Learning english basic sounds through syllabic utterances

Abstract

Learning English as a foreign language is normally supposed to require learning English grammar and vocabulary. Accurate pronunciation is either ignored or much less emphasis is given to it. The correct English pronunciation can be learned if the basic sounds of English can be uttered correctly. This is because words are formed by concatenating the basic sounds. Previously a computer method was suggested for learning correct pronunciation of English sounds, especially vowels. In this method isolated vowels were uttered in front of a microphone interfaced to a computer. An algorithm extracted the first two formants F 1 and F 2 and checked if these formants produced a point within a loop corresponding to the intended vowel. The pronunication of the vowel was declared to be accurate if the point ( F 1 , F 2 ) was within the bounds of the vowel-loop. Experience of most of the learners aged between six and nine has revealed that it is difficult to learn pronunciation of basic sounds when spoken in isolation. This is apparently due to difficulties in memorizing the isolated sounds. In this paper a scheme is presented whereby pronunciation of vowels is learned by uttering monosyllabic words which contain vowels to be learned. An algorithm is presented which would cull the vowel part from a monosyllabic word for analysis. The words chosen for practising pronunciation of English vowels are CVC type.