How to Pronounce: Listening Practice

Hello! I'm John Russell.
We can use different kinds of listening exercises to improve our pronunciation. The idea is this: if we can hear the difference between some sounds, then we will be more likely to produce these different sounds in speaking.
So, let’s play a kind of game. You will hear a sentence. Your job is to select the word that you hear. Pay special attention to the vowel sounds.

Let’s start:
Question 1
Which noun did you hear?
Pan pen
Let’s try again:
[Could you hand me the pan?]
The answer is pan. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, we write the vowel sound like this: /æ/.

Now let’s try another example. This time you will only hear two words. Choose the word that you hear:
Question 2
Laughed left
Let’s listen again:
The answer is left.
In IPA, we write the vowel sound like this: /ɛ/
Question 3
Let’s try one last round of our game. Listen to this sentence.
He stood in the sand.
Which noun did you hear?
sand send
Let’s listen again:
He stood in the sand.
The answer is sand. Once again, we have our friend /æ/
If these questions were difficult for you, you might need to watch some of our earlier videos on the vowel sounds of American English.
That’s all for today!
Keep up the good work.