English for Academic Study: Pronunciation Study Book + CDs PDF,MP3 download
Aims of the course:
The purpose of this book is to help you to improve the accuracy of your pronunciation, develop your listening microskills, learn the phonemic alphabet, build your understanding of sound/spelling relationships, recognize and remember words and phrases that commonly occur in academic contexts.
Accuracy of pronunciation
Accurate pronunciation is important if you want people to understand you clearly. Frequent pronunciation errors may put a strain on the listener, and may also lead to breakdowns in communication. While you do not have to speak with a perfect English accent, your aim must be at least for your pronunciation to be good enough for the listener to understand you with ease. The main technique you can use to achieve this is to listen and repeat patterns of pronunciation, but learning the phonemic alphabet and developing a sensitive ear will also help you.
Learning the phonemic alphabet
The phonemic alphabet is a system for showing the pronunciation of words in English, and is shown on page 9 of this book. At first glance, the phonemic alphabet looks like another language that you have to learn. However, about half of the 44 phonetic symbols that you are expected to know are pronounced in the same way as they are written. We have focused on:
- those symbols which may be unfamiliar, and so may be difficult to learn
- those sounds which may be difficult to pronounce for certain learners
We believe that learning the phonemic alphabet will help you to develop more accurate pronunciation and improve your listening skills. In addition, if you know the phonemic alphabet you can:
- understand the correct pronunciation when looking up a word in a dictionary
- note down the correct pronunciation in your vocabulary notebook
So, knowing the phonemic alphabet is another important aspect of recording and learning vocabulary.
Listening microskills
In listening classes, you will have had practice understanding meaning that is built up over a sentence or several sentences, but you may have had difficulty with comprehension at a lower level. Listening microskills are the skills you need to understand meaning at the level of a word or small group of words.
Students frequently remark that there are many words that they know in their written form, but fail to recognize when listening. There may be several reasons for this; for example, words may not be pronounced in the way you expect them to be, or it may be difficult to hear where one word ends and another begins. Many activities in this book will help you to deal with such problems.
Sound/spelling relationships
Another difficulty faced by students is that there does not seem to be a relationship between the way words are spelt in English and the way they are pronounced. This creates problems, not just for accurate pronunciation, but also for correct spelling. In fact, while there are exceptions (and many of these exceptions seem to relate to the most common words in English), there are a lot of useful sound/spelling patterns. If you can ensure that you are familiar with these patterns, you can then focus on learning the exceptions, which are the words that create the most problems.
Academic vocabulary
The examples and exercises in these materials are focused on words from:
- the General Service List (GSL): the 2,000 most frequently used words in English
- the Academic Word List (AWL): a list of 570 word families that are most commonly used in academic contexts
All the words in the AWL will be useful to you, but some of the words in the GSL are either words you may know already (e.g., you, from, hand) or words that are not commonly or widely used in academic contexts (e.g., handkerchief, niece, jealous). In general, words like these have not been used in the examples and exercises.
In addition, a number of extracts from academic lectures have been used to provide practice in listening for features of pronunciation.
A lot of care has been taken, therefore, to ensure that the vocabulary focused on in this book is relevant to both academic study and your needs. Many words will be those you ‘half know’, so the materials should reinforce your understanding. Other words may be quite new to you.
Structure of the course
There is a range of different exercises that require you to work in different ways. For example, you may need to:
- listen and repeat words or sentences
- stop the recording and read an explanation
- stop the recording, write words in spaces in sentences, then listen to check your answers
- stop the recording, fill in a table or choose the correct answer, then listen to check your answers
If you just play the recording non-stop, listening and reading at the same time, you will not improve your pronunciation or listening skills. You will have to stop the recording to read, think, write and check answers, and you will have to replay short sections you have difficulty with.
- Pronunciation notes
Each unit has at least one Pronunciation note. These notes explain different rules relating to the content in that unit, for example, the pronunciation of consonant clusters. - Study tips
These are included for ease of reference when you are revising what you have studied. They either summarize the outcome of a series or activities or are a summary of other information contained in the unit.
Listening material
This is available on CD and is indicated by the play icon ►. The full transcripts for the audio material are available at the back of the book, starting on page 77.
Recording your own voice
When you are asked to listen and repeat words, phrases or sentences, it can also be very useful to record your own voice and then play it back. This will enable you to compare your own pronunciation with the recording, and hear any differences or problems clearly. You will not need to record your voice for every exercise, but try to do this when you know you have a problem with certain aspects of pronunciation.
If you are unsure whether your pronunciation on an exercise is accurate enough, and you are working with a teacher, ask him or her to listen to your recording. He or she will be able to assess your pronunciation more objectively.
Additional materials
Glossary: Words or phrases in bold (or bold and underlined in the task introductions) in the text are explained in the Glossary on page 75.
Answer key: Answers for all the exercises are provided.
Transcripts: Starting on page 77, you will find the transcripts of all the audio material. Your teacher will sometimes give you the opportunity to listen to the recordings and follow the transcript at the same time, once you have completed the main listening tasks.
Format:PDF,MP3
Size: 91 MB
Series: English for Academic Study
Level: B2 to C2
Edition: 2nd Edition
Date: 2012
DOWNLOAD
English for Academic Study: Pronunciation Study Book + CDs
Related Content
English for Academic Study: Listening Course Book
English for Academic Study: Listening Teacher’s Book
English for Academic Study: Speaking Course Book
English for Academic Study: Speaking Teacher’s Book
English for Academic Study: Vocabulary Study Book
English for Academic Study: Writing Course Book
English for Academic Study: Reading Course Book
English for Academic Study: Reading & Writing Source Book
English for Academic Study: Extended Writing and Research Skills: Course Book