How to Pronounce: Games with Vowel Sounds, Part 16

Hello! I’m John Russell.
Vowel sounds are very important in American English. We use 14 or 15 vowel sounds – depending on how you count them.
If your goal is to improve your pronunciation, you will need to develop a strong sense of the differences between vowel sounds. You can start by developing your ability to recognize the sounds. If you can’t recognize the differences between sounds, then you will have difficulty producing the different sounds.
So, let’s do a kind of quiz. We will explore two different vowel sounds that are easy to mix up.

The first one is written like this in International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA): /ʊ/ This vowel sound appears in words such as “good.”

The second vowel sound is written like this in IPA: /u/ This vowel sound appears in words like “food.”
So, we have our two vowel sounds: /Ʊ/ or /u/

You will now hear one word. Which vowel sound do you hear?
[GRAPHIC /Ʊ/ or /u/ ?
[DO NOT SHOW THIS TEXT] understood
Let’s listen one more time
[GRAPHIC]
[DO NOT SHOW THIS TEXT] understood
The answer is /Ʊ/. The word is “understood.”
Now let’s try another word. Which vowel sound do you hear?
/Ʊ/ or /u/
Let’s listen one more time.
The answer is /u/. The word is “tool.”
That’s all for today! Keep up the good work.