Creativa

Sample Course Content

CRYSTAL CLEAR VOWELS

Episode 1

Is that a sheep or a ship outside your window? Two sounds for every vowel in English.

Problem: Differentiating between the pronunciation of short and long vowels. For example, the A in appear versus the A in late or the U in bus versus the word united. How do you choose between the two sounds based on their written form? How is this important and useful?

Episode 2

Whoa man or woman? The schwa sound, Most Valuable Player in English.

Problem: Sentences like “I took uhn express train tuhday” transform both the A in “an’ and the O in “today'' into an uh sound. Nobody taught you pronunciation in school and tuhday doesn’t sound logical based on that and on the sounds of your native language. It almost seems like any vowel can become the same sound in English. You want to know when and why vowels in English mutate into an uh sound. For example, why is the sentence above possible but not, “I tuck an uhxpruss train today”? When and why is it necessary and when is it impossible to use uh in place of a vowel?

PRECISE CONSONANTS 

Episode 3

That Tired Tiger: Solving the trouble with T in everyday communication.

Problem: The “t” sound in English takes on three different forms, but none of those resemble the  “t” sound heard among Indian speakers. The T heard across India is technically called a “Retroflex T.” That particular T sound is hard for non-Indian speakers of English to comprehend and throws them off when you speak. You’d like to know how to pronounce the T in its most common forms. The standard T occurs in words like stop or talk. Americans use a different T when it’s between vowels, as can be observed in words like water or later. There are other nuances to the letter T but these two will be enough to help resolve T-sound related distortions in your sentences.