Hello and welcome to the course.
I'm their instructor.
Nicole Calpe I'm so happy that you've joined me.
Let me tell you a little bit about our course.
First it's recommended that you understand English at an advanced level to make the most out of this
class.
I also assume that you are already taken my five days to a better axent course there will be some concepts
that I talked about in that class.
They all need to be familiar with to understand everything in this course before we get started.
I want to share some funny observations about spoken English with you since English is my native language.
I was curious what people who don't know English think that it sounds like this can really tell us a
couple of things.
One it tells us the sounds that are dominant in English and two it tells us what sounds English has
that are missing in the observer's native language.
So here's what I found out when people who don't know English were asked what English sounds like.
We hear things like dogs fighting.
It sounds like her and her.
It sounds like snakes hissing sounds like church church church every sentence ends in its you stretch
all the vowel sounds.
It sounds like you have a fat tongue.
So many Asians while this may all sound funny.
It tells us a little something about English.
These people are describing the sounds they find most noticeable in English.
There are several key sounds that give American English its particular sound and distinguishes it from
other languages one of those sounds is the earth and Related Are control vowels like R or an ear.
This explains the dog's sounds because they sound similar to a dog growling for the snakes hissing refers
to the frequency of sibilant sounds which are hissing and buzzing type sounds like.
Sheesh.
And the fat tongue reference is likely due to the T-H while not a very high frequency sound in English.
It is found in some of our most common words and it's not a sound that's common in many languages.
Of course what you think English sounds like will probably have a lot to do with your native language
and the English sounds that are not included in your language.
Now this is a good exercise.
Ask people from your home country that don't speak English.
What it sounds like to them and then go and post it to our group.
Now before starting our lessons I have a few things I need you to do first.
Print out the whole workbook and all the handouts in the introduction section to the course.
Read over the class info sheet.
Do the introductory section of the workbook and complete the pretest before beginning the lessons.
Once you've completed your personal word inventory and done the pretest and saved it where you can find
it again.
Then you can begin the class.
Let me repeat that this is really important.
You must complete your personal word inventory and pretest before beginning the lessons.
You will find them both in the workbook in the introduction section.
Welcome to the class.
I look forward to working with you.