Sounds, Syllables and Word Stress: Elementary and Intermediate English Pronunciation Practice

Sounds, Syllables and Word Stress

Elementary and Intermediate English Pronunciation Practice

Dr Nsebeng Jean Mayala

First published in the UK in 2024 by Shakspeare Editorial

Copyright © 2024 Dr Nsebeng Jean Mayala.

ISBN 978-1-7392549-7-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-7392549-8-8 (ebook)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission from the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Design www.ShakspeareEditorial.org

in loving memory of

Mamono Mayungana Hélène

Katanga Kiongo Stanislas

Kangundu Nsil’afa Justin

Kangundu Kossy Justin (brother and friend)

You left fingerprints of love and devotion on our lives. You shall not be forgotten.

phonemic symbols

Consonants

/b/ bank, number, tub

/d/ day, lady, head

/g/ girl, giggle, egg

/p/ pot, paper, cup

/t/ teach, hotel, boat

/k/ cat, cucumber, lack

/v/ vein, review, give

/ð/ this, father, bathe

/z/ zinc, present, was

/ʒ/ genre, measure, beige

/f/ fall, often, cliff

/θ/ thought, method, bath

/s/ say, passport, bless

/ʃ/ shell, bushman, dish

/h/ hot, behind

/ʧ/ cheese, achieve, clutch

/ʤ/ gender, algebra, courage

/m/ moon, memory, team

/n/ note, renew, ten

/ŋ/ ink, kingdom, morning

/w/ water, subway, wow

/j/ yes, beyond

/l/ lost, willing, tall

/r/ rain, forest, far away (link with following word)

Vowels

/i:/ be, leap, key

/ɪ/ hit, lip, ending

/e, ɛ/ bet, desk, care

/æ/ bag, sand, apple

/ɜː/ girl, first, circle

/ʌ/ but, drum, brother

/uː/ crew, food, fruit

/ʊ/ book, could, full

/ɔː/ call, baseball, thought

/ɒ/ motto, octopus, upon

/ɑ:/ car, hard, park

/ə/ (schwa) about, bitter, calculator

preface and acknowledgements

My first debt of gratitude goes to the British Council who kindly sponsored my four-year study at Durham University. Your financial assistance and a great deal of other material support made it possible for me to successfully achieve the objective set by your department. I am grateful for being one of the recipients of your scholarships.

Secondly, I would like to sincerely thank Peter Grundy, professor at Durham University, who not only introduced me to research skills, but was also my guide and mentor for four years. Peter spent a great deal of time and effort to support and help me successfully complete my PhD degree.

I am immensely grateful to Pete Gentry for his in-depth proofreading and expert editing suggestions to improve the book content and presentation. Pete’s attention to details – style, font, and consistency – helped turn a draft of ideas into structured and meaningful content.

My sincere thanks to Angie A. Phillips for expertly drawing the many brilliant and colourful diagrams used in this book. Such illustrations are likely to prove particularly useful for beginner and younger learners.

And finally, I would like to express my wholehearted appreciation to Alison Shakspeare for her time, effort and dedication in seeing this book to publication. My sincere thanks for turning my wish into a reality.

words of gratitude to family and friends

It is hoped that this book will inspire a noticeably young generation of children to always give the best of themselves while hopefully becoming true advocates of the book. As it is not possible to include all the young children from our large family, I only mention here those who are fortunate to share memories of our everyday lives: grandchildren Jacob Kimanese Moseley, Samuel Makangu Kiwanuka-Musoke, Jaden Kossi Moseley and Sophia Ngahel Kiwanuka-Musoke; niece Taliah Kala; grandniece Naomi Pandanzyla and nephew Michael Bwelesi. Those young grandchildren, nieces and nephews not mentioned here are equally loved and always part of our family life.

I would like my children and their spouses, namely, Linda and Jason, Christian, Jean-Junior, Hélène and Paul, and my wife Jeannette Kimpiabi Mayala to see this book as a gift to you for being part of my everyday life. Similarly, I am grateful to my sister Micheline Makibengi, her children and grandchildren, younger brothers Justin Kangundu, Paulin Bwelesi as well as my in-laws Annie and Joseph Kimpiabi for sharing part of your lives with my young family in its early and challenging years.

A big thank you to all my friends and their families for playing a special role in my life, namely, Herman Rapier, Raphael Kamidi, Idesbald Munganga, Annie Nzinga, Sister Rosemary, Sister Margaret, Christine Makala, Bernard Munganga, Dominique Mputubwele, Makele Ben-And, Anatole Nzwanga, Scholastique Kingalala, André Biselela, Venant Munungi, Rigobert Lufalanka, Kitila Mkumbo, Deogratius Wenga, Agnès Mondo, Bruno Matudi, Christina Nantwi, Antoinette Tshabola and many others not included here for always keeping alive our common memories.

I am also deeply thankful to all my colleagues and friends at the Virtual School in Barking and Dagenham: Jane Hargreaves, Ian Starling, Jill Baker, Lynne Hannigan, Janet Cassford, Angelina Ikeako, Rukhsana Bakhsh, Cris Ford, Kathleen Twin, Fahmeeda Ghulam, Kathleen Adams, Tricia Butler, Hannah Anderson and Efrem Berhane, for your friendship and support throughout our shared professional lives. My work in schools was made interesting and rewarding thanks to special friends like Tracey Whittington and colleagues such as Gary Anderson and Emma Somers.

Special thanks to my daughters Linda and Hélène, to Phillippe Kodi, Fahmeeda Ghulam and Stephanie Bwelesi for your encouragement and constant reminders to complete the book.

Also, my warm and heartfelt thanks to all my students at the Institut Pédagogique National in Kinshasa and to all my tutors and students at Kinampanda Teachers’ College (Tanzania) for your contribution to several practical aspects in this book.

Last but not least, I would like to express my love and sincere appreciation to all my extended family members and family friends: the Kangundus, the Bwelesis, the Makangus, the Tamulombos, the Kahungus, the Kimpiabis, the Pandanzylas, the Moseleys, the Kiwanuka-Musokes, the Kodis, the Kukwikilas, the Agobas, the Kalas, the Ghulams, the Grecus, the Mapanda-Meyas, the Kwilus, the Mukasa Mukengis, the Munungis, the Bulabulas, the Bakas, the Kaulus, the Kindembis, the Mukezas, the Sally-Lutus, the Sukidisas, the Makukas, the Kihanukas, the Kisendes, the Totos, the Bundukis, the Witeles, the Zengamambus and many others not included for your continued love and friendship and for sharing so many good memories together.

introduction

1. Why this book?

The academic and social pressure on all teacher trainees to master the English language in a French-speaking environment could only be overcome by a strong and unparalleled motivation to succeed. To be able to complete three academic years of undergraduate studies and two years of graduate studies in the English department at the Institut Pédagogique National in Kinshasa, we had to be highly motivated and extremely hard-working students.

With our starting point being almost no English, we had to work hard for two long years as undergraduate students before we began to relax and enjoy English lessons. The main motivating factor was the arrival in the English department of a British teacher, Mr Alan Barr.

The weekly listening lessons delivered by Mr Barr in the language laboratory were a source of truly funny and animated conversations. All the fuss was caused by the sight of our twisting and twisted mouths trying hard to correctly articulate the English sounds. There was a need for (and a huge interest in) all of us to learn to speak well so that we could impress our lecturers and the other French-taught students at the college. To give the reader an idea of how much we enjoyed practising our new language, try to exaggerate the pronunciation of the following sentence while watching your mouth in a mirror:

The wrong man was arrested by the security forces.

You will be surprised to see the variation in the movements of the mouth, particularly the lips and the tongue. This is what we used to do to impress the other students who were not taking English. Although we were all being trained to become teachers, some of us had a higher ambition: to go to England and get a university degree in teaching English. When we were offered the job of assistant lecturers in the English department, we felt we had taken the first giant step towards achieving our ambition. Two years into the job, after taking a series of written and oral tests and having successfully passed them, we were given the unexpected opportunity to study in England for the first time.

On arrival in London, we were accommodated at a hotel on Gloucester Road. The next day, when we asked the receptionist for directions to the nearest shops, we got our first shock of the English accent. Whatever the receptionist said, none of us registered a single word. At that point, we realised how far behind our level of understanding of spoken English was. We were glad our students were not around at that very embarrassing moment. That first difficult conversation set the tone for the rest of our one-year stay in the United Kingdom (UK).

It is this personal experience, first as students and later as lecturers, that contributed partially to the idea of writing a book. Another motivating factor came about during the time we worked as advisory teachers in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, supporting pupils who spoke English as an additional language. The influx of secondary school children from abroad, with little or no English on arrival in the UK, prompted our service to become more proactive in finding a variety of strategies to support these children. As teachers, we were required to have a better understanding of some of the basic features of pronunciation and how they interact in improving spoken language.

Our third and perhaps most powerful motivation to write this book came from our two-year stay in Kinampanda, at a teachers’ training college in the north of Tanzania. We were hired by the British Council as ELT (English language teaching) trainers to help college tutors improve their English teaching methodology. The job included collaborative English lesson planning with college tutors, observing English lessons and providing