How to Pronounce: Listening Practice, Part 3

Hello! I'm John Russell. We can use different kinds of listening exercises to improve our pronunciation. The idea is that if we can hear the difference between sounds, then we will be more likely to produce these sounds correctly. Let’s play a game. You will hear two words. Tell me if the words are the same or different. Let’s start: (two words are read) Listen again: (two words are read) Pause to consider your answer. These words were different. We have dip and deep. The vowel sounds are different. In International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, spelling, we write the vowel sound in dip like this: /ɪ/. In IPA spelling, we write the vowel sound in deep like this: /i/ Question 2 Let’s do another question. Tell me if the words are the same or different. Listen again: Pause to consider your answer. These words were the same. They both involved the vowel sound /ɪ/ If these questions were difficult for you, you might need to watch some of our earlier videos on the vowel sounds of American English. That’s all for today! Keep up the good work.