Error 2

 

Vowel sound added to words starting with ‘s’ and a consonant


   Explanation why this error occurs: Spanish speakers sometimes add an ‘e’ to the beginning of words starting with‘s’ and a consonant. As a result, you pronounce the words ‘street’ and ‘school’ as ‘estreet’ or ‘eschool’. This happens because words in Spanish do not normally begin with a consonant cluster – so sounds like sp, st, sk, sl, sm always have a vowel sound before.

Exercises to help improve the pronunciation of ‘s’ or ‘st’ correctly:

1. Snake game

   A good way to practice the pronunciation of the ‘st’ or the ‘s’ with some other consonants, is working in the letter ‘s’ like a snake; pronouncing it in a long way and then proceed with the rest of the word.

For example: ‘ssssstay’, ‘ssssstoke’ or ‘sssstorm.




Instructions:

  • Look at the pictures and find the word that corresponds in the box.
  • Write on the line the word that represents the image.
  • In pairs, pronounce every word correctly in an exaggerated way at the beginning.
  • By turns, say a sentence using each word, making sure to pronounce in the right way.


1. S- Blends Bingo


   All of the different beginning /s/ consonant clusters. ST, SK, SM, SN, SL, and the SK consonant cluster, which can be spelled four different ways: school, scoop, skip, square. SP, space. SPL, split. SPR, spring. In addition, SW, swift. Spanish speakers who are leaning English as a second language frequently mispronounce these words.



Instructions:

  • To form groups of three students
  • Two students will take a card, and the other student will say the words which are written on the individual cards, making sure of pronouncing them correctly.
  • The students will pay attention of the words, and if they have the word in their card, they will place a coin on the image.
  • The student who forms three pictures vertically, horizontally or diagonally wins.
  • At the end, every student will pronounce all the words that are in the cards correctly, helping each other.


Comentarios

  1. Celeste Betzabe Cruz29 de noviembre de 2021, 8:53 a.m.

    Hello girls!
    I consider that add the vowels sounds to words starting with "s" is one of the most common errors that we made as English learners. Those activities you chose to pronounce it correctly sound like a lot of fun. I would like to put them into practice.

    ResponderBorrar
  2. A world of words2 de diciembre de 2021, 10:25 p.m.

    Hello girls! I loved your blog, it is very creative and organized. The information you provided is very helpful and I liked that each exercise was interesting. (Karla Sierra)

    ResponderBorrar

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Featured Posts

Introduction

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    Learning a second language is an adventure that leads you to experience new ways of expressing what you think and what you feel. On this path, we can say that it is necessary to make errors in order to master the language in the best way. It is possible that we make some errors in the area of writing when using a grammatical structure different from the one of our mother tongue. Especially, we tend to make many errors in pronunciation; either because of the influence of our native language or because of the complexity of the language we are learning. However, if you stop to think about it, what would be the point of having teachers if students did not make mistakes when learning? The main purpose of teachers is to guide you, identify where you are failing and find ways to help you develop your skills, in this case speaking, which is the key to effective communication.     In this blog, we will be analyzing the most common errors in the pronunciation of ...
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Error 1

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Short and long vowel sounds often sound the same      Explanation why this error occurs: That is because in Spanish there are five vowel sounds that correspond to five letters, that is, wherever you see the letter A it will sound the same. In English, this does not happen, because English is not a phonological language, which means that although in spelling there are only five letters to represent vowels, in phonetics there are around twenty vowel sounds. So in English when you see the letter A it is not always pronounced the same way. For example, in the word batter, the A sounds /æ/ but in the word barter, the A sounds /ɑ/.      In order to generate these sounds, many students overstretch all vowel sounds or merge it with the closest sound in Spanish, and confuse pairs of short and long English vowel sounds such as "boat" and "sheep" in both comprehension and speech. To fix the problem: There are different exercises that students can do to improve, such a...
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References

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References ABA ENGLISH . (2015). Do you also make these mistakes in English? abaenglish.com. https://www.abaenglish.com/en/aba-english-masterclass/pronunciation-errors-in-english/ Anonymous. (September, 2015). All about long and short vowels sounds for preschoolers. Kutuki. https://kutuki.in/short-and-long-vowel-sounds-for-preschoolers/ Brenda. (11th November, 2020). 6 Pronunciation Mistakes Spanish Speakers Make in English (And How To Fix Them). oxfordhousebcn.com. https://oxfordhousebcn.com/en/6- pronunciation-mistakes-spanish-speakers-make-in-english-and-how-to-fix-them/ CARLA Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition. (18th August, 2021). Overview of Error Analysis. carla.umn.ed. https://carla.umn.edu/learnerlanguage/error_analysis.html English, W. (6th August, 2021). Pronunciation of S in English. Grammar.cl. https://www.grammar.cl/english/pronunciation-final-s.htm Gumbaridze, J. (2012). Error correction in EFL speaking classrooms....
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