connected speech in english

Connected Speech In English: What It Is And How To Learn It

Published on, june 10, 2024, july 16, 2024, this article may contain affiliate links.

Speaking English is hard because we often don’t say words like we should. Here’s how to understand connected speech and how to speak naturally yourself.

Table of contents

Maybe you’ve been studying English for a while now and gotten pretty good. 

Perhaps you’ve learned all those pesky irregular verbs, you feel comfortable using the past perfect continuous tense in context, and maybe you even know the difference between “who” and “whom” .

But even with all your actual knowledge of English and your ability to use it correctly, you may not sound natural when you speak. 

Natural spoken English comes down to more than just pronunciation and speaking fluently . It requires using connected speech . 

I consider connected speech to be a fairly advanced language learning topic. If you’re still at the intermediate level, I wouldn't focus on this; I’d leave it for later. And if you’re a beginner, it’s definitely not the right lesson for you right now. 

But if you’ve got quite a good grasp of the language and you’re really now trying to polish up your speaking skills, you might be at the right level to try to think about connected speech. 

In this article, I’ll explain what connected speech is along with some real-world examples of it. Then I’ll suggest some activities that you can do to work on and practise your connected speech. 

What is connected speech in English?

The first thing to understand about speaking English naturally is that it is very different from speaking English clearly. 

In English, words bump into each other. We reduce words when we’re speaking, contract them, and then mash them together.

That’s what connected speech is: it’s continuous spoken language like you’d hear in a normal conversation. It’s called connected speech because the words are all connected, with sounds from one running into the next. 

Examples and types of connected speech

There are five types of connected speech:  Catenation (or linking), Intrusion , Elision , Assimilation and Geminates .

Don't worry about the names. Let me give you some examples.

1. Catenation or linking

Catenation happens when a consonant sound at the end of one word gets attached to the first vowel sound at the beginning of the following word.

For example, when native speakers say “an apple” you’ll usually hear them say, “anapple”. The “n” in “an” gets joined with the “a” sound in “apple” and it becomes almost like a single word. 

In some cases, the sound of the consonant sound changes when it’s linked. For example, if I were to say “that orange” you would probably hear me change the final consonant “t” sound to a “d” sound as in “thadorange”.

Here are some other examples: 

• “trip over” often sounds like “tripover”
• “hang out” often sounds like “hangout”
• “clean up” often sounds like “cleanup”

2. Intrusion

Intrusion happens when an extra sound squishes in between two words. The intruding sound is often a “j”, “w”, or “r”. 

For example, we often say:

• “he asked” more like “heyasked”
• “do it” more like “dewit”
• “there is” more like “therris”

Elision happens when the last sound of a word disappears. This often happens with “t” and “d” sounds. For example:

• “next door” often gets shortened to “nexdoor”
• “most common” often gets shortened to “moscommon”

4. Assimilation

Assimilation happens when sounds blend together to make an entirely new sound. Some examples include:

• “don’t you” getting blended into “don-chu”
• “meet you” getting blended into “mee-chu”
• “did you” getting blended into “di-djew”

5. Geminates

Geminates are a doubled or long consonant sound. In connected speech, when a first word ends with the same consonant sound that the next word begins with, we often put the sounds together and elongate them. For example:

• “single ladies” turns into “single-adies”
• “social life” turns into “social-ife”

Notice that in none of these cases does the spelling actually change. It’s just the sounds that change when we say them. 

Is connected speech important?

Yes and no. 

I like to think of learning connected speech in two halves: understanding it when you hear it, and recreating it when you’re speaking yourself. 

Understanding connected speech when it’s used is extremely important. This is how native English speakers really talk. If you can’t understand English as it’s really spoken, you’re not really able to use the language. 

So listening to connected speech and being able to parse it into meaning is very important. 

Producing connected speech isn’t very important. Native speakers don’t need you to use connected speech to understand you. If you speak English clearly, carefully enunciating each syllable, you may sound a bit unnatural, but you’ll certainly be understood. 

So being able to use connected speech yourself doesn’t have to be a priority.

How can you improve your connected speech?

You can get better both at understanding connected speech when it’s spoken by others and using it yourself. Here are some ways you can train yourself on it.

Listen as frequently as possible

The way that we get better at understanding native speakers is by listening to them . So listen to native speakers as frequently as possible. 

At higher levels, listen to different accents: American, British, Australian , and others. This will help you understand people using a range of different accents.

You can also use music to help you learn English. Music and songs are very helpful for connected speech. 

Use transcripts or subtitles as you listen

One of the most difficult things to do when we’re new to a language is figure out where one word ends and another starts.

A great exercise for this is listening to a native speaker while you also read what they’re saying. 

There are a few ways you can do this. You could listen to someone read an audiobook while you read the book itself. You could watch a show on Netflix or a YouTube video with the subtitles on .

And, of course, you could listen to an English podcast while reading the transcript of that podcast. ( Leonardo English conveniently provides transcripts to members for the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast for exactly this reason.)

Shadowing and recording yourself

Those are great for listening, but what about speaking?

Shadowing is the ideal exercise for practising connected speech. In shadowing, you mimic or imitate the sounds that you hear as you hear them. So you practise saying full sentences exactly like a native speaker.

This helps you see how native speakers really pronounce sentences—connected speech included. 

Recording yourself speaking is another activity that has similar benefits. It lets you listen and see how the way you say a sentence might be different from a native speaker so you can correct yourself or make changes. 

Have conversations

Speaking naturally is really only a skill you can develop through practice. 

So practise speaking! 

Find an online English conversation partner , join an English community, or find other ways of speaking English regularly . That’s how you’ll get better at speaking in general and also at using connected speech in particular. 

Use podcasts to improve your connected speech

Here’s how you can make the best use of English podcasts like English Learning for Curious Minds to work on understanding and using connected speech. 

• First, listen for understanding. The first time you listen to an episode, just try to grasp what’s going on. Try to pick out the general story or the main ideas. You can slow the episode to 0.75x or 0.5x if you need to.
• Next, listen for pronunciation. Choose a part of the episode (or the whole episode if you like) and notice places where the speaker uses connected speech. Reading while you listen may help you identify particular instances of connected speech. 
• Finally, shadow part of the episode. Now work on your speaking skills by shadowing part of the episode. It doesn’t have to be long—just a couple of minutes. Try to imitate the person speaking as closely as possible. Here’s our guide on Shadowing in English —you can find detailed instructions there.
• Challenge yourself by getting faster. If that feels easy or comfortable, make it harder by doing all that on a faster speed setting, or turn it back to 1x if you were doing it more slowly beforehand. 

This process will help you understand spoken English even when the words are mashed together. It will also help you get used to speaking more naturally in English yourself. 

Speaking naturally will come with time

To wrap up this article, I want to stress that connected speech is about practice, not memorisation . 

Earlier, I gave some names for different groups of connected speech sound changes—catenation, assimilation, and so on. I did that for your interest, but I don’t recommend trying to memorise them or learn those names by heart unless you’re a linguist. 

You certainly don’t need to know what “elision” means to speak naturally. Most native speakers wouldn’t have any idea what that word means.

Instead of learning that linguistic theory, just practise using English. Listen to it and speak it. Connected speech will come naturally to you as you use English more. 

Indeed, let’s remember that the reason connected speech happens is that it’s an easier way to speak. 

When you are singing Beyonce’s Single Ladies , it would feel really weird to clearly pronounce “single” separately from “ladies”. It’s much more natural to jam the words together into “Singl-adies”

Similarly, it’s much harder to say “that orange” than it is to say “thadorange”. As soon as you’re saying those words together, you’ll probably find your mouth making the connected speech sounds automatically. 

That’s important to remember: connected speech doesn’t happen randomly. It happens because it’s actually easier to say the words in that way. 

So yes, learn what connected speech is. Practise listening to native speakers so you can understand them even when they speak at a normal pace and words jam together. Do your regular speaking activities.

But then relax. Natural, connected speech will come.

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5 features of connected speech.

A look at assimilation, elision, delayed plosion, catenation and intrusion in connected speech.

In spoken discourse the boundaries between words are very often not clear-cut. Words and sounds are lost and linked together in different ways to enable us to articulate with minimal movement.

This is one of the reasons learners find spoken discourse more difficult to understand than written discourse. At higher levels it is often not a lack of vocabulary which prevents understanding, but lack of ability to deal with these features of connected speech. Native speakers are more able to use top-down processing to decide whether what they have heard is red dye or red eye .

Here are some of the more common features of connected speech:

Assimilation

Assimilation occurs when a phoneme (sound) in one word causes a change in a sound in a neighbouring word. For example, try saying the following pairs of words:

Elision is the loss of a phoneme, most commonly the last phoneme of a word, and most commonly the /t/ and /d/ sounds. Have a look at these examples:

• looked back

Delayed plosion

Our “red dye” and “red eye” is an example of this. To articulate “red dye”, we must take a very short pause before the /d/ sound. The /d/ is an example of a plosive , consonant sounds where the vocal tract stops all airflow. Other examples are /b/ , /d/ , /g/ , /p/ , /t/ and /k/ . This pause before the plosive gives us the name of this feature, delayed plosion.

In catenation the last consonant of the first word is joined to the vowel sound at the start of the second word. For example:

• pick it up – (learners will hear something like pi ki tup)
• what is it – (learners will hear something like wo ti zit)

Intrusion is what you might expect from the name – an extra sound “intrudes” into the spoken utternace. Try saying the following pairs of words:

• media event

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Keith Taylor

Keith is the co-founder of Eslbase and School of TEFL . He's been a teacher and teacher trainer for over 20 years, in Indonesia, Australia, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Poland, France and now in the UK.

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27 comments.

Thanks a lot, easy and helpful!

thanks a lot for beautifully explaining the features of connected speech. it helps me a lot.

M.Umar khan

Very good material about connected speech,

Well , I just want to say that I really greatful learning connected speech from you ,thank you so much.

ZAKAYO MONG'ATEKO M

This work is really good! However, this kind of speech should be better specified if it is accepted in formal speech or it only relies on colloquial conversation.

Hello Zakayo,

As a native speaker of North American English, I’d say that these are good examples of what you’ll hear in both colloquial and formal speech. Ignoring elision and assimilation, for example, could make someone’s pronunciation sound almost unnaturally precise.

Aren’t the delayed plosives far more likely to geminate in actual connected speech? Only seem to have demonstrative value, no teaching value…

Yep, I would suggest that most of these features lend themselves better to receptive skills work, rather than actually “teaching” learners to produce them. It could lead, as Curt says in the previous comment, to unnatural or forced pronunciation.

Abba gustavo jigawa

This is incredibly helpful not only to learners but also teachers as well. Special thanks.

Shanmugasundaram V

Thanks very much. But a doubt. Where does the /r/ sound intrude after “media” as mentioned. Could you help?

The /r/ sound intrudes between the two words “media” and “event”, so you hear something like this:

“media-r-event”

Hope that helps.

Imadeddin Shaheen

I do not hear it!

Are you a native English speaker?

Do you have a suggested lesson plan for teaching this? I’m currently teaching listening skills and this is really helpful to raise the awareness in students. For intrusion, for example, I haven’t been able to find exactly the rules of when to use /r/, /w/, /j/. I have seen some examples, but it seems like there’s no rule around this? I’m sure I’m wrong. Can anybody help?

Gabriel Sowrian

Is it possible for you to talk with me? If it is, I can demonstrate to you how to to find out when to use the linking /w/, /j/, /r/ and intrusive /r/.

/j/ occurs when connecting /i/ to other vowels. That’s why we pronounce ‘the’ with /i/ when connecting to a vowel (e.g. ‘the air’). Note that several diphthongs end in /i/ and connect accordingly. /w/ occurs whenever we connect /u/ to a vowel, which is why we pronounce ‘to’ /tu/ before vowels (we generally use a schwa before consonants). Note that diphthongs /əʊ/ and /aʊ/ end in /u/ (more or less) and connect accordingly. All other vowel sounds connect with /r/.

Note that most words that end in a vowel sound (if we’re being non-rhotic) are *spelt* ending in the letter ‘r’ (e.g. ‘car’ /kɑː/), which is why students generally find this quite intuitive. Students get confused with words like ‘law’, which end in a vowel (not /i/ or /u/) but aren’t *spelt* ending in the letter ‘r’. The issue here is that students tend to be overly concerned with spelling, to the detriment of their pronunciation.

Could you please tell me where to find tracks with examples of elision and assimilation

You could try searching on Youtube – there are quite a few videos about elision and assimilation which contain spoken examples.

It’s so good, thank you.

Radwan Raid

Hello, can I have a source of the topic?

Hi Radwan, do you mean the author and publishing date?

Who’s the author?

Hi, the author of this article is Keith Taylor

Adeyemi Oba Olaitan

Enlightening

Nanhee Byrnes PhD

Hi, the r-intrusion happens in British English. It is viewed substandard in general (standard) American English. In American English, /j/ intrusion happens between two high vowels, and /w/ intrusion happens between two low vowels. You might want to refer to my video for details: https://youtu.be/CSTVOlnixkI .

Idris Musari

This is helpful. I really appreciate this effort.

Thatiana Romano

Thank you very much!! this is very helpful!

Leave your comment (Cancel Reply)

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Connected Speech

The way words are pronounced often changes in the flow of natural speech. Sounds can blend together, change, or disappear completely.

This is often called "connected speech." It's natural, and very common, but connected speech can it make hard to understand native speakers.

You'll hear connected speech all the time in the stories in American Voices. So we'll be adding tips on the most common types of connected speech, with examples from our stories. Use these examples to "tune your ear" to how native speakers really talk - it's a great way to improve your listening skills.

In connected speech, the word "and" is often reduced to [ǝn], or even just the single consonant sound [n].

When a word ends in /i:/ or a diphthong ending in /ɪ/ (/ey/, /aɪ/, or /ɔɪ/), and the next word begins with a vowel sound, we often hear a glide ( [j] as in 'yard' and 'yellow') between the words as they flow together smoothly.

Listen for this glide [j] after words like 'city,' 'rely,' 'early,' 'me,' and 'my.' Repeat after the speakers, letting the words flow smoothly in "rely on," "day of," "the only," "early age," "city of," and "my ultimate." You'll hear each example three times.

The sound of 'th' as in that , this , the ([ð] in the international phonetic alphabet), is not found in many languages, and some learners find it difficult.

But if you've struggled with this sound, here's some good news: native speakers don't always pronounce it clearly, either – sometimes we leave it out completely!

And knowing when we don't pronounce it clearly will help you understand better when people speak quickly.

It has to do with this special combination: when one words ends in the sound 'n,' and the next word begins with 'th' as in that, this, the . You'll see this sequence all the time in phrases like "i n th e," "o n th is," "bee n th ere, do ne th at," "whe n th ey," and so on.)

In quick, everyday speech, these will be pronounced without a clear 'th.'

In these clips you'll hear each example twice in isolation, and then in context:

You may be wondering: if the 'th' in "i n th e" drops out, how do we know the person isn't saying "in a"?

Great question!

There's a small difference that most native speakers don't think about. Read (and listen!) on for the full story .

Sounds like p, b, t, d, k, and g are called "stops" because the flow of air is stopped, and then released.

When one word ends in a stop, and the next word begins with a consonant, the final stop is often not released.

Listen to how the final -t sound in these phrases is not heard clearly:

The /t/ in "first five" and "it would" are not pronounced in these examples: listen first in isolation, then in context.

In some cases, this means that the past tense verb ending -ed/-d is not heard. Listen carefully to the first example in each pair: it may not even sound like a past tense! Then listen to the example in context.

There are times when it may be hard to decide whether you've heard "have" or "of." Visit this page for an interactive video, then try a mini-dictation challenge.

Sometimes it may be hard to know whether you've heard "can" or "can't" ... but the difference can be very important!

Visit this page for a video with tips on how we really pronounce "can" and "can't" in North America, then try a mini-dictation challenge.

You are here: Home » Free Lessons » Pronunciation Lessons » Connected Speech & Linking Sounds

Connected Speech & Linking Sounds

What is connected speech?

Connected speech is when spoken language is not pronounced as it is written down on a page. 

For example, sometimes when native speakers very quickly, they add, remove and even change sounds.  This is connected speech and this is what makes spoken English difficult to understand for students who are learning English.

Linking sounds means when sounds are joined or linked together.

Is connected speech important?

If you want to speak English like a native speaker, then connected speech is very important.

When native speakers speak English, they often use connected speech and what they say sounds very different from the way it is written.

What are some common examples of connected speech?

Example 1 - what are you doing (woddayuhdowing), example 2 - give it to him. (givit towim.), example 3 - what's happening (what'sappening), example 4 - do you want to go (djyuh wanna go), example 5 - what is it about (woddizidabout.), how can i improve my connected speech.

The best way to improve your connected speech is to listen to native speakers and copy them.  You can listen to native speakers while watching TV, YouTube, the news and much more.

It’s very important to keep practicing your connected speech so it will become natural for you.

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Connected Speech Practice Dialogues (Pronunciation)

ESL Level : upper-intermediate

Class time : 30 minutes

Worksheet Download : File moved to TPT

Description  These two dialogues can be used to practice connected speech. Students in pairs first practice their dialogue and then they perform it for another pair. The listening pair fills in the expressions they hear on the worksheet.

Note : This activity has been updated with improved dialogues and an answer key. The new lesson can be found here . I will leave the old lesson below so you can get an idea of the activity.

Detailed Instructions

• Put students in pairs . Give one pair the "Pair A" worksheet, and the other pair the "Pair B" worksheet.
• Tell the pairs to look at the dialogue on the top half of the sheet (Speaking Part 1). They should try to rewrite it or link the words using the principles of connected speech. Tell them to ignore the Part 2 cloze section below.
• After changing the dialogue into connected speech, have them practice it several times.
• Once they are ready, put two pairs together (one PairA and one PairB). PairAs will then perform their dialogue, while PairBs listen and write the information into the Part2 cloze section.
• When finished, they can confirm their understanding.
• Lastly, groups switch roles and the process repeats.

Worksheet Preview

Connected Speech Practice — Pair A

SPEAKING Part 1: Use connected speech to make the below dialogue more efficient. Then practice it with your partner and then read it to another group. They will listen and write in the missing words.

A: What are you doing?

B: Studying. I have a lot of homework. I hate math. I wish I could drop out of school.

A: Well, you have to go because you need to get your diploma.

B: I guess so. Hey, have you seen Benjamin?

A: No. If he's not in his room, then he must have gone out. He could have gone to the park to play basketball. It is a nice day.

B: Okay. I'll look for him there. Later.

LISTENING Part 2: Listen to your partner's dialogue. Write down the words you hear.

A: Hey Jake. ___________________ ?

B: I'm ___________________ upset.

A: Why? ______________________________________?

B: I lent ___________________ bucks to my friend last week. But he still hasn't paid me back.

A: You ___________________ lent money to him. It's not good when money gets between friends.

B: I know. He was ___________________ ___________________ yesterday, but he didn't. He didn't even mention it.

A: I ___________________ ___________________ __________________ about it. Why ___________________ remind him?

B: I guess I ___________________.

Connected Speech Practice — Pair B

A: Hey Jake. How are you?

B: I'm kind of upset.

A: Why? What's the matter?

B: I lent 100 bucks to my friend last week. But he still hasn't paid me back.

A: You shouldn't have lent money to him. It's not good when money gets between friends.

B: I know. He was supposed to pay me back yesterday, but he didn't. He didn't even mention it.

A: I bet you he has forgotten about it. Why don't you remind him?

B: I guess I have to.

A: _____________________________ _________ doing?

B: Studying. I have ___________________ homework. I hate math. I wish I could drop out of school.

A: Well, you ___________________ go ___________________ you need to get your diploma.

B: I guess so. Hey, ___________________ seen Benjamin?

A: No. If he's not in his room, then he ___________________ out. He ___________________ to the park to play basketball. It is a nice day.

- Matthew Barton of Englishcurrent.com

• Friends' Video (Connected Speech)

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7 comments on “ Connected Speech Practice Dialogues (Pronunciation) ”

It is great !i got more knowledge from here

This is great! Thanks a lot for sharing your work :)

In case you are generating the money you’d like to from Holdem, it’s since you haven’t acquired these points appropriately.

Thanks so much!!!

Thank you for this. I can get a lot of practice out of these 2 dialogues.

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Features of Connected Speech

Do you want to learn more about American English sounds? You’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we discuss everything you need to know, starting with the basics.

Aspects of american english pronunciation

What connected speech is, aspects of connected speech.

Teaching pronunciation used to involve little more than identifying and practising the sounds of which a language is composed, that is to say, its phonemes.

Recently however, there has been a shift of focus towards the other systems operating within phonology, which may be more important in terms of overall intelligibility.

• What connected speech is
• How this affects native and non-native speakers

Working on weak forms

So what is it that we do when stringing words together that causes so many problems for students?

There are a large number of words in English which can have a "full" form and a "weak" form. This is because English is a stressed timed language, and in trying to make the intervals between stressed syllables equal, to give the phrase rhythm, we tend to swallow non-essential words. Thus, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries and articles are often lost, causing comprehension problems for students, particularly for those whose language is syllable timed. Some examples of words which have weak forms are

fish and chips (fish´n chips) a chair and a table (a chair ´n a table)

She can speak Spanish better than I can (The first "can" is the weak form, the second the full form.)

A pint of beer That´s the last of the wine!

Have you finished? (weak) Yes, I have. (full)

Well, you should have told me. (Both "should" and "have" are weak here)

The relevance of certain features of connected speech to students' needs is often debated. However, this is not the case with weak forms. Learners must come to not only recognise and cope with the weak forms they hear, but also to use them themselves when speaking English. If they do not their language will sound unnatural and over formalised, with too many stressed forms making it difficult for the listener to identify the points of focus. This, the degree to which connected speech contributes towards "naturalness" or "intelligibility", is a useful starting point from which to measure the value to students of the different features of connected speech.

Here are some ways in which we can attempt to help our students with weak forms.

• How many words do you hear?

Play a short dialogue, or a group of sentences, and ask students to listen and write down the number of words they hear. Go over each phrase to check whether they could identify all the words and then to see if they can accurately produce what they heard. Contrast the weak or natural version with the full version, pointing out that the full version is often more difficult to pronounce.

• Unnatural speech

Activities built around "unnatural speech" are an enjoyable way of working on weak forms and rhythm. To obtain "unnatural speech", record someone reading a sentence as if it were just a list of words. A good way of doing this is to put the words onto flash cards, and to reveal one at a time, so the reader gives each word its full pronunciation.

When you have a few sentences, play them several times to the students, who should then work in pairs to try to make the speech more natural sounding. They can then either use graphics to show the points they would change, or take turns reading out their different versions, or record themselves using a more natural pronunciation. Conduct a general feedback session at the end of the activity, discussing reasons for the changes the groups have made.

• Integrating

Integrate weak forms into grammar work. If practising "going to" for example, the teacher can write on the board examples such as:

• Go on holiday
• Earn more money

Ask different students to read these phrases as a sentence with "going to". Listen for and highlight the weak form of "to" before the consonant sounds, and the "full" form of "to" with the linking "w" sound before the vowel.

Pronunciation work should be seen as an integral part of what goes on in the classroom. Try not to fall into the text book trap of dividing language up into isolated chunks. One lesson on grammar, the next on vocabulary, then pronunciation and so on. All language, like speech, is connected, and students will benefit from learning the weak forms and stress patterns of new words from the start, rather than in a remedial lesson months later.

Raising student's awareness of these forms, whenever they arise, is the first step towards helping your learners to speak a little more naturally. Even if they do not assimilate these forms at first, "...in many cases, the simple awareness of their existence can help enormously in enabling students to better understand the language they hear." (Gerald Kelly- "How to Teach Pronunciation.")

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Eriberto Do Nascimento

Eriberto Do Nascimento has Ph.D. in Speech Intelligibility and Artificial Intelligence and is the founder of English Phonetics Academy

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Tag: connected speech

Action research: pronunciation project #2.

This is the second in a series of posts documenting a mini research project I’m doing with a group of C1/C2 students to see how effective explicit pronunciation instruction activities can be. If you haven’t already, please read the first post to get a better idea of the methods I’m using. Download the slides and handout for this second mini lesson plan below:

Full credit to Mark Hancock for the excellent -ed endings maze, you can get it and many more from this excellent website he runs together with Annie McDonald. You can also get loads more great materials from his Instagram page . If you get the chance to attend one of his seminars/webinars, go for it, loads of great ideas.

This particular lesson plan focuses on -ed endings of regular verbs and consonant to vowel linking in phrasal verbs. If you’re following along with the project with your students, please let me know how it’s going in the comments.

Action Research: Pronunciation Project

This is the first of a series of blog posts I plan to write on a little pronunciation project I’m going to run with a C1/C2 group of Catalan/Spanish speaking students. If you’d like to try to run the same experiment with your own groups, you can download the materials I’m going to use at the bottom of this post.

How much can high-level students’ spoken pronunciation be improved by explicit focus on connected speech during class time? The plan is to use both reactive teaching/error correction and explicit, mini-lessons on specific elements of connected speech to work on students’ spoken output. Their progress will then be tracked through the use of submitted voice recordings.

Baseline Level

In order to gauge students current level of spoken pronunciation, I wrote a text, which you’ll find below, that contains many elements of connected speech:

Dusty Dreams

I have always wanted to play in a rock and roll band but I can’t seem to find the time to practice enough. If you don’t put in the hours, you’re always going to put off fulfilling an ambition. I want to do it, but the harder I try to pick up the guitar, the busier I get, and at the weekends I tend to go out most nights and those dreams are left back in the corner gathering dust with my guitar.

In class today I collected their baseline recordings. They completed a simple comprehension task on the text, then each recorded themselves reading the text on their own mobile phones and sent me the resulting audio file.

I will also have them record themselves completing a Cambridge “long turn” task during the next class in order to gather a non-scripted sample of their spoken output.

Pronunciation Development

The pronunciation work students will complete will take a number of forms:

• Explicit teaching of sentence stress, weak forms, and other elements of connected speech.
• Use of tubequizard.com in their free time as ear-training/decoding.
• Exposure to a “model” version of the target text, read by me, for students to compare/mimic.
• Activities and worksheets such as Mark Hancock and Annie McDonald’s mazes.
• Reactive hot and cold error correction.

Tracking Development

The idea is to spend 15-20 mins a week explicitly focusing on pronunciation and then have students rerecord the original “Dusty Dreams” text in 6-8 weeks and compare the second recording to their original. I will also periodically collect long turn attempts to track the progress of more spontaneous/authentic speech. I also plan to use other texts or dialogue transcripts for later recordings as well as tracking students’ scores on C2 Proficiency reading comprehension tasks.

This is my first real attempt at action research, I’m probably doing a bunch of stuff wrong, but it’s exciting and my students seem to be up to the challenge! I’ll keep you posted.

If you’d like to follow along with your own students, you can download the first lesson plan, with the baseline text and a micro-lesson on weak forms of “to” and “for”, below:

Feel free to comment or give advice!

Listening: I got double-scammed!

Image Credit:  blogs.thisismoney.co.uk

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This is a listening lesson for high B1+. I designed this lesson for my DELTA receptive skills assessed class. It’s based around a listening text from  Speak Out Upper-Intermediate (Pearson), in which a woman describes how she had her bag stolen while sitting in a café. I chose this text because this type of crime is an extremely common occurence here in Barcelona.

Below you can download the lesson procedure, students’ and teachers’ handout, an annotated version of the transcript and the listening file.

Lesson Procedure 

Lisas bad day student handout 

Lisas bad day Teacher’s copy

The most important thing to bear in mind is that this is a class which focuses on developing students’ listening skills rather than simply testing their comprehension of a text so feel free to replay sections of the text as many times as it takes for them to get the message.

It’s important to follow the steps as laid out in the procedure. The pre-listening tasks, in which students make predictions about what will happen next, aid students in their comprehension as they are given the opportunity to apply their own knowledge and experience to the text.

After listening the language focus section on connected speech will help students to identify and decipher fast connetced speech, for example, the pronunciation of past modals “can’t/must/might have”. I’m currently working on my grammar assessment class in which I will come back to past modals of speculation. It should make a good follow-up class to this one so watch this space.

Sandy Millin: Advanced Pronunciation

Check out this great lesson plan from Sandy Millin on advanced pronunciation. Students are introduced to different forms of connected speech and put it into practice by transcribing part of a listening text.