the same way but for the vibration or non vibration of our vocal cords in their production and, thus, we sometimes find it difficult to tell them apart.

Here you are a couple of interactive activities to get familiar with four of these pairs.

Now listen to Amy Mcdonald's song "This is the life" and try to fill in the gaps with the correct words, which all contain the consonant sounds introduced in the activities above. Click "hint" to get the phonetic transcription of the missing words and here to download the KEY.

Mind the sound (English Dypthongs)

Phonetics may seem plain boring to you but why not take a funnier approach to it with music?

Below you'll find an activity to work on English Dyphthongs. First, click the link above to download a presentation that'll help you revise these dyphthongs. Next, do the gap-fill activity to complete the lyrics of U2's song "One". Check your answers with the Key. Finally, click "next exercise" to do a matching activity based on the lyrics.