درسنامه اصلی

Okay, hi this is AJ again, welcome to Unit 16. Wow, you’re getting close to the end. We have more vowel training in this unit, we’ve got the short A and the short O. Let’s learn these sounds, starting with the short A.

This is the sound like Ah, Ah, like hat, wear hat, Ah, ah, ah. How do you make this sound? Okay first of all, front of your tongue is forward, pushing forward, against your bottom teeth. Ah, ah, now as you push the tongue forward, the middle of your tongue will go up. But it will not touch, right, we’ve had some sounds where it’s like, where the middle of the tongue touches and stops the air, not this sound. The middle of the tongue goes up but it does not touch the top. You want to keep the air coming, don’t stop the air for this sound.

Okay, so it’s, Ah, ah. And then the final thing is, the mouth is very open, okay, so you’re gonna really open your mouth a lot as you make this sound, we’ll exaggerate it, we’ll do it super big for practice.

So here we go, front of the tongue forward, middle of the tongue goes up but just a little bit not all the way and mouth opens a lot, ah, ah, ah. Let’s do some words.

Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask.

Very good.

Class, the middle sound, class, class, class, class.

Very good.

Fast, fast, fast, ah, fast, fast, fast.

Back, back. Front and back. Ah, back, baa-ack, back, back, back.

Very good.

Had, had. H-A-D. Had, had, had.

Good.

Am, I am, am, am, am, am, am.

Fan, fan, fan, fan.

Okay that’s the Ah sound, which we call the short A.

Am, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Now the short O sound which sounds like this, aw, aw, like the word hot, aw, aw, aw. Now, the big key to this one is your mouth opens a lot, okay? The back of your tongue is low for this one, in fact your whole tongue stays kind of low. The front of your tongue can touch your teeth, your bottom teeth but lightly, you don’t have to press it hard, okay?

It’s kind of similar to the Shwa, sound, remember the Shwa sound is Uh, that very relaxed sound with the vibration, Uh. This one is aw, aw. In fact, make the sound the Shwa, sound, just do that for a minute, Uhhhhhhhh, that was our last unit remember, Uhhhhhhh.

Now, to change it, I want you to make the Shwa sound but open your mouth even more. Watch what happens. Uhhhhhhhhhh, Uhhhhhhhhhhh, it changes to a short O if you just open your mouth more, cool little trick, okay? So, aw, aw, aw, aw. When you practice this one, super exaggerate, open your mouth as big as you can, okay, let’s try it, try some words.

Box, B-O-X, box, box, box, box.

And really exaggerate that big open mouth.

Box, box, force your mouth open. Box.

Not, not, not.

Stop, stop, stop.

Imagine you’re trying to eat something that’s really big, like a big hamburger or something, okay?

Shock, shock, aw, shock, shock.

Father, father, aw, father, father.

Mom, mom, mom, mom,

Hot, hot, hot.

A lot. The second word. A lot, lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

Block, block.

Rock, I rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, roooooock.

Okay , very good.

So, have fun with this, you know, when you’re practicing these sounds, especially the vowels, exaggerate as much as possible. Make it super super big, see one problem people have with pronunciation when making different sounds in English, is they feel embarrassed or something because in their own language, they don’t make this sound. And in their own language they don’t make these kind of faces.

So to do this, open their mouth really big, some people feel embarrassed because in their language they don’t do that, it feels uncomfortable. Well forget that, doesn’t matter if its uncomfortable. Just relax and have fun with it and make everything much bigger than normal when you’re training, this is very important. Make the movements big and strong so that you teach your brain how to do them automatically.

You know what time it is, time to go to the training audio, see you there.