| Book of the Month | ||
| Test your Pronunciation | |
Publisher: Penguin English Guides
Author: Michael Vaughan-Rees
90 pages
Price £10.00 (with CD)
ISBN 0 582 46904 X
As most students discover, English pronunciation is difficult. The main river in England, the Thames, is pronounced 'Tems', and 'read' is pronounced one way in the present tense, and another way in the past tense. Then there are words like 'record' that are pronounced differently if they are verbs or nouns. There are sentences such as 'I thought I knew' which, depending how it is said, means either that the speaker did know, or that he didn't. Because pronunciation is so difficult, you need help. Meet Mr Michael Vaughan-Rees, who has written Test your Pronunciation to help with some of the strange ways that words are pronounced in English
This book is one of the new series of 'Test your ..'. books. They are like the 'Test your Vocabulary' books by Peter Watcyn-Jones which were popular with students all around the world. The new series of books is not just about vocabulary, but also has books that test your idioms, listening, phrasal verbs and grammar. The first thing you will discover about the pronunciation book is that it is not just about pronouncing words. There are just as many exercises for rhythm and stress in a sentence. (Rhythm is which words you say together or separately, such as 'howdoyoudo, MrsSmith?'. Stress is which words, or parts of words, which you emphasize.) The CD is very important for this, in fact, it is probably more important than the book.
The book has 60 exercises, and the answers are given in the back. You need the CD for some of the exercises, and with some others you can use it, but you don't have to. The exercises are of eight different kinds - vowels and consonants; rhyming words; stress in words, stress in sentences; weak and strong vowels; normal fast speech; numbers; and phonetic letters. It is very important to learn the phonetic alphabet, because normal letters are pronounced differently in different countries - Japanese, Germans and Italians all say letter 'w' differently, for example.
Though you have eight kinds of exercise, they are not in eight sections - they are mixed up through the book. You could probably start anywhere in the book and do the exercises, or you can concentrate on the exercises that do the kind of pronunciation you want to improve. Not all exercises take the same time. You can do some in 5 minutes, and some will take 15 minutes. There are lots of black and white drawings in the book, and some exercises have a lot of white space (empty parts of the page). The book is an exercise book, meaning that you are supposed to write in it. Remember to use a light pencil if yoiu want someone to use it after you!
The CD has over thirty listening exercises of between one and three minutes. You will hear a number of voices, though there is not a lot of difference in their accents. However, the exercises are useful, and the CD gives a lot of extra value to the book. It is an ordinary audio CD using .cda tracks, so you can use it in a stereo or in a computer with a sound card.
This book is not for elementary students or beginners. This is because some of the vocabulary is too advanced. For the same reason young readers will not really enjoy this book either. It is written to be used by teenagers or older people. If you are going to do an English exam, this book will help PET and FCE students with their orals, but remember oral exams are about much more than pronunciation. If you are a teacher, there is a cheaper version of this book without the CD that you can tell your class to get. You can easily do one pronunciation lesson a week for a term. If you are studying by yourself, and you are not sure if you need the book, look at the writer's name again. How do you pronounce 'Vaughan-Rees'?
Verdict If you have a teacher who is a native speaker, this book is useful, but not necessary. If you have no one else to help you, this book will..
Assessment 9/10