Schwa Function Words – Session
DATE: 6th February (Tuesday)
TIME: 10:00-10:30 (London)
TEACHER: Joseph Hudson
The live session has now finished, subscribers can watch a video of the presentation section on the link below. If you’d like to take the session as a 121 class, also see the links below.
IN BRIEF:
Many little function words are pronounced with /ə/ in connected speech. In this practice session we will:
- Recognise words that can be weak.
- Do drills to make the pronunciation smooth and fast.
IN DETAIL:
In English connected speech, our words squash together, with most sentences/units of speech having just one or two stresses.
Everything around these stresses tends to weaken, and some function words are particularly likely to do this such as:
- for /fə/
- to /tə/
- can /kən/
- are /ə/
- some /səm/
- but /bət/
In this session we will learn how to make these and many more words weak using sentence stress rhythm drills.
