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Helping students with connected speech

There is a huge difference between what our students see printed on a page and what we actually say in everyday speech.

In a recording of a TESOL Spain Presentation on Youtube (well worth watching), Mark Hancock makes the following joke:

Patient: Doctor, Doctor, I’ve got two theik, a near rake, sore rise, bruise darms a stummer cake and I far tall the time.

Doctor: I see, perhaps you’d like to way tin the corridor?

(Try reading it aloud)

The joke [apologies for the vulgarity 😉 ] showcases a good number of examples of features of connected speech. Teacher can tend to shy away from highlighting these in the classroom, but research shows that teaching learners about connected speech can really make a difference in terms of how well they understand native speakers. See for example, Authentic Communication: whyzit important ta teach reduced forms (Brown 2006) . Equally, some ability to use these features in their own speech will also be likely to make students more confident and fluent speakers.

Features of connected speech

As a brief overview, there is a strong tendency in English to simplify and link words together in the stream of speech, in order to help the language flow rhythmically. Some of the most common features:

Assimilation

This is when the sound at the end of one word changes to make it easier to say the next word. For example:

‘ten boys’ sounds like ‘ tem boys’ (the /n/ sound changes to the bilabial /m/ to make it easier to transition to the also bilabial /b/)

Incidentally bilabial just means two lips together, which is a good example of the kind of jargon that puts people off!

This is when the last consonant of the first word is joined to the first vowel of the next word. This is very very common in English, and can be very confusing for students. For example:

‘an apple’ sounds like ‘a napple’ (Teacher, what is a napple?)

Elision means that you lose a sound in the middle of a consonant cluster, sometimes from the middle of a word. E.g. ‘sandwich’ becomes ‘sanwich’.

Or from the end of a word. For example:

‘fish and chips’ ‘fishnchips’

This is when an extra sound ‘intrudes’. There are three sounds that often do this /r/ /j/ and /w/

E.g. ‘go on’ sounds like ‘gowon’

I agree sounds like ‘aiyagree’

Law and order sounds like ‘lawrunorder’

[I probably should have used a phonemic keyboard!]

If you want to discover more about features of connected speech- and I think it’s fascinating stuff, there’s a list of useful books at the end of the post, but now let’s look at some activities to help raise awareness and encourage more natural sounding speech.

Connected speech activities

I remember reading somewhere that there are three ways to deal with pronunciation in the classroom: integrating it into other activities, dealing with it discretely, and completely ignoring it. 😉 Let’s assume we aren’t going to do the latter, and look at the other two approaches.

Integrated activities

I strongly believe that students should be made aware of the basics of connected speech right from the start. I don’t mean that you should be teaching your beginners exactly what catenation is, but you can certainly show them how words link together and what happens to sounds in the stream of speech. You don’t have to be an expert, and you don’t even need to know very much about the technical aspects; you just need to listen to yourself very carefully and notice what is happening in your mouth as you speak.

Drilling and using the board

At lower levels, we tend to teach quite a lot of functional chunks, such as ‘What’s your name?’ Phonetically that could be transcribed as /wɔ:tsjəneɪm/. However, this is likely to confuse (terrify) the students. Instead, using the board, you can just show the students how the words link by using arrows, and write the schwa /ə/over the top of ‘your’ . Alternatively, you can use your fingers to show how the three words (separate fingers) meld into one long sound (push fingers together). And model and drill the phrase as it is said naturally.

If students struggle with longer phrases, try the technique of back-chaining, starting from the last sound and working up to the whole sound bit by bit. For example with ‘Where do you come from?’ you drill ‘frum’ ‘kumfrum’ ‘dz-kumfrum’ ‘where-dz-kumfrum’ I have no idea why this works- but it does.

Using recording scripts

Where new language has been recorded (or by recording it yourself), ask students to first look at the chunk of language written down and try saying it a few times. Then play the recording several times and ask them to write down what they hear, however they want to spell it. Use the two written forms to elicit the differences (such as the use of the schwa) and then drill the more natural pronunciation. You could of course just say the phrase for them, but it can be hard to keep repeating something exactly the same way.

Make it part of presenting new language

Whenever you are dealing with new language, you need to be thinking about the meaning, the form AND the pronunciation. So if you’re teaching ‘Have you ever + past participle’, make sure you’re teaching it as something like /əvju:w’evə/ not ‘Have… you… ever…’ You don’t need to explain that the first /h/ is elided or that there’s an intrusive /w/- just provide a good model.

Incidentally, I say ‘something like’ because individual ways of connecting and simplifying speech do vary a bit.

Be aware of the difficulties connected speech may cause with listening

If students struggle to understand something in a recording, or that you say, be aware that they may actually know all the words, just not recognise them in the stream of speech. A great example of this is the student who asked me what ‘festival’ meant. I went into an explanation, giving examples of different festivals…but teacher, he said, why do you always say it at the beginning of the lesson? (I was saying First of all…).

If students don’t understand a phrase, see if they do understand it written down and then take the opportunity to highlight the differences between the written and spoken forms.

Discrete activities

As well as teaching connected speech as you go along, it is also worth doing some discrete activities for the purpose of awareness-raising.

A good activity to start learners thinking about connected speech and weak forms is to dictate just part of some phrases. For example: ‘uvbin’. After students have written these down as best they can (this should be a light-hearted activity), you dictate the full phrase, in this case ‘I’ve been to Paris.’.
After doing a listening activity, try doing a dictation where you handout the recording script, with chunks of 2-3 words missing. These should include some aspects of connected speech. Students have to complete the gaps, which will help to develop their decoding skills.
Mark Hancock has some great activities in Pronunciation Games and on the HancockMacDonald website. I particularly like The Word Blender , a game for A2/B1 students which starts to help students identify some of the features of connected speech.

This is necessarily a very brief and somewhat simplistic overview. For more information and ideas, you could try:

Sound Foundations- Adrian Underhill- Macmillan

Pronunciation- Dalton and Seidlhofer- OUP

Pronunciation Games- Mark Hancock-CUP

Sharon Noseley-Kallandzhs’ DELTA Phonology_Assignment_and_Lesson_Plan

Sharon Noseley-Kallandzhs’ powerpoint on features of connected speech

If you are currently taking CELTA, can I suggest my e-book, The CELTA Teaching Compendium, available from Amazon and Smashwords , containing everything you need to know for CELTA teaching practice.

46 responses to “ Helping students with connected speech ”

Thanks for this Rachel this is really useful for me as some of my students have been having listening issues and they seem to stem from their inability to distinguish words from each other. They know they words they just hear them all together! I confessed that I wasn’t the best versed in how to teach connected speech (and week sentence stress) as for some reasons it wasn’t an issue I came across that often in Ukraine (but have much more here in Spain yet Russian is suppose to not really have sentence stress where as Spanish does, though very different.) I wonder if certain nation groups find it easier than others. What has your/other peoples experience been?

Hi Chris, Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I think that all languages have features of connected speech, but perhaps it is more of an issue in a more stress-timed language like English, because we have to ‘mash’ words together in order to keep the rhythm, whereas a more syllable timed language (like Spanish), pronounces each syllable more clearly.I understand that Russian is supposed to be more stress-timed, so that may explain the difference you perceive. Incidentally, the whole syllable or stress-timed thing is a bit of a mine-field as the distinction isn’t clear cut, it seems to be more of a continuum. The clearest contrast I have found is between European Portuguese (more stress timed) and Brazilian Portuguese (more syllable timed) and certainly in my experience it is easier for the Portuguese to produce English- sounding connected speech.

I thought it was the other way round with Spanish and Russian (which shows my lack of research but definitely explains a lot including why I found Russian easier to distinguish words from each other.) Can’t believe I got it the wrong way round!

You just made me go and check in case it was me- which is the problem with jargon!

thanks rachael, like chris i found this another informative post. and many thanks for link to the hancockmacdonald site and that great word blender activity. i often refer to the phonology section in Learner English by Swan and Smith but it does not have any refs to connected speech. ta mura

Hi Mura, No, I noticed that Learner English doesn’t mention this when I looked up Portuguese to make sure I had it right. I love Mark Hancock’s stuff- little known fact- I used a lot of his stuff before Pronunciation Games was published as he and his partner, Annie MacDonald, were colleagues at Cultura Inglesa in Brazil.

following up the video link to Mark Hancock’s Spain talk found a great guide on “vulnerable” phonemes that I could use to help my students (have updated my accent post to inculde link to the relevant part of the video http://wp.me/pgHyE-9S ) ta mura

Good idea to add this link- thank you.

Thanks Rachael for bringing our attention to an issue that is often overlooked in EFL classrooms.As said it is not just for speaking but listening too..I’ve uploaded my mega assignment for my DELTA on phonology which led to a connected speech focused lesson..the plan took so long because I had to start off teaching the IPA then move on..loved Mark Hancock’s CDs and exercises btw..they were a great help to prepare the class for a connected speech lesson.. I had to upload it to your fb page as couldn’t work it out here! Keep up the great work on your blog!

I am looking forward to seeing the assignment- will try to upload it here. Personally, I love connected speech, but realise it can be very off-putting at first.

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One of my favourite topics Rachael – another great post. Also loved the ‘festival’ example. Brilliant.

Thanks, Sophia- one of mine too.. evangelising in fact!

Another great post, Rachael and some new (for me) terms. “Catenation” ? I would have thought [I woodathought] it was a medical procedure 🙂

Connected speech is one of the topics I personally find very interesting too. Most of my adult students have major difficulties understanding spoken language (for example, in films) due to the features of connected speech you outlined above. I’ll be sure and integrate your suggestions into my lessons. Thank you.

LOL It does sound like a very uncomfortable medical procedure! It is certainly important, and yet often overlooked.

Love this kind of ongoing dialogue in the comments section. Just wanted to add the pointing out how some of these connected speach ideas play out in the L1 is often helpful to get students feeling a bit more comfortable with their use in the L2. Most learners are not aware of the fact that these are feautures found in their own language. For example in Japanese, there are reduced vowels that undergo elision (the fist /u/ in Tsukue) and there is assimilation as well just as Brown mention in the article the /n/ can become /m/. By having the students break down these feautures in their own language, it can help reduce the feeling that English is a particulary nasty language which, in its spoken form is somehow just trying to trip a learner up. That being said, these features do seem to be a bit more prominent in English than say in Japanese.

Yes, I think that’s a very good point! I think students definitely can feel that English pronunciation is a special circle of hell.. It can also help, I think, to point out that connected speech is how we make it EASIER to say things.

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it was very useful for me .. i felt this was the reason of success…thanks alot.. goppu wadwal

Reblogged this on New Teaching Era .

Hi Rachel, Great blog and a lovely post – as a teacher and trainer quite terrified of teaching pronunciation, you’ve given me some great inspiration and I’ll be trying out some of these ideas very soon. I promise 🙂 Great links and resources too btw, thanks again! Gabrielle

Thanks, Gabrielle. I think it can all be rather intimidating, and I have plenty of my own no go areas!

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Thanks, Lizzie, and may i recommend your DELTA posts too.

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Hi Rachael, am Emmanuel from Nigeria you jut help me understood what connected speech is all about,you a the best and am happy you made me understood more God bless you.

Thanks, Emmanuel 🙂

Excellent blog! Thanks for creating it. What, do you think, is the order of difficulty level (context: non-natives listening to natives of English) amongst the 4: Rhythm, Elision, Assimilation and Linking?

Many thanks, Naveed. I would guess that rhythm is probably the easiest to ‘get’ followed by linking, and assimilation and elision the hardest..which is why I think the latter two are probably best taught mainly for receptive use.

There are some activities that I’ve already been doing and there are also some new ones. I really like The Word Blender activity. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to just drilling your students with words. I’m sure my students will enjoy this.

Reblogged this on Kaur Gibbons' Thoughts and commented: Useful for my recent pronunciation workshops.

very useful 🙂

Thanks soo much Rachael. i need more information about connected speech. would you?

I can recommend some reading if that helps?

This is such a great page 🙂 I was freaking out about phonology as I’m taking my delta soon. Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Hi, Rachel! I really like your blog! I was wondering if you could give me any help on how to work with connected speech for my 9th graders class, relating to the question forms DID YOU. I would appreciate if you could help me! Thank you very much!!!!!!

Hi Rachel! First of all I’d like to thank you for you blog. I have been reading many articles and things you write. I really enjoyed it and I am learning a lot. As connected speech is something new for lesson plans, I would like to know if you have any suggestions about how to work the connected speech of DID YOU with my students who are A2. Thanks very much for your contribution!!!

Hi Fernanda,

The final sound of did and the first sound of you can kind of meld together to produce a /dz/ sound, but some people would keep the ‘yuh’ sound. The most important thing, I think is the weak vowel in ‘you’. So you end up with something that sounds like ‘didja’. Sorry, out and about, so can’t use phonemic script, but hope that helps.

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Hi Rachel, I find the post really useful. One thing I also do is reproduce the chunk as a similar phrase/word in Spanish (from Argentina). Sometimes regular phrases can sound like taboo expressions, so I’m careful about teens, but it does work, because the places of articulation are the same. For example, “What’s your” name?” would sound something like “guacho” name (guacho=bastard) Or funny sounds like: “Could you” spell it? = “cuchu” spell it (and that makes most students burst out laughing, although later, when listening to native speakers, they spot exactly that sound)

Thanks, Cecilia. I can imagine that your students find this approach memorable 😉

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Hi Rachel, your post was really helpful, i’m teaching my students about connected speech and what i’m looking for is a text that contains some examples of the connected speech phenomena, so that i can use it to assess their progress. if you have such an activity i would be thankful thank you 🙂

Any audio where the pronunciation is reasonably natural will contain examples of connected speech. There are lots of examples where this has been highlighted and made a lesson focus in the Navigate coursebook series I worked on, or may I recommend TubeQuizard http://www.tubequizard.com/ , which takes snippets of youtube videos and exploits them to work on pronunciation for listening.

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New Ways in Teaching Connected Speech

May 2013 – volume 17, number 1.

Pages	ISBN	Price

	James Dean Brown, Editor (2012)
	Alexandria, Virginia: TESOL International Association
362 pages	978-1-9311-8576-9	$49.95 USD

The field of second language (L2) pronunciation instruction has benefited greatly from an increasing amount of research and attention in the last ten years. Before this, the field suffered from a narrow approach to pronunciation featuring a dominant emphasis on students sounding native-like. However, in the last ten years, a paradigm shift has occurred bringing focus to aspects of intelligibility and comprehensibility (Derwing & Munro, 2005; Levis, 2005). With the focus of L2 pronunciation research and instruction shifting, areas of word stress, intonation, connected speech, and suprasegmentals have seen much more exposure in scholarly articles and pronunciation instruction texts. These changes have resulted in the publication of New Ways in Teaching Connected Speech (2012). This book offers an extensive amount of pronunciation lessons created by teachers for teachers of a range of proficiency levels (i.e., beginner to advanced). The editor suggests that connected speech is not simply a marker for casual, less formal speech, but is instead present in all situations of language use to some degree. By enabling students to utilize rules for connected speech in English, teachers can provide their students with a means for being perceived as more intelligible and comprehensible.

The organization of this text allows a teacher to more succinctly target aspects of connected speech in need of instruction for students and to address those needs appropriately with provided lessons. The book features three major sections: Getting Ready for Connected Speech, Connected Speech, Mechanisms, and Putting Connected Speech All Together . These sections raise students’ awareness of unique traits for spoken English, providing guided practice with principles for connected speech, and joining these principles from connected speech in meaningful lessons. Within each major section of the text, there exist smaller sections devoted to more particular aspects within connected speech. These smaller sections consist of lessons, or modules, ranging in length from 15 to 90 minutes of class time. These lessons are meant to provide teachers resources for teaching important aspects of connected speech in the classroom. This review attempts to give readers a glimpse into what the book provides by highlighting a few lessons that represent the underlying approach to teaching connected speech within the book.

The first section of the book prepares learners to distinguish between written and spoken English. In the module Listening for Connected Speech , learners are given a checklist featuring twelve forms of connected speech preceded by their written forms. Before the listening activity, the teacher reviews each of the items on the list to prime students before engaging in listening. Along with this list, a script for recording is provided so that teachers can target the specific connected speech forms in a more contextualized manner. As the prerecorded passage is played, learners check yes or no as to whether they heard each connected speech example on the checklist. Finally, a paused-play review of the passage provides teachers the opportunity to help students heighten their awareness of connected speech as it exists in natural spoken language. This module serves as an exemplary for the targeted nature and ease of use for the rest of the modules within the first section of the book. The first section of the book provides meaningful context and guided practice for students who are unfamiliar with connected speech as a language phenomenon.

The Connected Speech Mechanisms section utilizes different aspects of connected speech as areas of focus (e.g., stress and changing sounds). The Same Consonant Twice in a Row module focuses on transitions. Before engaging in a targeted listening activity, the teacher reviews lengthening consonants. A list of examples is provided to draw students’ awareness to how this transitioning occurs in connected speech with different consonant types (i.e., stops, fricatives, and affricates). Students are then given a worksheet where two words in each numbered sentence have been removed. The object of the worksheet task is to engage students in targeted listening for instances where speakers transition from one word to another, blending the last phoneme from the initial word with the first phoneme of the following word (i.e., Bob Brown to /bab:raun/). A script is provided for the teacher to record and provide students context. This type of activity encourages a heightened awareness of the differing aspects of connected speech. It provides teachers with a short activity where students are presented with a description of and rules for connected speech forms, provided time for practicing listening for the forms, and given guidance in working with the contextualized use of connected speech.

The purpose of the modules and activities in the final section, Putting Connected Speech All Together , is to apply learned knowledge from the sound discrimination activities in earlier lessons of the book to producing and self-assessing those features in students’ own connected speech. One module repeated throughout the book is a Connected Speech Diary module. The activity engages students in meaningful reflection on the aspects and forms of connected speech learned in each section. By having students keep a diary, they can develop a metacognitive awareness of the ways in which connected speech is used in English and how they do or do not use connected speech in their own language use. The diary prompt for this section asks students to make note of modal and auxiliary verb phrases in their connected speech diary. Students are also asked to practice the phrases they have identified and reflect on whether the phrases pronounced are either similar to or different than the context where they were heard. This activity type is extremely valuable in solidifying the connections between connected speech forms and contexts of use.

One caveat for the book is its attention to listening activities over speaking activities. However, perception training is empirically supported as it contributes to a learner’s ability in pronunciation (Bradlow, et al., 1997). Additionally, the level of proficiency prescribed by lesson writers may need to be reconsidered by teachers using the book. Lessons rely on pre-existing knowledge of metalanguage (e.g., syllable, and schwa) and teachers must consider this when deciding how to utilize lessons in their classrooms. Because some teachers might lack training with teaching this terminology and the terminology itself, providing a working glossary for these terms might improve the practicality of the book. Overall, the book is quite accessible for beginning and experienced teachers.

By describing connected speech, providing listening and speaking practice with guidance, and giving teachers materials for classroom use, this book contributes greatly to the field of pronunciation instruction. These tenets of instruction are known to be integral in improving students’ pronunciation for higher intelligibility and comprehensibility (Celce-Murcia, et al., 2010). The book is an extremely beneficial addition to any pronunciation, speaking, listening, or integrated skills course and features information and activities that will certainly address a commonly forgotten aspect of spoken English. Language instructors in ESL and EFL contexts can begin to develop a broader sense of spoken American English among their students by using the lessons in this book as a guide to connected speech. The authors’ students have responded positively to the implementation of lessons from the book and most students have commented on their increased desire to learn more about this part of English that is so often overlooked.

Bradlow, A., Pisoni, D. B., Akahane-Yamada, R., & Tohkura, Y. (1997) Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: IV. Some effects of perceptual learning on speech production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America , 101, pp. 2299–2310.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., Goodwin, J., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A course book and reference guide. (2nd edition?). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2005). Second language accent and pronunciation teaching: A research‐based approach. TESOL Quarterly, 39 (3), 379-397.

Levis, J. M. (2005). Changing contexts and shifting paradigms in pronunciation teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 39 (3), 369-377.

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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.

textploitation

A library of free efl lessons, each one dedicated to using texts to their full potential in the classroom., video lesson – catch it if you can – connected speech.

Last year I attended a really good CPD session given by a colleague on using video clips in the classroom, I’ve never been a fan of using whole films in class, as I have always seen it as a cop out, but the focus on using short clips or parts of films really struck a chord with me and so I started thinking about how I could use them not just to stimulate interest in a topic or for comprehension questions but how it could be used for pronunciation practice. So, this lesson focuses on connected speech and listening skills using video. It uses a clip from Catch me if you can, which you may have been able to guess from the title.

Time : 30-60mins
Level : High Int +
Aim : To raise awareness of how spoken English sounds
Sub aim : To highlight stressed and unstressed words

This mini lesson can work in a couple of contexts:

as a follow on to indirect questions practice
as an extension from FCE Result p58-59 (reading on cons and tricks)

Materials :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiXTwfipyqk

1. Listening: Students watch and listen to get a general idea of what is happening. Some of the students have probably seen the film and they can help those who haven’t, explaining the context and the situation.

2, Vocab building (optional): Encourage students to think about how they would describe the two characters and their behaviour. Board interesting vocab and push students to use more interesting words to describe them, e.g. calm, stressed, hesitant, looks annoyed.

3. Listening (Test): Tell students they are going to watch a very small clip of the film and you want them to copy down the words (dictation/dictagloss if they are familiar with the terms).

Play the recording from 43 seconds where Leo says: “Do you mind taking that gun out of my face please, really, it makes me nervous.” When you have played it once, ask them to compare together, then you can play it again to help them if you want, or use the worksheet with the option to cut the words up to reconstruct the sentence if you want to scaffold the task a little.

(Teach) Students may have had problems hearing the “do you mind” so focus on this and explain the way it is pronounced and drill /ʤə mɪnd/ or /ʤuː mɪnd/ whichever you yourself normally use, personally I am the former and think that is what is on the recording.

( Test) Play students a different clip of the film at 1.35 – 1.58 and ask them to listen for the two polite questions that are used in the clip you show. Ask them to check with partners and then listen again if necessary. Hopefully this time they were able to pick up the question forms, so this time highlight what happens to ‘mind if I’ – /maɪnɪfaɪ/ and drill this.

4. Practice: 1.Give the students the block of text and ask them to record themselves saying it. Then ask them to highlight which words are stressed, ask them to predict and then play it to check and you can either use the board to show them or use the answers provided here. Ask them to think about what happens to words like ‘and’, ‘a’ – if they know the schwa they should be able to see this, if not, here is a good moment to introduce it.

Also ask them to focus on what happens to groups of words like ‘look at’, ‘would have been’ and ‘got to’. Show them the clip again and ask them to identify the sounds and how they join together and which sounds are used. See below.

look at – /lʊkət/, would have been – /wʊdəbɪn/, got to – /gɒtə/ 2. Now ask them to say the text in pairs using the correct stress and also trying to join the words together where they are in the recording.

3. Ask the students to think about the adjectives they used earlier and think about how this might influence the way they speak. Ask the students to try to do the text again, taking both the stress and the emotions into account.

4. Ask them to stand up and do it, so that they can really get into it.

5. Ask them to do it without the script, tell them to adlib if they forget parts 6. Ask them to sit down and to record it again.

5. Reflection: Ask the students to listen to both recordings and in pairs discuss how they differ. Ask them which was better and why. Also explain that knowing the pronunciation is really useful for their listening, as if they don’t know what to hear, how will they hear it?

Many of the ideas for this lesson stem from sessions given by Gillian Lazar and Martin Parrott, so thanks to them!

Connected speech

If anything in the first part of this guide is unfamiliar to you, you should probably take a little time to refresh your memory concerning the essential concepts in phonology. You can open that guide in a new tab by clicking here . You should also have worked through the guide to consonants and the guide to vowels (both new tabs) before tackling this. It is also assumed, in what follows, that you can read and write phonemic transcription.

Connected Speech phenomena occur where words meet. The first distinction to get clear is that of the pronunciation of a word in isolation and in a stream of speech. For example, if you read the words on this list aloud, one at a time, you will probably be pronouncing them in what is called their 'canonical', 'citation' or 'isolation' form. Here's the list to try. If you can, transcribe the words on a piece of paper as you pronounce them. Click here when you have done that .

The pronunciation you used is probably as follows:

	/ɑːr/		/biːn/
	/hæv/		/ðæt/
	/frɒm/		/ænd/
	/ten/		/ˈbɒt.l̩z/

Now memorise this sentence and then say it aloud at normal speed, contracting any words you can.

I have been to town and here are the ten bottles of beer I said that I would get from the shop.

That probably would have been pronounced something like this:

/ aɪv bɪn tə taʊn ənd hɪər ə ðə tem ˈbɒt.l̩z əv bɪər ˈaɪ ˈ seðət aɪd ˈɡet frəm ðə ʃɒp/

Look at the parts in black in that transcription and compare them to the transcription of the isolated forms of the words. What do you notice? Click here when you have an answer .

Full form	Contracted	Transcription	Full form	Contracted	Transcription	Full form	*Contracted	Transcription	Full form	Contracted	Transcription
		/aɪm/			/aɪv/			/aɪd/			/lets/
		/jə(r)/			/juːv/			/juːd/		†	/nt/
		/hiːz/			/hiːz/			/hiːd/			/l/
		/ʃiːz/			/ʃiːz/			/ʃiːd/		‡	/də/
		/ɪts/			/ɪts/			/ˈɪ.təd/		§	/s/
		/wɪə(r)/			/wiːv/			/wiːd/			/baʊt/
		/ðeə(r)/			/ðeɪv/			/ˈðeɪd/			/ə/

Weak forms: in normal speech been (usually /biːn/) is weakened to /bɪn/ . There are other examples in this sentence : to is weakened to /tə/ and is weakened to /ənd/ (and in some pronunciations may simply be /n/) are is weakened to /ə/ the is weakened to /ðə/ of is weakened to /əv/ that is weakened /ðət/ from is weakened to /frəm/
Other changes: The pronunciation of ten bottles is changed from the expected /ten.ˈbɒt.l̩z/ to /tem.ˈbɒt.l̩z/ . The pronunciation of said that is changed from the expected /ˈsed.ðæt/ to /ˈse.ðæt/.

To explain why all these changes have occurred, we need to look at the features of connected speech in English.

There are six main areas to understand.

The most common weak forms use the schwa (/ə/) so, for example: for is pronounced /fə/ are is pronounced /ə/ to is pronounced /tə/ but is pronounced /bət/ (before a vowel), or /bə/ in other environments and so on.
There are other weakenings, such as the replacement of the /iː/ in been with the shortened /ɪ/ sound. The word our in its full form is pronounced /ˈaʊə/ in isolation but is usually weakened to /ə/ or /ɑː/ in connected speech. Most of these weak forms affect structural words rather than meaning-carrying words but the reduction of the sound at the end of father with the elision of the /r/ before a non-vocalic sound (in British English) is also an example of weakening and another feature of connected speech (elision). For a list of the commonest weak forms in English, click here .

BROADLY STRESS-TIMED LANGUAGES	BROADLY SYLLABLE-TIMED LANGUAGES
ARABIC (with variations) CATALAN DUTCH ENGLISH GERMAN PERSIAN (FARSI / DARI / TAJIK) PORTUGUESE (EUROPEAN) RUSSIAN SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES	CHINESE LANGUAGES (also tonal) FRENCH GREEK INDIAN LANGUAGES ITALIAN JAPANESE PORTUGUESE (BRAZILIAN) SPANISH SWAHILI THAI (also tonal) TURKISH VIETNAMESE (also tonal) WEST AFRICAN LANGUAGES

Special or contrastive stress Occasionally, stress may be moved on an utterance for contrastive reasons as in, for example: A: Did sh e say she came from London ? B: No, she said she came TO London. in which the stress in B's contribution is unusual because the speaker is placing emphasis on the preposition and it is pronounced forcefully in its full form to make that clear. In normal circumstances the word is pronounced as /tə/ in connected speech but here it is /tuː/.

Progressive assimilation Sounds may change because the speaker is influenced by the preceding sound, i.e., the influence is working from left to right in the phrase. For example, try saying There's not much cider left quickly and focus on how the 'c' in cider is pronounced. If you say cider individually, the 'c' is pronounced /s/ as one expects (/ˈsaɪ.də/). However, in this environment, the influence of the /tʃ/ at the end of much means that the 'c' in cider is pronounced as if it were 'sh', as /ʃ/. The transcription is, then, not /ðeəz.nɒt.ˈmʌtʃ.ˈsaɪ.də.left/ but /ðeəz.nɒt.ˈmʌtʃ.ˈʃaɪ.də.left/ A simple example of progressive assimilation occurs with the pronunciation of a plural 's' in English. For example, words ending in unvoiced consonants such as /t/, /k/ or /p/ will make the plural 's' pronounced as /s/: hats and coats (/hæts.ənd.kəʊts/) talks and walks (/tɔːks.ənd.wɔːks/) tops and tips (/tɒps.ənd.ˈtɪps/) but words ending with voiced consonants such as /d/, /ɡ/ or /b/ will have the 's' pronounced as /z/: odds and sods (/ɒdz.ənd.sɒdz/) lugs and mugs (/lʌɡz.ənd.mʌɡz/) bags and logs (/bæɡz.ənd.lɒɡz/) It's even easier to spot the difference in cats and dogs (/kæts.ənd.dɒɡz/) A similar pattern may be observed with the pronunciation of the regular past-tense ending in English. After unvoiced consonants, the - d or - ed ending is usually pronounced as /t/ as in: asked (/ɑːskt/) spaced (/speɪst/ tapped (/tæpt/) but following voiced consonants it is voiced as /d/ as in: clubbed (/klʌbd/) fazed (/feɪzd/) dragged (/dræɡd/)
Reciprocal assimilation Here, sounds influence each other and may fuse together. For example, try saying Won't you come with us quickly and note how won't you is pronounced. It is not /wəʊnt ju/ except in slow careful speech but is actually pronounced /wəʊntʃu/. What has happened is that the 't' and 'y' sounds have coalesced to make the /tʃ/ sound. (Reciprocal assimilation is sometimes called coalescent assimilation, for this reason.)

Before these sounds	this sound	assimilates to	for example	transcription
/m/, /b/, /p/	/n/	/m/		/ðem.beɪk.ɪt/
				/ðemˈpʊt.ɪt/
				/ðe.mɪks.ɪt/
	/t/	/p/ or /ʔ/		/ðəʔ.ˈmɪks.tʃə/
				/ðəp.bred/
				/ðəʔ.ˈpeɪ.pə/
	/d/	/b/ or /ʔ/		/mæʔ.mæn/
				/mæʔ.ˌbɔɪ/
				/mæb.ˈpɒ.lə.si/
/k/, /ɡ/	/n/	/ŋ/		/biːŋ.keɪks/
	/n/	/ŋ/		/biːŋ.ɡʊd/
	/t/	/k/ or /ʔ/		/ðəʔ.keɪk/
	/t/	/k/ or /ʔ/		/bək.ɡəʊ/
	/d/	/ɡ/		/beɡ.kləʊðz/
/j/	/t/	/tʃ/		/maɪtʃu/
/j/	/d/	/dʒ/		/hədʒu/
/ʃ/	/s/	/ʃ/		/ˈɡlɑː.ʃɒp/
/ʃ/	/z/	/ʃ/		/hæ.ʃʌt/

the s following an unvoiced consonant will be pronounced as /s/ so we get hat and hats (/hæt/ and/hæts/), make and makes (/ˈmeɪk/ and /ˈmeɪks/) and so on.
following a voiced consonant, however, s is usually voiced from /s/ to /z/ so we get rug and rugs (/rʌɡ/ and /rʌɡz/), cab and cabs (/kæb/ and /kæbz/) and so on.
some speakers carry this over to other sounds, particularly the /θ/ and may pronounce, for example, baths as /bɑːðz/ and youths as /juːðz/. Others will retain the /θ/ in the plural forms.
regressively, the /v/ in, for example, have is often devoiced before a voiceless consonant such as /t/ so the pronunciation of have to is /həf.tuː/ and love camping is /ˈlʌf.ˈkæmp.ɪŋ/. Not all speakers do this and many retain the voiced /v/ in such expressions.
a teaching point is that in some languages, German, Dutch, Polish and Russian, for example, a final consonant is always devoiced so, e.g., bag, club, has, had and cave may be pronounced as /bæk/, /klʌp/, /hæs/, /hət/, /keɪf/, respectively, instead of /bæɡ/, /klʌb/, /hæz/, /həd/ and /keɪv/.
Consonant lengthening This is a minor area in English (but not so in some languages). There are times when two non-plosive consonants occur together and, normally in rapid speech one of them is assimilated (or elided, depending on your point of view). So, for example: some milk is usually pronounced as /səm.ɪlk/ with only one /m/ sound. However, when people are being slightly more careful and speaking a little more slowly, both /m/ sounds are heard so the transcription is /səm.mɪlk/ and it would appear from that that there are two separate sounds in the middle of the phrase. What in fact frequently happens is not that we have two /m/ sounds but that we have a single sound slightly lengthened. The transcription is sometimes adjusted to take this into account and a length mark is inserted after the consonant so we get the transcription as /səmː.ɪlk/. The phenomenon is called gemination (from the Latin gemini , meaning twins). This sort of lengthening occurs most frequently with certain consonants because plosives such as /p/ cannot usually be lengthened. Some examples are: club bar /klʌb.bɑː/ mad demons /mæd.ˈdiː.mənz/ safe fire /seɪf.ˈfaɪə/ big gate /bɪɡ.ɡeɪt/ full label /fʊl.ˈleɪb.l̩/ warm margarine /wɔːm.ˌmɑː.dʒə.ˈriːn/ gin next /dʒɪn.nekst/ car research /kɑː.rɪ.ˈsɜːtʃ/ less sense /les.sens/ mash shop /mæʃ.ʃɒp/ cave visit /keɪv.ˈvɪ.zɪt/ and here we have followed the convention of transcribing both consonants although we are aware that in rapid speech one will not usually be sounded. In some languages, including Arabic, Danish, Estonian, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish and Turkish, consonant lengthening carries meaning so a short or long consonant are independent phonemes. In English, no such meaning attaches to a longer consonant so we are dealing with allophonic differences. The transcription of gemination is also covered in the course on learning to transcribe. It is barely necessary to teach this phenomenon, incidentally, as it is a natural product of connected speech.

Function word reduction occurs when all or part of a function word such as of is elided as in cup of coffee being pronounced cuppa coffee (/kʌpə ˈkɒ.fi/ In many cases the word and is reduced to 'n' as in tea 'n' cakes (/tiː n̩ keɪks/).
Polysyllabic word reduction occurs in our example of library as /ˈlaɪ.bri/ and also in many other longer words such as probably (/ˈprɒbli/), comfortable (/ˈkʌmf.təb.l̩/) etc.
Cluster reduction occurs when a consonant cluster, such as the one at the end of sixths , is simply difficult to pronounce. The result is usually something like /sɪkθs/ or even /sɪkfs/. Learners whose languages do not allow the same clusters as English are often tempted to use cluster reduction inappropriately, for example, pronouncing crisps as /krɪps/ rather than /krɪsps/. For more see the guides to syllables and phonotactics and the guide to teaching troublesome sounds (new tab for both links). It is usually /t/, /d/, /p/ and /k/ which are elided in this respect, so, for example: text message becomes /teks.ˈme.sɪdʒ/ midst becomes /mɪst/ glimpse becomes /ɡlɪms/ and asked can be pronounced /ˈɑːst/. A word that causes persistent problems is clothes because learners feel they should have a go at the consonant cluster at the end /kləʊðz/. In rapid speech, however, the word is often pronounced /kləʊz/ with the elision of the /ð/. If learners always say it that way, they will never be misunderstood and it's a good deal easier for them. The same phenomenon is observable with the unvoiced /θ/ sound so asthma is pronounced as /ˈæ.smə/. Occasionally, elision can become fixed in the language so, for example, the confection now known as ice cream was originally iced cream but the /t/ sound of the letter 'd' was routinely elided and the phrase took on its current spelling. There is some overlap and some debate about whether certain phenomena are examples of assimilation or simple elision. For example, in the table above, we have classified the dropping of the /s/ sound when it precedes /ʃ/ as a case of assimilation. So we get, e.g.: face shape pronounced as /feɪ.ʃeɪp/ rather than /feɪs.ʃeɪp/ At first sight this appears to be a case of elision because the /s/ is not changed, it is omitted entirely. However, there is some evidence that the /ʃ/ sound is lengthened in connected speech so the correct transcription might properly be /feɪsʃ.ʃeɪp/ retaining both instances of the phoneme and clearly constituting a change rather than an omission. We can avoid the debate altogether and simply refer to both phenomena as simplifications, of course. For teaching purposes, a technicality like this is not something on which to dwell.
Adjacent sound elision When the sound at the end of one stretch of language is the same as the one at the beginning of the next item, they are usually reduced to a single sound in connected speech so, for example: I'm meeting Mary is pronounced as: /aɪ.ˈmiːt.ɪŋ.ˈmeər.i/ not /aɪm.ˈmiːt.ɪŋ.ˈmeər.i/ and Don't take that table is pronounced as /dəʊn.teɪk.ðæ.ˈteɪb.l̩/ not /dəʊnt.teɪk.ðæt.ˈteɪb.l̩/ In the transcription here, we have removed the first of the sounds but you can decide whether it is the first or the second which is elided. Speakers are not consistent in this and some will retain both sounds or, when it is possible, as with /m/ to extend the sound slightly. That is not possible with stops such as /t/, /k/ /d/ etc. but occurs with fricatives like /f/ and /s/ and with the nasal sounds. When it happens both phonemes appear in the transcription so, e.g., She makes sandwiches can be transcribed either as /ʃi.ˈmeɪk.ˈsæn.wɪdʒ.ɪz/ or as /ʃi.ˈmeɪks.ˈsæn.wɪdʒ.ɪz/
Full elision We saw above that certain combinations assimilate differently but others can result in the full elision of a sound. This elision affects two sounds in particular, both alveolar stops, /t/ and /d/ and occurs when they fall between two other consonants only. For example. in: host presenter the pronunciation is /həʊs.prɪ.ˈzen.tə/ and the /t/ is elided. band master the pronunciation is /bæn.ˈmɑːst.ə/ and the /d/ is elided. This does not occur invariably and careful speech will reveal the sounds. However, in rapid speech such elisions are common. It is also common for the sounds to be assimilated (see above) rather than elided.

There are more examples of connected speech phenomena in the course on learning to transcribe (new tab).

Of course there's a test .

This is the index of other guides in the in-service pronunciation section.





Guides marked are in the initial plus section.

References: Field, J, 2008, Listening in the Language Classroom , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press O'Brian, P, 1970, Master and Commander , London: Collins Roach, P, 2009, English Phonetics and Phonology: A practical course (4th edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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.

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

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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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 :)

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Thanks so much!!!

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

15 Of The Best ESL Speaking Games And Activities.

For English language learners speaking is probably one of the most important and most feared language skills they have to learn . They may be shy, in both languages, or they may be afraid of making a mistake in front of their friends or classmates.

We have been teaching English for a lot of years and here are 15 of the best English Speaking games and activities we have researched and trialed in our classrooms. They have been massively useful to us over the years, so we hope they are for you as well.

I often try to speak in the students first language to show them that of course people make mistakes, and that is perfectly acceptable , of course some times funny, and nothing NOTHING to worry about!

Also where we have them on our site we will link to the files for you to download to make it more convenient for you. If you want to jump to a specific game just click on the list below .

Just before we jump into these 17 ESL Reading Games and Activities we have the four skills covered on the site. Speaking, Reading, Writing and Listening.

The Best ESL Games and Activities – 4 Booklets in 1

English Speaking Games and Activities

1. 30 second speech.

There are two ways to approach this, you can introduce the task by asking them to work individually first, or move straight onto the game below.

The 30 Second Speech game

As they practice the task above write the rules on the board and split class in half

Adaptations:

2. Logic Speaking Lesson – Downing Street

We have a separate page for the full details, and it is in this speaking exercise book ( free download ) but will highlight the basics here to see if it is something that fits your teaching needs.

You will need the table worksheet for students to fill in and the list of information and clues both on the links includes here

Adaptations: It is possible to add clues (carefully to make sure they fit the answers) doing this makes it much easier. The aim is to get the students speaking to each other not just the logic side of the activity.

3. Giving Directions Lesson plan

The activity.

Also it is possible to have your class spend a lesson coming up with the directions themselves and then putting them all in a box or bag at the front for the whole class to use. This means you add writing and they are actually using their own work to prepare a lesson.

4. Speaking lessons – Expressions

5. responses lesson.

As a game you can then repeat the same sort or exercise as the activity above. Have a selection of sentences than usually require a response and then ask for the incorrect response. No one expects you to say congratulations when you tell them your little rabbits died yesterday!!!

6. Word Association Speaking Game

This game is based on a old TV show from the UK called Wacaday. In it they had a rather colorful character called Timmy Mallet who, among other things, played a game called mallets mallet. In this game the players, always children, had to think of a word associated with whatever Timmy said. There was no hesitation, repetition, or ummm or errrrrs allowed or they got a bonk on the head. (softly of course) the winner was the one who didn’t get hit!

If they get it wrong they get a ‘bonk’ on the head and 3 times bonked and a new pair or students comes up or you could even play winner stays on. For fun they can play against the teacher as well.

You can make this much slower than the video if you are working with second language or ESL students, and if you don’t want a hammer you can use a rolled up piece of paper or just play it as a point game without the hammer. (its more fun with one of course!)

7. Wish Speaking and Writing lesson.

Adaptations: This is also great as an Icebreaker activity for students and teacher to get to know each other. You can keep the activity as wishes or ask them to write three things about themselves. You can even change it to two things true and one lie to add some fun and creativity. ( and to create another English Speaking game called ”would I lie to you” or Call my Bluff.

8. Yes – No Game – Speaking Lesson

It is better to teacher this to students with at least a basic abilty, but it doesnt have to be high level as you can level the wuestion you ask.

9. Pictionary – English Speaking Game.

Allowing your students to communicate with each other takes off some of the pressure of a whole class environment and allows them to risk take with their English speaking in a less public arena

This allows the teacher to compare the two drawings with the students and ask what language they could have added to get more details into the picture. This really enables students to start to think about expanding and adding to the phrases they say.

10. Guess who

Although you can use the Guess Who board game if you have it, its about 15 USD on Amazon if you have a need! It is probably easier and more adaptable for the culture or location you are teaching in to make a simple version with famous people from your area.

11. Call My Bluff / Two Truths and A Lie

With older groups you can have some real fun and you might be surprised what you’ll learn about some of your students when playing this particular EFL game.

How to play:

12. doctors in.

Actually this stems for a party (or drinking) game at universities and can be adapted to what ever vocabulary or topic you are teaching at the time. In the university version we all stick a post it to our foreheads and have to guess the famous person we are. Similar to the Guess who game above. In ESL or Classroom use we can do this with Jobs , animals, furniture, absolutely anything all you need are some post its or similar to stick to peoples heads or backs – anywhere they can not read it. It is a great ESL speaking game for classrooms with limited resources.

13. Show and Tell

15. think fast, share this:, making english fun, similar posts, environment reading passages for grade 2 and 3., what is the past tense of freeze, what are the 7 reading comprehension strategies., free dolch sight word worksheets – ‘make’, free printable grade 2 sight word worksheet – “why”, how to teach english in hong kong., always welcome thoughts and comments, new blogs can be lonely cancel reply.

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Speak Clearly: 15 Fun and Effective Articulation Activities for All Ages

Hrideep barot.

Communication , Public Speaking

Discovering the art of clear and confident speech involves diving into articulation activities, those nifty exercises designed to spruce up how we talk. These activities focus on getting speech sounds just right, covering everything from repeating single sounds to playful games and even reminiscing sessions. Why bother? Well, t hey’re a game-changer for folks dealing with speech quirks, offering a path to better communication, less social jitters, and a confidence boost.

Now, let’s talk about X fun activities for all ages. Kids can enjoy games like Articulation Bingo and Sound Scavenger Hunt. For the middle-aged crew, Word Puzzles and Conversation Cards add a fun twist. Senior citizens can relish Reminiscence Therapy and cozy reading aloud sessions. Each activity isn’t just about talking; it’s a mix of fun, socializing, and honing speech skills.

But the speech journey doesn’t stop there. Tips for speaking clearly and confidently roll in, from regular practice to focusing on pronunciation and even recording yourself. It’s a gradual process, but hey, progress is progress. If you’re serious about levelling up your speech game the following will help.

What Are Articulation Activities?
15 Fun And Effective Articulation Activities For All Ages

Games That Can Elevate One’s Communication Skills.

Why should one practice articulation activities, what are articulation activities .

Articulation activities are exercises or tasks designed to help individuals improve their speech and pronunciation , particularly in terms of producing specific speech sounds accurately. These activities are often used in speech therapy, language development programs, or by educators to address difficulties with articulation, phonological disorders, or speech sound disorders.

Articulation activities may involve various techniques and tools to target specific speech sounds or patterns. Here are some common types of articulation activities:

Isolation Exercises:

These activities involve focusing on a single speech sound in isolation, without combining it with other sounds . This allows individuals to concentrate on the specific movement of the articulators (e.g., lips, tongue) required for accurate production. For example, saying the target sound (/r/, /s/, etc.) repeatedly in isolation.

Syllable and Word Repetition:

This step involves practicing the target sound within syllables and words. This helps individuals integrate the correct sound into different linguistic contexts. For instance, repeating syllables like “ba,” “be,” “bi,” or words like “cat,” “dog,” “ball” containing the target sound.

Minimal Pairs:

Minimal pairs are pairs of words that differ by only one sound (e.g., “bat” vs. “pat”) . Practicing minimal pairs helps individuals distinguish between similar sounds and develop the ability to produce the correct one through auditory discrimination.

Sentence and Phrase Practice:

Extending the practice to sentences and phrases helps individuals use the target sound more naturally and communicatively. This can involve constructing sentences or responding to prompts that incorporate the target sound .

Reading Aloud:

Reading aloud provides a contextualized approach to articulation practice . Individuals read passages, stories, or sentences that contain the target sounds. This helps bridge the gap between isolated practice and using the sounds in real-life situations.

Articulation Games: Making learning enjoyable, games can include board games, card games, or online activities that encourage the repetition of target sounds in a playful manner. This fosters engagement and motivation, especially in younger individuals.

Use of Visual Aids:

Visual aids, such as mouth diagrams or videos, offer a visual representation of correct articulatory movements . This visual feedback enhances understanding and awareness, aiding individuals in mimicking the correct mouth and tongue positions.

Mirror Exercises:

Observing one’s articulatory movements in a mirror provides immediate visual feedback . This self-monitoring approach helps individuals become more aware of their articulation and assists in self-correction.

Role-Playing:

Engaging in role-playing scenarios involves using the target sounds in real-life, communicative situations . This activity not only targets articulation but also integrates social and pragmatic aspects of speech.

Articulation activities are often tailored to an individual’s specific needs and may vary based on the severity and nature of the articulation difficulty. Regular practice and consistent feedback from speech-language professionals or educators are crucial components of successful articulation therapy.

15 Fun And Effective Articulation Activities For All Ages

Some of the most fun and effective articulation activities are divided into groups based on age ranges – children , middle-aged people, and senior citizens:

For Children:

1. articulation bingo:.

Create Bingo cards with colorful images representing words with the target sound.

Use a variety of words to keep it engaging and diverse.

Encourage children to say the word aloud when marking it on their cards, reinforcing articulation.

2. Sound Scavenger Hunt:

Provide a list of target words, and children can check them off as they find corresponding objects.

Include a mix of common and challenging words to maintain interest.

Make it a collaborative activity, fostering teamwork and social interaction.

3. Story Cubes:

Use story cubes with a variety of images to spark creativity.

Discuss the story together, emphasizing the articulation of words containing the target sound.

Rotate roles, allowing each child to contribute to the story.

4. Silly Sentences:

Encourage creativity by having children come up with their silly sentences.

Provide a mix of words with the target sound and other sounds to create a balanced challenge.

This activity can be turned into a game with points for the silliest sentences.

5. Articulation Charades:

Include a mix of easy and challenging words in the charades game.

This game promotes movement, making it an active and enjoyable way to practice articulation.

Rotate roles so that everyone has a chance to act out and guess.

Check this out for more information and this video to know some fun strategies for children-

For Middle-Aged People:

6. word puzzles:.

Tailor puzzles to the interests of the group (e.g., themed puzzles related to hobbies or current events).

Provide hints or clues related to the target sounds to make the activity more engaging.

Collaborative puzzle-solving can foster a sense of community.

7. Conversation Cards:

Create cards with open-ended questions that naturally incorporate the target sounds.

Encourage participants to share personal stories, ensuring the use of the target sound in context.

Use a variety of topics to keep conversations interesting and diverse.

8. Tongue Twisters:

Start with simpler tongue twisters and gradually progress to more challenging ones.

Practice each tongue twister multiple times, gradually increasing speed.

This activity enhances articulatory agility and control.

9. Role-Playing Scenarios:

Tailor scenarios to situations commonly encountered in daily life.

Use role-playing as an opportunity to practice articulation in realistic, everyday conversations.

Provide constructive feedback to reinforce correct articulation.

10.Memory Game:

Include images along with words on the memory cards to make it more visually engaging.

As individuals turn over cards, encourage them to say the words aloud and emphasize the target sounds.

Adjust the difficulty level by increasing the number of pairs or using more challenging words.

For Senior Citizens:

11. reminiscence therapy:.

Incorporate prompts related to different life stages to facilitate reminiscence.

Encourage individuals to articulate memories with clarity while engaging in a meaningful and nostalgic activity.

Create a relaxed and supportive environment for open sharing.

12. Reading Aloud:

Choose reading materials that align with the interests and preferences of the group.

Allow individuals to take turns reading paragraphs or pages.

Discuss the content, promoting articulation in a context that fosters comprehension.

13. Sing-Alongs:

Select familiar songs with clear lyrics and melodies.

Singing together provides a social and enjoyable way to practice articulation.

Consider incorporating hand movements or gestures to enhance engagement.

14. Poetry Recitation:

Choose poems with rhythmic patterns and rhymes.

Break down longer poems into smaller sections for easier recitation.

Discuss the meaning of the poems, adding depth to the articulation practice.

15. Articulation Meditation:

Integrate relaxation techniques with articulation practice.

Guide participants through deep breathing exercises while enunciating words with the target sound.

Emphasize the calming and therapeutic aspects of combining mindfulness with speech practice.

Remember, the activities can be adapted based on individual preferences, needs, and the severity of articulation challenges. It’s always beneficial to consult with speech-language professionals for personalized guidance.

1. Among Us:

Among Us, a popular online multiplayer game, requires players to work together on a spaceship while identifying impostors among them. Effective communication, persuasion, and critical thinking are crucial as players discuss suspicions and observations to deduce the impostors.

2. Codenames:

Codenames, a captivating word-based party game, challenges players to connect words using clues provided by their team’s spymaster. The game encourages strategic thinking and improves verbal communication by requiring players to convey information while avoiding confusion.

3. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes:

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a unique cooperative game simulating bomb defusal. Effective communication is essential for conveying complex information quickly and accurately, promoting teamwork, time management, and clear information sharing.

4. Pictionary:

Pictionary, a classic drawing and guessing game, relies on non-verbal communication and creativity. It encourages players to express ideas visually and interpret visual cues, making it a fun and interactive way to improve both artistic and communicative skills.

5. Escape Room Games:

Escape room games, in board or digital form, provide an immersive experience requiring teamwork, problem-solving, and effective communication. Players must share information and ideas to uncover hidden clues, fostering collaboration within a team.

Practicing articulation activities is important for several reasons, particularly for individuals with speech sound disorders or difficulties . Here are some key reasons why one should engage in articulation activities:

Communication Skills Improvement :

Articulation activities aim to enhance an individual’s ability to produce speech sounds accurately. Clear and precise articulation is crucial for effective communication , as it ensures that spoken words are easily understood by others.

Enhanced Speech Intelligibility:

Correct articulation contributes to improved speech intelligibility. When individuals can articulate sounds properly, it minimizes the risk of miscommunication and allows listeners to comprehend spoken language more easily.

Building Confidence :

Regular practice of articulation activities, especially when combined with positive reinforcement and support, can boost an individual’s confidence in their speech abilities. Increased confidence can lead to more willingness to engage in communication.

Reduced Social Anxiety :

Individuals with speech sound disorders may experience social anxiety due to concerns about being understood or judged. Articulation activities help address these concerns by improving speech clarity, thus reducing anxiety in social interactions.

Academic Success :

Clear and effective communication is essential for academic success. Articulation activities can benefit students by improving their speech skills, leading to better participation in class, understanding of instructional materials, and overall academic achievement.

Prevention of Academic and Social Challenges :

Articulation difficulties can sometimes lead to academic and social challenges. Addressing these challenges early through articulation activities can prevent potential issues and help individuals thrive academically and socially.

Enhanced Self-Expression:

Clear articulation allows individuals to express themselves more accurately. This is crucial in various aspects of life, including personal relationships, work environments, and social interactions.

Speech Development:

For children, engaging in articulation activities is a fundamental aspect of speech development. The correct production of speech sounds during early years lays the foundation for effective communication and language skills.

Improved Overall Communication Competence:

Articulation activities contribute to the overall development of communication competence. Individuals who practice articulation exercises are likely to develop better phonological awareness, auditory discrimination, and overall communication skills.

It’s important to note that the effectiveness of articulation activities often depends on the individual’s specific needs, the severity of their speech sound disorder, and the consistency of practice. Speech-language pathologists and educators may tailor articulation activities to address the unique requirements of each individual.

In summing up our exploration, getting the hang of clear and confident speech involves diving into the world of articulation activities, understanding their importance, and enjoying the perks of regular practice. These activities, ranging from tongue twisters and syllable repetition to engaging games like Articulation Bingo and Memory Games, form the foundation for getting the pronunciation right and building a base for effective communication. The fun and effective articulation activities we’ve explored aren’t just limited to kids; they cater to individuals of all ages , ensuring that the journey toward clear speech is both personalized and enjoyable.

Digging into the ‘why’ behind articulation activities reveals a host of benefits, from improved communication skills and enhanced speech clarity to boosted confidence and reduced social anxiety. The positive effects stretch to academic and professional success, making articulation exercises a handy tool for individuals aiming to excel in various aspects of life. To speak with clarity and confidence, individuals are encouraged to embrace a holistic approach, including regular recording, mindful pacing, and the artful use of pauses. The journey towards articulate and confident speech is unique for each person, marked by dedication, positivity, and the celebration of milestones . Seeking guidance from speech-language professionals can provide invaluable support along this fulfilling and ongoing journey toward improved communication skills.

Dive into this link for an abundance of information that will leave you enlightened and intrigued. Click now for a journey into the world of knowledge!

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Pronunciation exercises – Connected Speech

There is a pronunciation exercise using video and text available for pronouncing the different vowel to vowel linking.

These pronunciation exercises are accessible by clicking on the links below.
You can also record and listen to your voice after viewing each lesson, by using the Vocaroo recorder. You need a microphone attached to your computer in order to record your voice.
The icons underneath the ‘Download file as…’ download mp3 and mp4 files onto your computer, iPod, mobile phone or iPad.
Download Word lists for Connected Speech .

Vowel to vowel linking

Exercises	Listen/Watch	Download file
	or	or
	or	or
	or	or

Tongue twisters

Exercises	Listen/Watch	Download File
	or	or

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Connected speech

Game Code: 81482
English 15 Public Some types and examples of connected speech
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Unstressed vowel sounds are often reduced to short vowels or to schwa /ə/. Reduction
Words beginning with a vowel sound normally link to preceding words ending in a consonant sound, and can end up sounding like quiet different words. Catenation & juncture
Words ending in a vowel sound formed with rounded lips followed by a word beginning with a vowel sound, insert a /w/ sound between Intrusion
Words ending in a vowel sound formed with lips spreading followed by a word beginning with a vowel sound, insert a /j/ sound between Intrusion
A silent /r/ at the end of words is sounded if the following word starts with a vowel. This happens to some other words with similar vowels sounds, even if they don’t have an /r/. Intrusion
Consonants at the end of words may change to be more similar to consonants that begin the following word Assimilation
/t/ or /d/ is often not pronounced very clearly when followed by /p/ or /b/. This is known as the glottal stop Assimilation
/n/ is pronounced like an /m/ before /b/ or /p/. Assimilation
/n/ is pronounced like /ŋ/ (‘sing’) before /k/ or /g/ Assimilation
/s/ is pronounced more like /ʃ/ as in ‘shoe’ before /j/ or /ʃ / Assimilation
Consonants may disappear off the end of words if the following word starts with the same or a similar one Elision
h/ is often deleted, especially in initial position. Elision
/t/ or /d/ is often deleted when they occur between two other consonants Elision
There are some highly frequent words in which /l/ is often deleted. Examples: already also alright Elision
A syllable containing the unstressed /ə/ vowel is sometimes lost. Example: int(e)rest diff(e)rent sim(i)lar libr(a)ry secret(a)ry Elision

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Speech-Language Pathology SLP

| 1 December 2020

15 Speech Therapy Activities and Games for All Ages

Do you have a child, family member, or student who faces challenges with speaking or communicating? Speech therapists use fun activities, from vocabulary games to board games and beyond, to help their clients practice language production. As a layperson, you can try out the same activities with your loved one or student.

The speech therapy ideas in this post are geared toward parents, family members, and teachers who are looking for language games to play at home or in the classroom. Speech therapists, also known as speech-language pathologists , and speech-language pathology assistants may find these suggestions useful for planning therapy sessions. Whether the person in your life needs practice with pronunciation, sentence fluency, or speaking in turn, these activities may help them improve. You can tailor the games to be more or less challenging depending on the person’s age and abilities. Check out the link to printables for some free therapy materials!

Speech Therapy Games for Preschoolers

These fun preschool games are perfect language activities for younger kids.

1. Hopscotch Word Fun

Draw a hopscotch on the sidewalk or driveway and write target words in each box. Then have the player say the words out loud to practice speech sounds as they skip through the game.

Helps with: Pronunciation

One player chooses an item in the room that all players can see, then offers clues so that the other players can guess the item they are thinking of. The player who guesses correctly has to use the word in a sentence.

Helps with: Speaking in turn, sentence fluency

3. The Alphabet Game

While driving in the car or walking around your neighborhood, have the player try to find all the letters of the alphabet on signs. Older players can record each letter they find on a piece of paper. See how long it takes to get all 26! For an added challenge, have them say a word that starts with each letter they find.

4. Bury Objects or Picture Cards

Hide objects or speech cards in a sandbox at the playground or under a pile of leaves, and have the player find them. When they do, have them pronounce the object’s name or the word on the card. To add another element to this game, have them use the word in a sentence.

Helps with: Pronunciation, sentence fluency

5. Word Search

Find a word search that is appropriate for the player’s age, as there are many difficulty levels. When they find a word, have them say it aloud. Download our easy printable word search activity below. It’s perfect for ages 5 to 7.

6. Hide-and-Seek with Words

Have the player find word cards you place around the house. When they find a card, have them pronounce the word on the card. For those who can’t read, use cards with pictures.

7. Articulation Station App

The Articulation Station app by Little Bee Speech is designed for kids ages 4 and up. The app offers practice at the word, sentence, and story levels. It features six activities, including flashcards, matching, rotating sentences, unique sentences, and two levels of stories.

Helps with: Word finding, sentence fluency, pronunciation

Speech Therapy Games for Adults

8. Heads Up! Smartphone Game

Heads Up! is a smartphone app game that combines trivia and charades. (You can download it from the Apple App Store or from Google Play.) The player who will be guessing the word or phrase holds the smartphone on their forehead, revealing the word or phrase to others, who act out clues.

Helps with: Learning to speak in turn

9. Yoga Speech Therapy

Combining speech therapy with yoga can double the fun. Have the yogi practice different sounds and sentences while holding yoga poses.

Helps with: Wor d finding, sentence fluency, pronunciation

10. Opposites Attract

In this game, one player makes a list of words that have a clear opposite, such as “yes,” “down,” “happy,” etc. The player reads each word aloud and the other player states the opposite.

Helps with: Word finding, speaking in turn

11. Group Chat

Set a topic, such as a movie or current event, and create a safe space for players to discuss. This is a great way to practice more natural communication.

12. Name Game

This activity involves naming items within a certain category. The best way to play is with cards that have written directions on them, such as “Name five fruits.” In turn, each player picks a card and responds to the directions. Download our name game activity below.

Helps with: Word finding

13. Journaling

Because reading and language development are interconnected, writing in a journal can help people improve language production and comprehension. Provide a list of writing prompts that the player can choose from. Have them write without stopping for 5 or 10 minutes.

Helps with: Word finding, sentence fluency

14. Name Ten

Similar to the name game, the player is given a category and is asked to name ten things that fit within that category. For example, you can ask the player to name ten colors, fruits, animals, or sports.

15. Sound-Focused Game

Players choose a sound they want to target, such as an “S” or “T” sound. Then they take turns saying sentences aloud using as many words as possible that include that sound. For example, if players are targeting an “S” sound, one player might say, “My sister Sally sat sideways in the seat.”

Helps with: Pronunciation, word finding

Speech therapy activities are a fun way for people of all ages to develop the skills they need to communicate better and gain confidence. Check out our other resources for speech therapists as well.

For those who need more guidance, it may be helpful to work with a speech-language pathologist (SLP), who will create a custom treatment plan based on their client’s unique needs. SLPs earn their Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology (MS-SLP) degree, in which they are trained in assessing and treating disorders of speech, language, and swallowing. At the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, our MS-SLP program features online coursework and hands-on clinical practice, preparing graduates to positively impact the lives of others.

The University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (USAHS) offers a Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology (MS-SLP). Designed for working students, the MS-SLP is an online program with four required on-campus residencies on either the USAHS Austin or Dallas campus. The program offers two intakes per year, in January and September. Prepare to make a difference in the lives of clients across the lifespan with a meaningful career in speech therapy!

Accreditation Status*

The Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology education program at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences is a Candidate for Accreditation by the Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology (CAA) of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2200 Research Boulevard, #310, Rockville, MD 20850, 800-498-2071 or 301-296-5700. Candidacy is a “preaccreditation” status with the CAA, awarded to developing or emerging programs for a maximum period of 5 years.

*The candidacy status includes the MS-SLP program offered at Austin, TX and Dallas, TX locations.

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23 Parts of Speech Activities for Students of All Ages

July 1, 2023 // by Kit Berry

When students get poor marks on writing assignments, it is often because they don’t have a solid grasp of the parts of speech and how they function. Parts of speech is a topic that needs to be revisited regularly in order for it to stick, but maybe you’re a busy teacher who doesn’t have time to rework every activity you know! Not to worry: here are 23 parts of speech activities, grammar games, and creative lessons to help students of all ages learn this tough topic once and for all!

Elementary Grade Levels

1. ping pong toss.

Bring out your class’ competitive spirit with this game! Label some cups with the parts of speech and then write vocabulary words on the ping pong balls. Have your kiddos take turns at tossing the words into their corresponding parts of speech cup. You can have students guess which part of speech will fill up first, or challenge them to fill all the cups as quickly as they can! All you’ll need are some ping pong balls and some plastic cups!

Learn More: Amazon

2. Reading Scavenger Hunt

Who doesn’t love a scavenger hunt? This activity has printable sheets making this the perfect quiet activity for your kiddos to read as a warm-up or if they are fast finishers. They’ll take a worksheet and book and will have to hunt through their book to find adjectives, verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech.

Learn More: 123 Homeschool 4 Me

3. Word Ball

In groups, give each of your kids a part of speech and instruct them to say a word that corresponds with that part of speech whenever they have the ball. After they say their word aloud, they roll the ball to someone else in the circle. This is a great activity for young students who are learning basic vocabulary and developing hand-eye coordination. You could even use this ball for an extra challenge where they’ll have to start their word with the letter their hand lands on!

Learn More: New Age Kidz Store

4. Worksheets

If you don’t have the space for physical, outdoor activity, worksheets are a good way to engage your students from their desks. Worksheets are also great for some quiet work time.

Learn More: Scholastic

5. Visual Webs

Create a visual web with your classroom and put it up on the wall for students to see. A visual reference during grammar lessons is essential in solidifying the concepts. Let the web grow with example vocabulary words attached to their respective parts of speech. Use colorful paper, designs, and images to go with the vocabulary words.

Learn More: Braun 107

6. Flipbooks

Let your students create their own flipbooks to keep for reference. Let students personalize their flipbooks with sketches, colorful ink, and colored paper. This is a good activity for 3rd-grade students and above who might find some of the other elementary school activities too simple.

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

Who doesn’t love a sing-a-long? These fun parts of speech songs are set to familiar tunes like the “Spongebob Squarepants” theme song! You can put the lyrics up on the projector and have the whole class sing along.

Learn More: The Classroom Key

8. Picture Books

These books are all about the parts of speech and are geared toward very young students. Get a few of these for your classroom and you can have students read them on their own or in small groups.

Learn More: Learn In Color

9. Label the Room

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to finally get that label maker you’ve had your eye on, then this is it! Label everything in the classroom with parts of speech! You might think everything is going to be a “noun,” but with a little creativity, you can add a variety of labels to each object. A chair could have labels like, “chair = noun” and “sit = verb,” or even “comfy = adjective.

Middle-Grade Levels

10. parts of speech jeopardy.

Make the parts of speech your top-row categories and write sentences under each points square. When a student selects “verbs for 200,” read the sentence and the student will respond with the verbs as their answer.

11. Colorful Copywork

This printable activity is an excellent way to get your kiddies some practice at identifying the different parts of speech. Ask them to use a few different colors to highlight the different parts of speech they come across in each sentence. You can make this activity even more fun by having your students copy sentences from their favorite books to use for this exercise.

Learn More: Instagram

12. Cinquain Poems

Cinquain poems, like haikus, follow a very specific, strict structure. Cinquain poem rules don’t just restrict your syllables, but also what part of speech to use on each line.

Learn More: Poetry Tea Time

13. Tally Parts of Speech

Ask students to read a few passages from a book and tally up how many times each part of speech is used. This is a great activity for all levels of students because you can adjust the reading level of the material being tallied. This is also a good independent online activity for students who are still virtual and are unable to participate in an interactive game.

Learn More: The School Run

14. Super Stories Substitution Game

Use this fun interactive game on your smartboard and have your kiddos edit a story into a bestseller! Task them with changing the sentences by substituting given words with other words that match the respective part of speech. They’ll go through each part of the speech until the sentence is completely changed! “How now, said the brown cow,” becomes “When then, ran a cozy table!

Learn More: Top Marks

15. Create a Cheat Sheet

See how much information about parts of speech your students remember! Have them create their very own cheat sheets with definitions of each part of speech and some ‘wow’ vocabulary to help them make their writing interesting! The more they use their cheat sheet, the less they’ll eventually need it.

16. Sentence Diagrams

Sentence diagrams are a great way to make parts of speech concrete for middle school students and there are a variety of ways to diagram parts of speech.

Learn More: English Grammar Revolution

17. Parts of Speech Bingo

With this printable bingo game, students can practice parts of speech while relaxing and having fun!

Learn More: Bingo Baker

High School Grade Levels

18. partner match game with post-it notes.

Give each student a post-it note with a word or phrase written on it. Tell them to stick the post-it to their forehead without looking at it. Students can go around the classroom asking questions about the word on their post-its. Once they know what part of speech it fits into, they can partner up to make full, silly sentences!

Learn More: Vocabulary Luau

19. Mini Zines

Zines are a fun activity and a great way to get creative. Have your students make zines about the parts of speech.

Learn More: Wiki How

20. Charades

The classic game of charades can also help students identify parts of speech. Break into teams and have students act out basic sentences by focusing on the parts of speech.

Learn More: Beehive

21. Group Skits

Have students break into groups and write short skits based on parts of speech. One group could have proper nouns, while another has interjections, and so forth. Each group will write and perform a skit focused on the use of their assigned part of speech.

22. Creative Writing and Review

Have students write a paragraph or two, then pass their work to the left for review. The reviewer will then suggest alternative nouns before passing the paper to the left again. The second reviewer will suggest alternative verbs before passing the paper to the left again.

Learn More: Pinterest

23. Baseball Grammar Game

To play this grammar-based classroom baseball game, you’ll set up “bases” and ask students who are “up to bat” to identify parts of speech in a basic sentence on the board. Alternatively, you could ask students to correct sentences instead. This is an exciting game and is sure to get students up and moving around!

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

Let’s Be Indirect: Teachers’ Top 9 Fun and Creative Activities for Practicing Reported Speech

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They help English speakers understand exactly who said what. Sometimes the words are direct, or quoted. Other times they are coming through an intermediary. A tells B what C said. This kind of speech, the kind that isn’t quoted directly, is referred to as indirect speech. It’s also called reported speech. And it’s not exactly instinctual for English language learners. That’s why it’s always good to have . When you’re in need of one, the following are fun and a little bit out of the ordinary, but they still get the job done.

Your students will have fun with this role play in which one person plays a grandparent with hearing loss and another plays the grandchild who must repeat everything for the grandparent. Choose a scenario that ties in with what you are currently teaching in class, for example sports, food, travel, etc. Assign someone to be the grandparent and another to be the grandchild. Then add a third person to the role-play who fits into the theme – a waiter, a sports announcer, a travel agent, etc. The grandparent and the third member of the group will have a conversation, but the grandparent won’t be able to hear anything the third person says. The grandchild must repeat everything for the grandparent using reported speech. Encourage your students to have fun and be creative and, of course, raise their voices so they can be heard.

As students mingle and spread fictional gossip in this activity, they will get the chance to practice using reported speech in English. To prepare for the activity, make up quotations for each member of your class – words that they have supposedly overheard in social settings. If you like, have them all center around a mystery such as who stole the school mascot. Divide the cards and give one to each member of the class. Then give them time to mingle and share the gossip from their card with their classmates using reported speech and starting with phrase such as, “I heard that she/he said…” Give everyone enough time to talk to most if not all the members of the class, and then see if anyone can determine what really happened based on the things their classmates told them.

You can set up a simple game of memory using direct quotes and their associated reported speech. Start by writing five to ten sentences in direct speech, each on its own index card. The game will be more challenging if these sentences are very similar and only differ in the verb tense or the pronoun used. Then write sentences using indirect speech on five to ten separate cards. Shuffle the cards together and lay them in a grid face down on the table. Students play against a partner to find the most matches for the sentences. To keep a pair, they must with the correct reported speech.

One person plays the doctor who is giving advice to her patient using the conditional form. For example, “If your knee hurts when you move it, don’t move it.” The patient then repeats the doctor’s instructions using reported speech. “So you’re saying if my knee hurts I shouldn’t move it.” Have the doctor give the patient at least five pieces of advice which the patient then repeats. Then have students switch roles.

That’s the scenario for this role-play. Two students are so mad that they are giving each other the silent treatment. They can be playing two friends, a husband and wife, an employer and employee, or any other match up you choose. The third member of the role-play is the intermediary between them. Have the first two people sit far enough away from each other that they can’t hear what the other is saying. Then have the third person relay messages between them using reported speech as the two parties try to work out their differences. Once the parties come to an agreement and are reconciled, give students another scenario and let a different student play the intermediary.

Tell your class the situation that they will give advice for: a friend wants to leave their spouse, a student thinks they will fail a course, a child has to tell their parents they were arrested, etc. Each member of your class gives one piece of advice to the person while the rest of the class writes down what their classmate said. Once everyone has given their advice, each member of the class shares the two to three best pieces of advice offered by the class. They must share the advice again using reported speech such as, “The best advice was when Kylie said the kid should just be honest.”

Write several people your students probably know (their mother, sibling, teacher, best friend, etc.) on small slips of paper and put them in another bag. Each person takes a turn pulling one slip of paper from each bag and then putting those words into the following sentence: the … thing …. ever told me was….” For example, “The funniest thing my mother ever told me was…” That person must then share their answer with the class using reported speech.

Then have each person share with a partner something someone told them on one of those occasions (using reported speech) without revealing what the occasion was. For example, “My mother told me I was the smartest person there in her mind.” The second person must then try and guess what occasion that statement was said on. Once they guess correctly or get the answer wrong three times, students switch roles.

One person stays seated while the other person mingles with the other minglers in class. The seated person asks his partner to find someone who…. for example, knows how to speak Spanish, used to have a dog, etc. Once the mingler finds someone who meets the criteria, she returns to her partner and reports what the class member said e.g. MinYoung said she used to have a dog. The two players then switch roles and the sitter becomes the mingler. Students continue to switch roles and talk to their classmates until time is up.

and these fun reported speech activities and you’ll all have a great time.

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10 Fun Reported Speech Games And Activities

“I love to read, and write,” said Alex.

Notice something in this sentence? Observe how the sentence is “reporting” a particular statement, which could have been conveyed “directly” too.

Now, that you understand the basic difference between reported and direct speech, let me also tell you that no English class is complete without the knowledge of this concept as it plays a crucial role in communication and writing. At the same time, learning this concept can be a bit difficult and challenging at first, as it requires a fair amount of practice and dedication to understanding the rules behind the conversion of direct to reported speech and vice versa.

Hence, in this blog, we will be navigating through a bunch of activities that can help students learn faster and better and also promote interaction and enthusiasm among them. Check the below-mentioned games and activities to create a diversified yet challenging learning experience for stimulating the knowledge of learners.

Engaging games to teach reported speech

From sentence building to grammar to even vocabulary , learning through games promotes enthusiasm as well as knowledge. It gives students a necessary break from the traditional way of learning. It helps them explore, interact and work in teams to achieve their objective. By playing games, they learn more than the subject which is being taught.

A quiz is a great way to interact with students. It helps in engaging the whole class. Everyone is a participant and gets to learn as the one who answers is an active participant and the one who listens is the passive participant.

Prepare a set of sentences that are in direct speech
Divide students into teams of 3 each
Only one student is allowed to answer at a time
Speak the sentence in Direct Speech and teams have to answer in Reported speech
The team to answer the maximum number of right answers wins the game

This game exposes students to interactive learning. This game encourages students to participate in the classroom. It encourages them to listen and learn and also gives them the chance to answer and gain confidence in themselves.

2. Who Am I?

This game is something that can challenge kids to listen carefully. It helps exercise active listening and is a good game to grasp the attention of students and help them participate in class.

Narrate a small story that is full of examples of Direct and Reported Speech
Divide the class into a set of teams as per the rows in the classroom
While narrating, stop when there is any instance of direct or reported speech in the story
Ask students to identify whether it is direct speech or reported speech
The team with the most correct answers win

This game helps all students to participate. This can help in active listening, learning the concept, and the development of a healthy environment in a class.

3. Reporting Whisper

This is an interactive team game that helps in promoting learning the concept of reported speech in a challenging manner. It challenges students to apply the concept of reported speech in their daily life, which can help them retain and understand it better.

Two teams with two members should participate each time a round is played
One team gets a chance to say three normal sentences to the other team
The task of the team which gets the sentence is to convert what Team A said into Reported Speech
For example- Team A: “ My friend Victor works in a pet shop. ” In this case, Team B has to convert and say this in a reported speech. Team B: Team A said that their friend Victor worked in a pet shop.
The team that converts most of the sentences correctly from direct speech to reported speech wins.

This game can help students learn by putting the concept of reported speech in their conversation. It also promotes active listening, encourages teamwork , and helps them gain confidence.

4. Find the Fault

This game is all about having an eagle’s eye. It promotes being clear with the whole concept and knowing even the little mistakes there can be in a reported speech.

Prepare a list of 10-12 sentences
These sentences are to be written in reported speech but should carry errors in them
Reported Speech with errors: Dan said, “that he likes Apples.”
The correct answer is: Dan said that he liked apples.
The student who identifies the fault and correctly writes most sentences in the reported speech wins.

This game is a little difficult compared to others. It can help in polishing and refining the concept of reported speech in a better fashion and help students master it.

5. The Speech Bingo

This is a fun individual game that is based on the concept of Bingo. This game is a creative way of teaching and making students practice the concept of reported speech.

Create a set of 25 statements written in a direct speech on the blackboard
Ask students to make 5 rows and 5 columns giving them a total of 25 boxes
Ask students to write the answers of direct speech in different boxes
Now, put the chits of these direct speech sentences in a bowl
Pick chits and let students form 5 vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines to win the bingo

This game helps in involving students and encourages participation in the class. It also helps them identify what was the direct speech to then understand the reported speech.

Interesting activities to teach reported speech

Activities are another way of helping students learn by actively participating in the classroom. Activities help students explore educational concepts in creative ways and help them learn in a playful manner.

1. Find Your Pair

This is a fun activity that includes music, interaction, and active participation. This activity is a fun way to learn the concept of reported speech.

Prepare a set of 50 cards as per the number of students in your classroom. One card per each student
25 cards should have reported speech and 25 cards should have direct speech
Number each card from 1 to 50
After giving one random card to each student, ask students to form a circle
Play the music and students have to simply walk and enjoy the music
Stop the music and call out a random number
If you call number 28 the student having that card should step out and speak out loud what is the sentence written on the card
After this, the student with the corresponding Reported Speech or Direct Speech should come out within 10 seconds and speak the sentence written on their card

This activity can help students learn in an interactive manner. It is a very creative activity by which students can learn to identify direct and reported speech and its differences.

2. Spin The Wheel

This activity is a lucky draw activity. Students randomly get a chance to learn more about reported and direct speech.

Install a giant spinning wheel with many examples of sentences in Direct Speech
Spin the wheel
Select a student randomly to answer
The selected student has to convert the sentence in Direct Speech into Reported Speech

It is a simple activity that can help students learn better the way of converting Direct Speech into Reported or Indirect Speech.

3. Tell Me About Someone’s Day

This activity is fun and can help students in learning the art of interviewing and help them develop better social skills.

Students have to talk to anyone during day
They would obviously have the conversation in direct speech
Their task is to narrate the entire conversation in reported speech
For example, Dad said that he had a very long day at work. He said that he had a burrito for lunch.

This activity is another activity that can help students master the concept of reported speech. It helps them develop critical thinking and better concentration skills.

4. Choose The Correct Option

This game requires students to be alert as it is a challenging activity. Through this activity, students learn how exactly a sentence is framed in reported speech and what common errors are made.

Prepare a set of 10-15 questions
The question will have a sentence in Direct Speech
There will be 4 options with only 1 correct
Students have to identify and select the correct option and also give an explanation

This activity helps them learn from their mistakes. It also helps in mastering the concept of direct and reported speech.

5. Write A Story

This seems like a simple story-writing activity but there is obviously a twist. This activity challenges students to write creatively and create a story based on the concept which exercises reported speech.

Give students a story-writing prompt
The challenge of writing this story is that they need to have a character who converses in reported speech
The story should be having a conversation between two or three characters where reported speech is used to narrate and convey the message

This activity helps students learn how to use the concept of reported speech in their creative writing activities . It helps them learn the application of this concept which can help them understand and remember this concept better.

Reported Speech is an important grammatical concept and often needs more practice. Due to the existence of many rules in this concept, students can often be perplexed. So, teachers and parents can make use of creative ways to foster a fun and effective learning environment .

The above-mentioned games and activities can help make the daunting and challenging concept of reported speech easier for students. It can also help them learn this concept in a better fashion as compared to the traditional theoretical methods of learning. These games and activities can help them gain confidence, learn teamwork and attain mastery over this concept after a certain period of time.

I am Shweta Sharma. I am a final year Masters student of Clinical Psychology and have been working closely in the field of psycho-education and child development. I have served in various organisations and NGOs with the purpose of helping children with disabilities learn and adapt better to both, academic and social challenges. I am keen on writing about learning difficulties, the science behind them and potential strategies to deal with them. My areas of expertise include putting forward the cognitive and behavioural aspects of disabilities for better awareness, as well as efficient intervention. Follow me on LinkedIn

Mr. Walz to VP Walz? Former students react to seeing their teacher on presidential ticket

To Minnesotans, Tim Walz is their governor of six years. To Vice President Kamala Harris , he is her newly official 2024 running mate.

But to Nate Hood, he was Coach and Mr. Walz.

"I'm much more excited about the race now that he's involved," Hood, 40, said. "The energy that he's bringing right now to the campaign reminds me of the energy that he would bring to football practice."

Formerly Hood’s eleventh grade geography teacher, Walz is now #2 on the Democratic presidential ticket . Harris announced the decision Tuesday.

Walz was one of a handful of candidates said to be in the running for the VP spot. Weeks ago, the governor was relatively unknown outside the Midwest. Today, his name recognition and popularity have rocketed among a crowd of freshly energized Democratic voters .

Live updates: Minnesota governor Tim Walz named Kamala Harris' running mate

Hood said the Walz he knows has always been adored.

“Tim Walz is a very down to earth human being. When you see him and when you talk to him, he's very relatable,” said Hood, a city planner in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I think that's a huge asset for the Harris team.”

Walz taught social studies and coached a championship team

Walz, born and raised in Nebraska, began his teaching career in South Dakota at a Native American reservation, then spent a year teaching in China, before returning home to the Cornhusker State.

He and his wife – and fellow teacher – Gwen moved again to her home state of Minnesota in 1996.

Walz taught social studies and geography at Mankato West High School in southern Minnesota, where he was also a football coach and helped lead the team to their first state championship.

“When he wanted to amp up players before a game, he did a great job of it,” Hood, a 2002 graduate of Mankato West and defensive line player at the time, said. “Just like the fiery speeches that you see him give today that might go viral, that's what he was doing. Except he was yelling at a bunch of 16- and 17-year-olds.”

In his new role, Walz will be expected to help amp up the entire Democratic base and any Midwestern moderates still deciding between Harris and former President Donald Trump in 2024. And he began that work even before Harris called his name, credited with coining the insult “weird,” now popularly used by Democrats against Trump and MAGA conservatives.

More: Why Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro as her running mate

"These are weird people on the other side," Walz told MSNBC in July. "They wanna take books away, they wanna be in your exam room, that's what it comes down to and don't, you know, get sugar-coating this, these are weird ideas. Listen to them speak, listen to how they talk about things."

A teacher "universally beloved"

Other students at Mankato West remember Walz bringing that same energy and passion to his classroom.

“I was a ‘C-ish student in high school,” Noah Hobbs wrote on X ahead of the Harris campaign’s official announcement. “Mr. Walz took the time to make sure that I was successful. Not only in his class but others. He made learning exciting.”

The now-governor had a reputation for being the fun and favorite teacher, even by those who didn’t have him for history class.

“Everybody liked Mr. Walz,” said Emily Scott, who did not have Walz for a teacher but remembers him leading their school trip to China when she was 17.

More: 'Boring' vs 'weird': Trump campaign tries to define Walz after his Vance criticism stuck

Scott said Walz, who was also a lunchroom supervisor, acted as a bridge between the student cliques.

“There were jocks that did football. There were history nerds like me that wanted to go to China,” Scott said. “Debate and speech nerds, band nerds. And Mr. Walz stood in the middle of all of that and was pretty much universally beloved.”

When a student at Mankato West wanted to start the school’s first gay-straight alliance club in 1999, Walz agreed to be the group’s faculty adviser.

"It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said of his role in a 2018 Star Tribune article .

Educator to politician, he's still Mr. Walz

Walz made the shift from educator to politician in 2006. He ran for a seat in the U.S. House, flipping what had been a reliably Republican district in southern Minnesota.

Six terms later, Walz set his sights on governor. He is currently in the middle of his second term.

More: Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' VP pick: Minnesota governor named running mate

Peter Williams, a 2002 alumnus like Hood and Scott, has watched his former geography teacher go from Mankato to Congress to the governor’s mansion, and now to representing the Democratic presidential ticket out on the campaign trail.

He described Walz as a local celebrity back home in Mankato.

"He was already a pretty big figure in town that was always so nice to everyone,” said Williams, a 41-year-old attorney in Minneapolis. “It doesn't matter whether he's running for (vice) president or whatever, he's still the same guy. So, yeah, I think of him as Mr. Walz.”

Deepak Chongtham

Valfaris: mecha therion will blast onto consoles later this month, unleash mecha hell in valfaris: mecha therion.

Steel Mantis, Big Sugar, and East2West Games have announced that Valfaris: Mecha Therion will arrive on consoles on 29 August 2024. This action-packed side-scrolling shoot ’em up will be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Additionally, a brand-new arcade-style Challenge Mode will be included in the console versions. It will also be coming out as a free update for the PC version on 26 August.

Valfaris: Mecha Therion is the sequel to the hit PC game from 2019 and marks the return of Therion. It initially launched on PC via Steam in November 2023 and is currently sitting with 95% positive reviews on the platform.

The hunt for Lord Vroll continues as our hero pilots an advanced machine of death and destruction in this intense 2.5D side-scrolling shoot ‘em up. As the final battle approaches, he must harness the power of his secret weapon – Mecha Therion.

It is a powerful suit of metal machine packed with serious firepower. It’s got a whole arsenal of weapons, including its signature Hellwraith, a wicked minigun that fires tormented souls. So, get ready to blast your enemies to bits and unleash mayhem upon them.

Key features:

– Fight through multiple levels of hostile alien territory – Master a range of Destroyer, Melee, and Auxiliary class weapons – Configure your Mecha loadout with your favorite weapon combos – Earn Blood Metal to upgrade weapons and add-on – Challenge Mode: Shoot for a high score in an arcade-style test of skill

IMAGES

Engaging Ways to Teach Parts of Speech In Your Classroom
Connected speech
Connected Speech Overview
Connected Speech Overview: English ESL worksheets pdf & doc
Connected Speech Practice
A collection of speech and language activities we created in 2013

COMMENTS

Connected speech
Weak forms: In connected speech, many words are pronounced in a weak form. In the classroom Intensive listening activities can help raise awareness of the features of connected speech, as can teaching phonemic symbols to illustrate these features. Modelling and drilling contextualised language can help learners to approximate connected speech.
Helping students with connected speech
A good activity to start learners thinking about connected speech and weak forms is to dictate just part of some phrases. For example: 'uvbin'. After students have written these down as best they can (this should be a light-hearted activity), you dictate the full phrase, in this case 'I've been to Paris.'.
Connected speech
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.
New Ways in Teaching Connected Speech
These changes have resulted in the publication of New Ways in Teaching Connected Speech (2012). This book offers an extensive amount of pronunciation lessons created by teachers for teachers of a range of proficiency levels (i.e., beginner to advanced). The editor suggests that connected speech is not simply a marker for casual, less formal ...
connected speech
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.
Connected speech 2
Connected speech 2. An advanced student of mine speaks both clearly and usually correctly, but can often sound over formal and at times stilted. Author. Vanessa Steele. He has learnt his English "through the eye" and has trouble interpreting the utterances of native speakers who do not monitor their output.
Video lesson
So, this lesson focuses on connected speech and listening skills using video. It uses a clip from Catch me if you can, which you may have been able to guess from the title. Time: 30-60mins. Level: High Int +. Aim: To raise awareness of how spoken English sounds. Sub aim: To highlight stressed and unstressed words.
ELT Concourse: connected speech
When the sound at the end of one stretch of language is the same as the one at the beginning of the next item, they are usually reduced to a single sound in connected speech so, for example: I'm meeting Mary. is pronounced as: /aɪ.ˈmiːt.ɪŋ.ˈmeər.i/ not /aɪm.ˈmiːt.ɪŋ.ˈmeər.i/. and. Don't take that table.
Connected Speech In English: What It Is And How To Learn It
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".
Connected Speech Practice Dialogues (Pronunciation) ESL
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.
The Schwa in connected speech
Here are 3 activities to try in the classroom: Bottom-up Listening Dictation. a. Read the sentence "I'm an English student learning about the schwa, what am I going to learn?". Make sure you read it at normal speaking speed, using connected speech features. (Change the sentence depending on level, create more challenge for B1+ students) b.
A lesson on connected speech
In pairs, Students discuss for two minutes.Teacher gets feedback on the differences, similarities. Teacher gives students worksheet 1 and they need to figure out if the sentences refer to old rules of relationship or new rules.Teacher checks answers and meanings. Teacher tells students they are going to listen to a song.
Use pop songs to learn connected speech and sound more fluent in
Pop songs are a fun way to improve your connected speech. Because they are repetitive, songs provide a great opportunity to notice links between words. They also give you the chance to practice connected speech as you sing along. Here are five features of connected speech with pop songs to illustrate each point.
15 Of The Best ESL Speaking Games And Activities.
1. 30 Second Speech. This English speaking activity is both fun and useful. The aim is to get students to speak for 30 seconds about topics that may or may not be out of their comfort zone. We have a list of topics here for you to choose from, and of course you can think of your own.
Speak Clearly: 15 Fun and Effective Articulation Activities for All
1. Among Us: Among Us, a popular online multiplayer game, requires players to work together on a spaceship while identifying impostors among them. Effective communication, persuasion, and critical thinking are crucial as players discuss suspicions and observations to deduce the impostors.
Pronunciation exercises
Pronunciation exercises - Connected Speech. There is a pronunciation exercise using video and text available for pronouncing the different vowel to vowel linking. These pronunciation exercises are accessible by clicking on the links below. You can also record and listen to your voice after viewing each lesson, by using the Vocaroo recorder.
Connected speech
15. There are some highly frequent words in which /l/ is often deleted. Examples: already also alright. 15. A syllable containing the unstressed /ə/ vowel is sometimes lost. Example: int (e)rest diff (e)rent sim (i)lar libr (a)ry secret (a)ry. 15. Some types and examples of connected speech.
15 Speech Therapy Activities and Games for All Ages
Speech Therapy Games for Preschoolers. These fun preschool games are perfect language activities for younger kids. 1. Hopscotch Word Fun. Draw a hopscotch on the sidewalk or driveway and write target words in each box. Then have the player say the words out loud to practice speech sounds as they skip through the game. Helps with: Pronunciation.
23 Parts of Speech Activities for Students of All Ages
23. Baseball Grammar Game. To play this grammar-based classroom baseball game, you'll set up "bases" and ask students who are "up to bat" to identify parts of speech in a basic sentence on the board. Alternatively, you could ask students to correct sentences instead.
Let's Be Indirect: Teachers' Top 9 Fun and Creative Activities for
Then write sentences using indirect speech on five to ten separate cards. Shuffle the cards together and lay them in a grid face down on the table. Students play against a partner to find the most matches for the sentences. To keep a pair, they must match the direct quote with the correct reported speech. 4.
10 Fun Reported Speech Games And Activities
It can help in polishing and refining the concept of reported speech in a better fashion and help students master it. 5. The Speech Bingo. This is a fun individual game that is based on the concept of Bingo. This game is a creative way of teaching and making students practice the concept of reported speech.
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Lead-in (to set the context and engage students in the topic)	Teacher asks students if relationships these days are how they used to be. In pairs, Students discuss for two minutes.Teacher gets feedback on the differences, similarities.
Pre-listening (to activate schemata on relationship problems, pre-teach vocabulary)	Teacher gives students and they need to figure out if the sentences refer to old rules of relationship or new rules.Teacher checks answers and meanings.
Listening (to listen for the gist)	Teacher tells students they are going to . Students should decide if the song is about new rules or old rules. Teacher highlights students will listen for the general idea and it is not necessary to understand every word. Students listen to the song. Teacher gets feedback.
Description and analysis (to provide oral and written illustrations of how elision is produced and occurs within spoken discourse)	Teacher says students are going to listen to the song again, but the parts of the lyrics in italics are written similarly to the way people speak. Students need to write the correspondent written form. Teacher models the first one. Teacher gives students .Students listen to the song again.Students check in pairsTeacher gets feedback, boards the answers.Teacher elicits why sounds disappear in some object pronouns and why some are pronounced. Teacher shows answers and elicits stress. Teacher elicits and shows stressed parts of the sentences: Don’t him You to him again. I’ve new , I them. I’ve gotta them to .
Listening discrimination (to provide focused listening practice with learner’s ability to correctly discriminate elision)	Teacher tells students they will listen to five sentences of people reacting to the song. Students need to indicate if sounds disappear or not. Teacher gives them . Here I encourage you to have some good non-native English speaker teachers record the sentences. You’ll be providing students with models that they are numerically more likely to be exposed to.Students do the exercise. Students check in pairs. Teacher checks answers, plays recording again if necessary.
Restricted practice (to raise learners consciousness on elision)	Teacher divides the class in Student A and Student B. Teacher tells students they are going to read a dialogue and each student has a role. Teacher hands in . Teacher tells students to pay attention to the colors in the text, as they will indicate which sounds are going to disappear. Teacher highlights students need to try to read in a normal or fast pace, not too slow. Teacher tells students to pay attention whether their partner makes the indicated sounds disappear.Students do the task. Teacher monitors. Teacher asks if students noticed if their partners made sounds disappear.
Freer practice (to offer more structured communication practice to enable the learner to monitor for elision)	Teacher tells students to work individually on their own relationship rules. Students write 5 sentences about how they think relationships should be like. Students complete: 1- Ask him/ her/ them… 2- Tell him/ her/ them… 3- Let him/ her/ them… 4- Kiss him / her/ them when… 5- Help him/ her/ them with…Students write.
Communicative practice (to practice paying attention to form and content)	In trios, students share their relationship rules and justify their sentences.Students share their ideas in groups. Teacher gets feedback and gives feedback.

Helping students with connected speech

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Connected speech

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

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

What is connected speech in English?

Examples and types of connected speech

1. Catenation or linking

2. Intrusion

4. Assimilation

5. Geminates

Is connected speech important?

How can you improve your connected speech?

Listen as frequently as possible

Use transcripts or subtitles as you listen

Shadowing and recording yourself

Have conversations

Use podcasts to improve your connected speech

Speaking naturally will come with time

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Connected Speech Practice Dialogues (Pronunciation)

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