You know the world of English is a fun
and exciting place to be I'm so glad you
could join me for another lesson hi
everybody this is mr. Duncan in England
how are you today are you okay I hope so
are you happy I hope so in our lesson
today we will take a look at the system
that is designed to make learning
English easier or so we are told in this
lesson we will talk about phonetics
I have something in my hand do you want
to see it it's my big dictionary there
can be no doubt about the popularity of
English these days and because of this
many people are taking up the challenge
of learning and teaching the language
over the years there have been many new
ways of overcoming this task one popular
method is to group all of the english
sounds into easy-to-read symbols we call
this system the international phonetic
alphabet or IPA for short the idea
behind this is to make words much easier
to pronounce and therefore improve the
learners level of English much quicker
why do we need phonetics the reason why
we need a phonetic code is because some
English letters have more than one sound
and because some letters when joined
together in a word actually create a new
sound of their own also there is the
silent letter that can appear within a
word but we will leave that one for
another lesson as you may already know
the English alphabet is split into two
groups of letters they are consonants
and vowels we also use these two groups
of sounds to build up the phonetic code
so let's take a look at the first group
good as it get cut as in lock the as in
this yeah as in yes sure as in chip hmm
as in ring as in she jus as in jaw as in
thin Shh as a decision ah as in hat yeah
as in bed her as in father e as in sit e
as in cozy ah as in hot o as in run o as
ah as in arm air as in chair earth as in
her e as in c o as in saw who as in too
i as in my ow as in how a as in day Oh
as in no ear as in near boy as in boy or
as in poor higher as in fire our as in
all the phonetic sounds useful some
people do not like the phonetic alphabet
and believe that it actually makes
learning English more complicated in
harder to grasp while others think that
the code helps to speed up the process
of learning English especially for those
using it as a second language many
students find that having to keep
referring to the code takes the fun out
of English and it eventually becomes
boring and turns into a chore the other
problem with phonetics is that it does
not take into account the different
accents and dialects of all the regions
that use English a good example of this
is the varying use of the letter A in
words such as bath path and draft these
words are spoken differently depending
on the local accent and the way in which
the words were taught to be pronounced
generally speaking the phonetic alphabet
is a great way to learn the various
sounds that exists within English but my
advice is not to rely on it too much try
to get used to remembering the
formulation of letters and how they vary
from word to word finally be aware of
how much you rely on phonetics as it can
slow down your improvement or at the
very worst make the subject of English
become boring and dull before I finish
my lesson today I would like to say a
special hello to my new friends watching
in Argentina Brazil China Italy Japan
Malaysia Mexico Pakistan Poland Spain
and the United Kingdom this is mr.
Duncan in England saying thank you for