درسنامه اصلی

Hi, I’m AJ, and welcome to our next unit. We’re finished with the consonants, now we’re starting with the vowel sounds in English. Now, vowel sounds can be extra difficult, because sometimes, they’re very subtle. By subtle I mean that to make the correct vowel sounds, sometimes you have to make very small changes in your mouth, your throat, your tongue; so because the changes can be a little bit smaller, it might take longer to master some of the vowel sounds, and of course, just like the other sounds, the most difficult ones for you will be the ones that you don’t have in your own language.

If you have a vowel sound in your own language, no worries, you already know how to do it, but if it’s a new one, if it’s different than your language, be patient, relax, keep training. Just focus on improving, don’t worry about being perfect. You will need time to train yourself to make the more difficult sounds.

Now, in this unit, we’re starting with two commonly difficult, two sounds that a lot of people have trouble with in English. It’s the short I, which is the ih, ih sound, and then the long E, ee, ee, ih and ee. We’re going to practice saying those. I’m going to give you some tricks and tips for how to say them correctly, and then of course, as usual, in the training audio, you will be practicing these sounds every day.

Let’s review again what you need to do. Now, you know you’re going to follow that five day process, and with the vowel sounds, it’s especially important on that day when you record yourself and compare to me, so listen carefully to your vowel sounds and mine, and try to get yours as close as possible.

Okay, let’s start with the short I sound. It’s pronounced like this: Ih, ih, ih. How do you do that sound? First of all, you want to relax your mouth and your tongue. The tongue is relaxed on this sound, so don’t put it up, don’t put it down, don’t push it, don’t do anything with your tongue: Ih.

Your tongue just stays there relaxed, it’s not moving around. Your face also stays quite relaxed: Ih, ih, ih. If you want, you can move your bottom lip, this is a little trick, you can try it. You don’t have to do this, but you can try it, see if it helps you.

You can take your bottom lip, only your bottom lip, and move it downward, like this. See how I’m doing that? Ih, ih, but it’s got to go down, not up. Very important for this sound. Your bottom lip, don’t go up, don’t smile, don’t do this, ih, ih, it makes it more difficult. Don’t raise your eyebrows, keep your eyebrows here, keep these down when you make this sound, eyebrows stay down. If you want, you can try having your lip go down, but most important, your tongue stays relaxed.

Let’s try some words with this sound:

It, it, it. Say it after me, practicing this sound: It, it.

System. It’s the first sound, sih, sih. System, system, system, system.

Active. It’s at the end: Active, active, ihv, ih, ih, ihv, active, active, active.

Sit. Right in the middle: Sit, sit, ih, sit, sit.

Minute, minute, ih, min, min, minute, minute.

In, like inside, in, ih, ih, in, in, in, in.

Very good.

Live, live — Where do you live? Ih, live, live, live, live.

And fill, fill, fill.

Very good.

That’s the ih sound, we call it the short I sound, ih, ih, ih.

Next, the long E. It’s pronounced like this: Ee, ee. When we say something’s long, a long vowel, long A, long E, long I, long O, long U, long means that it says its own name, right, so E is pronounced ee, long E: Ee, ee.

How do we make an ee sound? Okay, first of all, your tongue is more active now. The middle of your tongue, the middle of your tongue goes up, ee, but it’s mostly the sides. It’s the sides, the middle, sides of your tongue go up, and they’ll touch the side of your top teeth, right, so you’re kind of making this U shape with your tongue.

Each side of your tongue will touch the teeth at the top, ee, ee, and you can press your tongue hard against your top teeth, but only the sides of your tongue. Not the front, the sides: Ee. You can see, if you can see my, the front of my tongue is not touching my teeth: Ee. Actually, the front of my tongue is down, I can even touch my bottom teeth with it. Front of the tongue is down: Ee, ee. It’s only the sides of my tongue that go up. The sides of my tongue touch the top teeth: Ee, ee, ee.

Another tip that might help you. Try this: As you say the ee sound, raise your eyebrows, so eyebrows go up, and smile when you make this sound: Ee, ee, ee, so that’s kind of a mental trick to help you say this sound correctly. Ee, ee, and I as always, exaggerate, make everything very big when you’re first practicing, when you’re first learning. Later, everything will become smaller of course, but when practicing, exaggerate everything very big and strong: Ee.

Let’s practice some words.

Keep, keep, keep, keep, keep.

Free, free, free, free.

Seem, seem, seem, seem.

Each, each, ea-ch, each.

Need, I need it, need, need.

See, see, see, seeee.

All right. Very good. That’s the long E sound.

Now, as usual, in the training audio, you want to practice both of these sounds. In the beginning, go slowly. The training audios have different speeds, right? I do a slow version, and then I do it medium, then I do it fast. If this is very difficult for you, in fact, any sound in any unit, if it’s difficult for you, focus on the slow training audio first.

Do it slowly, you can do the slow part, and then rewind and just focus on the slow part for a while, practicing slowly and carefully. Then you can start doing the slow and the medium, going a little faster, and then finally, you can do all three, the slow, the medium, and the fast so that you can pronounce all the sounds correctly at normal, fast speed.

All right, I’ll see you in the training audio. Good luck.