Words with short vowel o

auə]: flower, tower, shower, coward, hour, flour, sour

before K Read [u]: 9000

1. 7777777777 book - book
2. look - look
3. took - took
4. hook - hook

Phrase to remember: Look in a cookery book. - Look in the cookbook.

2. oo before voiced consonant read [u:]:

1. soon - soon
2. mood - mood
3. school - school
4. choose - choose

Phrase to remember: Choose this school. It's cool! - Choose this school. She is cool!

Exceptions: good [gud] - good, wood [wud] - forest, hood [hud] - hood, wool [wul] - wool, flood [flɅd] - flood, blood [blɅd] - blood

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Rule 6. Oor = our read [uə]:

1. poor - poor
2. moor
3. tour - tour

Exceptions: door [dɔː] - door, floor [flɔː] - floor

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Rule 7. Oi = oy read [oi]:

1. boy - boy
2. toy - toy
3. coin - coin
4. join - join

Phrase to remember: This coin is my toy. This coin is my toy.

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Phonetic exercises for practicing reading letter combinations with an audio recording and answers

Materials in this article are protected by copyright. Copyright © EnglishStory, 2013-2021

Phonetic exercise 1.

1. Read the words:
Your browser does not support the audio tag!
Goat, boat, low, grow, owl, brown, bold, cloud, sound, gold, coil, noise, choice, foist, toy, goose, slow,gown, growl, noon, snow, crow, down, howl, pool , food, post, coast, how, now, goal, roach, moist, toilet, round, found, scold, told, bloat, float, bloom, proof, town.

2. Write down the first line with transcription marks.
Test yourself - HERE

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Phonetic exercise 2 (to consolidate all the rules for reading the letter O and its letter combinations).

1. Read the words:

Your browser does not support the audio tag!
more, north, fountain[`fauntin], coal, enjoy, tool, stop, ground, sport, pole, show, month, ago, clown,

hold, oil, shot, pork, book, spoon, stout, look, stone, work, post, hose, goal, `money, ex`ploit, sorry, `comfort, whose [hu:z], once [wʌns] , noble, `mountain [`mauntin], to im`pose, dose, other, lost, `mortar, `porridge, world, adore, workshop, boating, `coffee, `orange, `monster, a`bout, short, `horror, col`lect [kə`lekt], spooky, `honey [`hʌni], `donkey [`dʌnki]

2. Indicate the main sound in the words of the first line.

Check Yourself - HERE

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Phonetic Exercise 3.

Read the text "Seasons".

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Learning to read English?

Long and short vowels in English

Longitude is one of the characteristics of a vowel sound, which shows the relative duration of its sound compared to other sounds.

Longitude can be positional or phonemic. In the first case, the duration of the vowel depends on the position in the word and stress, while this characteristic does not affect the meaning. The phonemic length of a vowel has a semantic function, that is, depending on the length of the sound, the meaning of the word changes.

In Russian, the length of vowel sounds does not affect the meaning of words and changes only depending on stress. In English, vowels differ not only in positional but also in phonemic length. This means that long and short sounds, similar in other characteristics, represent different phonemes. Words that differ only by these phonemes have different meanings: ship - sheep , fit - feet , pull - pool . Therefore, it is so important to pronounce long and short sounds correctly.

In transcription, long vowels are indicated with a colon: [i:], [α:], [ɔ:], [u:], [ә:]. In some cases, long vowels in an unstressed position are reduced and become semi-long, which in transcription is indicated by one dot from above: [α ].

The long vowels listed above are contrasted with short vowels, forming the following pairs in English:

• [i:] - [ı]
• [uː] - [u]
• [ɔ:] - [ɒ]
• [α:] - [ʌ]
• [ә:] - [ə]

The pronunciation of long and short English vowels often causes difficulties for Russian learners of English, since in Russian vowels do not have phonemic longitude, and we are not used to hearing the length of a vowel sound. We often do not hear the difference between long and short vowels when listening to English speech. It is still not clear how long you need to draw a sound when speaking, so very unnatural, or almost inaudible, or too long vowels are obtained. It is impossible to correctly pronounce short and long sounds so that a native speaker hears the difference, even if you diligently shorten short vowels and stretch out long ones.

Sometimes it seems that native speakers themselves do not know the difference between short and long sounds, they seem to pronounce them the same way - but they themselves understand each other. But it's not. Let's see what are the differences between long and short English vowels, how to learn to hear them and how to train their pronunciation.

It is logical to assume that if vowels are called long or short, they differ in sound length. This is the main difference between them, but not the only one. It is important to understand that long and short sounds have other differences, which consist in articulatory features. This means that the sounds are not just of different lengths, they are also different in sound. And most often it is these articulatory features that determine the length of the vowel sound: the duration of the sound depends on the position of the tongue and the tension of the vocal apparatus.

Long and short English vowels differ in such a characteristic as tension. Long vowels are tense, in English they are also called tense . When they are pronounced, the root of the tongue seems to be tense, under tension. The sound is pronounced, bright, rich, clear.

Short vowels are called lax – relaxed. The tongue in the region of the root is relaxed, the vowel sound is articulated quickly, easily, without additional effort, as if bursting. It turns out short, inconspicuous, faded and fuzzy.

Qualitative differences in sounds in different pairs of English vowels range from pronounced to almost imperceptible. It is easy to notice the difference between long and short sounds a: pay attention to how the words cart and cut are pronounced, they differ not only in duration, but also in sound. But the differences between long and short u are almost imperceptible: pool and pull sound very similar, only slightly different in length. The Scots generally pronounce them the same way, differing only in context.

In addition, the duration of the pronunciation of vowels is also affected by positional longitude - for example, stressed or unstressed position in a word. As a result, a short vowel sound in one word may sound longer than a long sound in another word.

Thus, it is not enough to rely only on the subjective duration of a vowel sound. All the features of short and long vowels described above must be taken into account when learning English. It remains to understand how to master the pronunciation of long and short sounds in practice.

The main mistake foreigners make when pronouncing long and short English sounds is focusing only on duration. But with this approach, it is intuitively incomprehensible where the boundary between a long and a short sound passes: you can’t measure the length of a sound with a stopwatch. When trying to artificially lengthen or shorten a vowel, the sounds are unnaturally short or drawn out.

To learn how to pronounce long and short English sounds, you need to forget about the usual terminology "long" and "short". Try not to think about the duration of the sound at all. To correctly pronounce long and short vowels, you need to focus on their articulation, and not on duration. If we correctly reproduce the pronunciation of the vowel, then the duration will turn out to be correct automatically. Remember that long vowels require more tension at the root of the tongue, while short ones are pronounced without additional effort, easily and without tension.

Pay attention to how native speakers pronounce vowels - don't watch how long they draw them out, but watch the pronunciation, the articulation, the quality of the sound. Repeat, imitate, practice. For practice, it is best to use video lessons or a conversation with a native speaker, since audio materials do not make it possible to see articulation.

It is best to train long and short sounds not separately, but as part of words. First, this way you will note the influence of positional longitude on the duration of the sound in specific examples. Secondly, just as words are best learned in context, sounds are also best learned in the environment.

Practice pronunciation of long and short vowels in pairs of words to notice the difference between sounds, for example:

• Sport – hot
• Arm-cut
• See-hit
• Food-put
• Fur – ago

When you learn how to pronounce long and short vowels correctly in English, it will become easy to distinguish between them in speech. When listening to speech, forget about the differences in duration, pay attention to the qualitative differences in sounds - how intensely the vowel is pronounced, how bright or faded it sounds, how pairs of sounds differ from each other, except for duration.

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