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Part 6SpeakingSection 5 of 5

6.5Pronunciation: five things that matter most

  1. Word stress. English words have one strong syllable. Say PHOtograph, phoTOGrapher, photoGRAPHic. Getting the stress wrong can make a familiar word unrecognisable.
  2. Sentence stress. Stress the words that carry meaning, not the small grammar words.
  3. Final consonants. Arabic speakers often drop or soften the end of a word. The difference between want and wanted, or work and worked, lives at the end of the word.
  4. The p sound. It exists in English and must be produced with a puff of air. Practise pairs: pin and bin, pack and back, cap and cab.
  5. Pausing. Pause at the end of an idea, not in the middle of a phrase. Where you pause tells the listener how your sentence is organised.