It can really help you improve your pronunciation if you know the phonetic symbols and the sounds they represent. You don’t need to worry about learning to write them just to recognise them.
If you do some of my Quick Pronunciation Exercises, you’ll pick them up in no time, plus you’ll see that you gain a better awareness about how words are pronounced. This will not only improve your pronunciation but your listening skills too. If you don’t know how a particular word is pronounced then it is very likely then that when you hear it, you don’t recognise it.
Remember too that it’s not just about the sounds that make up the word but also which syllable is stressed. The stress is on the syllable after the apostrophe (‘).
Can you ‘decipher’ these 10 words related to Work?
Check out the main Quick Pronunciation Exercises page with the full list of exercises and links to very useful pronunciation videos.
Answers
1. career
2. salary
3. personnel
4. vacancy
5. qualifications
6. course
7. promotion
8. employer
Full List of Grammar Exercises on Recipes for English
Test your Idioms
Test your Vocabulary
Test Your Phrasal Verbs